May is National Asparagus Month.         This perennial spring vegetable is one of the first harvests of the season and a favorite on menus. A distant cousin of the lily, asparagus takes some dedication to cultivate, about three years before your first crop. But once it takes, the stalks can grow up to four inches in one day. If your green thumb hasn’t stretched to asparagus, you’ll find the stalky green popping up all over — in farmers markets,...

I was involved in the very first Earth Day, and I remain a strong supporter of its goals.     The earth we grow our crops in is our umbilical cord for survival. The proverb take care of the earth and the earth will take care of you is true in more ways than one. If we continue to rape the earth as we have, we will leave nothing for future generations. This earth has provided us with an abundance of food and has helped to sustain us in many other ways. We have an obligation...

Thursday marks April’s full moon, also called the Pink Moon for the early blooming phlox, the Grass Moon for the return of verdant lawns and the Fish Moon, hereabouts commemorating the opening of rockfish season. That evening, the moon rises in the east as the sun sets in the west. In parts of Africa, the Middle East, Australia and Asia, Earth’s shadow will partially eclipse the moon. The rest of us will have to be content with the golden glow of Saturn above the moon and to its...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.     So says Jane Austen in the original chic lit, Pride and Prejudice, which opens The Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s third season at the Bowie Playhouse. Questing to bring local audiences not only works by the Bard but also other time-tested classics, the company takes us to Britain’s Regency. Jon Jory’s 2005 stage adaptation promises “...