England has Stonehenge. France has cave paintings. We have national parks.         The parks were a cutting-edge idea when they were born in 1872, with the founding of Yellowstone. With some 2.7 million visitors a year, our 59 national parks are still a big deal.     But how many of us get to visit them? How many of us get to be inspired by the trees that form a green mantle over many of their lands?     That’s why biologist...

Picture this: A chilly night cloaked in mist with vultures roosting by the dozens on lampposts, in trees behind the grocery store.     That was a rare sight at Bay Hills Shopping Center, but I see vultures almost every day. Usually turkey vultures, distinguished from their black cousins by red heads and outer feathers of black and brown. They often perch on the signs or lampposts on the eastern approach to the Severn River Bridge. They circle the skies around Broadneck, riding...

Observe and serve. That could be my motto with our fennel plants.     The larvae of swallowtail butterflies feed on umbelly plants: fennel, cutting celery and parsley going to seed. I appreciate the mature butterfly, but in the summer of 2011 I removed a number of the larvae to save my plants. I deposited them in the woods across the way. Late last year, the woods were sprayed to stop the poison ivy. The spraying meant moving caterpillars from my plants would no longer be an...

Why does a three-time Tony-nominated New York director and choreographer come to a way-off Broadway stage in Annapolis?     Dames at Sea at Infinity Theatre Company is a blast from the deep past for Randy Skinner, who choreographed it as  a student in the mid-’70s. Nowadays, Skinner says, “people don’t write songs so tuneful.”     Skinner should know: Dancing since he was four, he has worked with some of the industry’s best. His...