Regulars (All)

Article - Sky Watch by J. Alex Knoll; by J. Alex Knoll - 1/20/11

Riding the Ecliptic

Some of the sky’s brightest sites travel this road through the heavens

The waning gibbous moon rises around 7:45pm Friday, January 21. Look a half-dozen degrees above it for the blue-white star Regulus, the heart of Leo the lion. Just as the lion is the king of beasts, Leo is the king of the constellations. In Latin, regulus means little king. The star is located right on the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun, moon, planets and the constellations of the zodiac, meaning that at times during each year it rises with the sun, giving it great powers throughout...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Francis Gouin - 1/13/11

Pitch Those Fading Poinsettias

It’s much easier to buy next year’s colored blooms than to raise them yourself

Every January, I receive questions on how to keep poinsettia plants and have them flower again next Christmas. My best advice is to dump them in the compost pile as soon as you get tired of looking at them or when they start dropping their leaves. Leave the growing of Christmas poinsettias to growers of greenhouse crops who have both the knowledge and the facilities to produce quality plants in full bloom in time for Christmas. The poinsettia is known as a short-day plant, meaning that it...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 1/13/11

Weathering a Tough Winter Ashore

Stay warm with fishing shows and movie nights

This winter has been especially difficult, with record low temperatures in Maryland for the last several weeks. The long-range forecast into late January says we can expect that trend to continue. Past seasons, I have usually been able to get in a couple of days on nearby tributaries for pickerel and maybe a day or two out on the Bay for deep water white perch. Fish Are Biting … But so are the temperatures. With no respite in sight, it is best to stick around the home fires for...

Article - Sky Watch by J. Alex Knoll; by J. Alex Knoll - 1/13/11

By the Light of the Moon

Follow the waxing moon and test your eyesight

The waxing gibbous moon brightens the night sky this week, appearing high in the southeast Thursday at sunset a little after 5:00. The next evening, and each following night, sunset finds the moon roughly a dozen degrees to the east. Thursday, the moon shines in front of the constellation Aries, with the three stars outlining the ram’s head shining to the upper right of the moon. A rather indistinct constellation at best, Aries’ brightest stars, Hamal, Sheratan and Mesarthim, pale...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Francis Gouin - 1/6/11

Your Christmas Tree’s Days of Giving Are Not Over

It still holds gifts for flowers and birds

If you planted pansies in your garden last fall, use branches of your discarded Christmas tree to provide the plants with some winter protection. Cutting the branches near the stem and spreading a single layer over the pansies will provide light shade, thus reducing chances of winter injury if we don’t get sufficient snow. Next spring, remove the branches just as the plants resume growing. Pansies are winter-hardy, but providing them with light winter shade will improve their spring color...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 1/6/11

Predictions for the Coming Year’s Sporting Life

Good — and sometimes great — fishing in a cleaner Bay

One of America’s wryest philosophers, Yogi Berra, once noted that predictions were difficult to make, especially about the future. Despite his sage warning, I feel compelled to make some Tidewater prophecies for the New Year. Fish Are Biting At last! A slight warming spell has freed many of the ice-bound tributaries, and the pickerel and perch are on the move. Lip-hooked minnows on a shad dart under a bobber will tempt them and relieve your winter doldrums — at least until...

Article - Where We Live by Steve Carr; by Steve Carr - 1/6/11

20 Questions about the Bay’s New Cleanup Plan

With these plain English answers, you’ll know as much as the experts (Of course nobody knows if it will work)

There have been a lot of headlines lately about how we’re finally going to start cleaning up Chesapeake Bay. Most feature the non-word TMDL. Q What is this TMDL thing that everyone keeps talking about? A TMDL stands for Total Maximum Daily Load. It’s a fancy phrase for measuring and establishing limits on what’s polluting the Bay, specifically nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment. The primary sources of nitrogen and phosphorous are sewage treatment plants, farms and stormwater...

Article - Sky Watch by J. Alex Knoll; by J. Alex Knoll - 1/6/11

A Matter of Degrees

Even at their best, we can never see the full face of Mercury or Venus

While winter has just begun, we’re already in the process of reclaiming daylight, and Saturday marks a milestone when the sun sets at 5:00. Over the next month, the sun sets roughly one minute later each day. That same Saturday, daybreak arrives at 7:25, but alas, through January, it will come just a few minutes earlier each week. Sunset reveals Jupiter in the south. Look for the waxing moon less than 10 degrees to the east of Jupiter Sunday night and to the west Monday night. By 10...

Article - Sky Watch by J. Alex Knoll; by J. Alex Knoll - 12/30/10

Basking in the Sun’s Rays

While Old Sol is seven percent stronger this week, it’s unlikely you’ll need to break out the sunscreen

While we commonly mark the first week of January as the commencement of the new year, it also marks two significant milestones in the passage of the earth’s journey around the sun. You wouldn’t know it by winter’s chilly grip, but January 4 marks perihelion, earth’s closest approach to the sun. On this day, 92.187 million miles separate us from the sun, compared to aphelion, around July 4 each year, when the two are 93.375 million miles apart. Sunlight hitting the earth...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 12/23/10

Clean-Up Time

Over winter, the most innocuous fouling turns into hardened deposits

This year Old Man Winter arrived with an especially frigid blast. Closing the rockfish season almost two weeks early for most of us, the 20-degree nighttime temperatures have since turned our tributaries to ice, denying even pickerel anglers their bitter weather pleasures. Fish Are Biting But not around here. Rockfish season is officially closed on the Chesapeake. However, if you still have a hankering to tangle with old linesides, the season remains open year-round oceanside. Ocean...