If you moved your houseplants outdoors last spring, this is the week to bring them in before the first frost.     But first you had better inspect them for bugs. One of the major problems associated with moving houseplants outdoors in warm weather is that they become exposed to a greater variety of insects generally not found indoors.     Examine the stems, tops and underside of leaves and flowers closely for both insects and egg masses. The most common insects...

Sunset finds Venus ablaze low in the southwest before setting by 8pm. There is no brighter planet or star, and so close to the horizon Venus can pulse and shimmer as its light is distorted by our atmosphere. Traveling close to the sun, Venus appears for at most a few hours either after sunset or before dawn. This led early civilizations to believe that the evening star and the morning star were two distinct objects. The ancient Greeks called the morning Venus Phosphoros and the evening...

No prison can hold Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone: Bullet to the Head). He’s literally written the book on prison security, breaking out of dozens of super max facilities to prove his point.     Yet he hesitates when a CIA operative asks him to test the security of a black site holding facility. They want him to go in blind. His team won’t know his location, and he’ll be out of touch with the outside world. It’s a risky deal, but the money is good, and...

A new oyster reef lies alongside the Bill Burton Fishing Pier in the Choptank River. Sportsman and Maryland outdoors writer for nearly half a century, Burton retired from the Baltimore Evening Sun and came to Bay Weekly. Over 16 years with us, Burton became increasingly adamant and outspoken about restoring the Chesapeake.     To make the reef, Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s oyster restoration boat, the Patricia Campbell, dropped 300 two-foot-tall, igloo-like reef balls built...