Back Porch

A 15-year-old girl who was spending her day off from school with her boyfriend was shot late yesterday morning in the face as the couple lingered on the back porch of his family's Brooklyn Park house, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. Maranda Callender, a student at North County High School, was taken by ambulance to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. She was listed in critical condition early yesterday evening. Police said they were searching for a man - possibly in his teens or early 20s - whom witnesses saw fleeing from the area just after 11 a.m. yesterday.

Reality struck the other evening when I arrived home from work and saw that the dining room was dark, tented in shade. During the day the awnings guys had done their work, installing the canvas coverings that convert my back porch into a cool perch. It may not be summer by the calendar, but it has arrived on my timetable. There was a time when I dreaded a Baltimore summer, but now I'm a convert.

From my back porch the world is good. Mulberriesfall to the cement making a sweet slick patchthat spreads past the gate. Swarms of pigeons,pairs of songbirds, and a crow or two all coo tweetscreech from the trees and wires overheadWould you agree --Vowels are a lot like Fruit?

Talk about coincidence. In May 2005, blues, rock and zydeco band the Subdudes cut an album about growing up, family, loss and having fun. The first track, "Papa Dukie and the Mud People," was about a roving group of hippies who set up camp by a Mississippi River levee, near the homes of a couple of Subdudes members. The Subdudes, who play the Hot August Blues Festival on Saturday, named the album Behind the Levee. A few months later, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the levees failed, and the city was devastated.

Eighteen people escaped injury last night when a two-alarm fire raced through three rowhouses in the city's Westport section.Two firefighters sustained minor injuries battling the fire that reportedly began when furniture stored on a back porch caught fire.The fire has been ruled suspicious and is under investigation.Reported at 1:06 a.m., the fire caused extensive damage to 2319 and 2321 Annapolis Road and moderate damage to 2323.Satrena Hawkins, 27, of 2319, said that shortly after she checked the back of the house around 12:30 a.m., she saw flames coming from the back porch where three pieces of furniture were being stored.

A 32-year-old man, who apparently suffered a blow to the back of the head, was found dead in an alley behind a North Baltimore bar yesterday morning, police said.Police said a passer-by discovered the body of James Wade Reeves after 10 a.m., next to a trash bin behind B. J.'s Pub and Grille in the 3800 block of Falls Road in Hampden. Reeves, who lived in the area but whose address was unavailable, was wearing a sweat shirt, boxer shorts and socks, police said.Reeves' sandals, pants, valuables and other personal effects were found on the bar's second-floor back porch, police said.

A three-alarm fire that started from a discarded cigarette destroyed a house in Crofton yesterday afternoon, causing $250,000 in damage and threatening two neighboring residences, Anne Arundel County fire officials said.Firefighters received the first call on the fire at 2:01 p.m. from a neighbor who saw the front of the house in the 1400 block of Crofton Parkway in flames. The first trucks arrived 6 minutes later, and firefighters quickly called for the second and third alarms.It took 45 firefighters operating with 12 fire engines and four ladder trucks 45 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

Three 16-year-old boys were arrested last night after two bullets were fired into a party outside a West Baltimore house, leaving a 23-month-old boy with a gunshot wound in his left arm, police said.Quraan Payton was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital pediatric intensive care unit and released about two hours after he was shot, said his mother, Lynette Coates.Police said the bullet passed through the boy's arm about 10:15 p.m. as he stood on the back porch of his family's home in the 3800 block of Clifton Ave."

THIS LITTLE tale began this past fall when I determined to be ready for a blockbuster spring and Memorial Day. I wanted to have the place ready for the visitors who call on an upcoming neighborhood garden walk. Plus, I wanted to be ready to take off and say goodbye to Baltimore at a moment's notice for some visiting with family and friends. Last year, before the World Series, I had the painters and carpenters in. I whacked and tore the garden apart. It was clipped and groomed, ready for a winter's rest and spring debut.

THERE WERE two words my grandmother Lily Rose used to lambaste a summertime condition she detested: hot and buggy. Were she alive today, she would have condemned this month with full fury. Each week has delivered violent temperatures, but even in the Baltimore of asphalt and brick, this has been a stingy summer, too. I have placed cans of insect repellent by each chair on my back porch. I spray myself almost every night; then, as the inevitable bites become welts, I grease up with anti-itch cream.

As I reached down to grab the bag of vegetables, a sharp wind stung my face, reminding me that it was time to cook the rutabagas. The rutabagas had been on the back porch for two weeks after I carried them home from the Sunday Baltimore Farmers' Market. Scott Williams, who presides over the Gardener's Gourmet vegetable stand there, had foisted them on me. I had requested a bag of spinach leaves but Scott, who along with his wife, Cinda Sebastian, grows crops on a Carroll County farm, presented me with four rutabagas as well.

A 15-year-old girl who was spending her day off from school with her boyfriend was shot late yesterday morning in the face as the couple lingered on the back porch of his family's Brooklyn Park house, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. Maranda Callender, a student at North County High School, was taken by ambulance to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. She was listed in critical condition early yesterday evening. Police said they were searching for a man - possibly in his teens or early 20s - whom witnesses saw fleeing from the area just after 11 a.m. yesterday.

A RINGING PHONE interrupted the nap I was enjoying one afternoon this week. I had a right to be exhausted. I had just written "The End" across this spring's housecleaning epic. My sister Mimi was on the wire. She wanted to know if I had extracted the dead flies and moths out of the light fixtures. I assured her I had - and in proper homage to my grandmother Lily Rose and Great Aunt Cora, managed to kill a lightbulb, just as they did, when they introduced sudsy water to live electricity.

TODAY, MY MIND will be in the gutter, and my body will be in the basement. Like a lot of area residents, I am hoping the gutters on my house will withstand the surge of water expected to come when heavy rains melt the 2-foot snowpack sitting on the roof. Once the water gets off the roof, the goal is to keep it out of the basement. This weekend looks like it is shaping up as a couple of days filled with roof worry and cellar dwelling, another exciting chapter in the life of a homeowner.

THERE WERE two words my grandmother Lily Rose used to lambaste a summertime condition she detested: hot and buggy. Were she alive today, she would have condemned this month with full fury. Each week has delivered violent temperatures, but even in the Baltimore of asphalt and brick, this has been a stingy summer, too. I have placed cans of insect repellent by each chair on my back porch. I spray myself almost every night; then, as the inevitable bites become welts, I grease up with anti-itch cream.

THIS LITTLE tale began this past fall when I determined to be ready for a blockbuster spring and Memorial Day. I wanted to have the place ready for the visitors who call on an upcoming neighborhood garden walk. Plus, I wanted to be ready to take off and say goodbye to Baltimore at a moment's notice for some visiting with family and friends. Last year, before the World Series, I had the painters and carpenters in. I whacked and tore the garden apart. It was clipped and groomed, ready for a winter's rest and spring debut.

I WAS WALKING down the front steps early Wednesday morning when I knew it was time to observe the annual ritual. It was warm; the wool rugs in the living room gave off a musty scent. It's time. It's May. Houseclean while it's still cool.So, for the next few days I'll submit to this rite, a practice that so many people have abandoned -- making over a house for the season. By the time it's over (Memorial Day for sure, when the ocean house opens for the first week), I'll have lost a couple pounds and gone through every room in a cleaning frenzy worthy of my most obsessive private moments.

Reality struck the other evening when I arrived home from work and saw that the dining room was dark, tented in shade. During the day the awnings guys had done their work, installing the canvas coverings that convert my back porch into a cool perch. It may not be summer by the calendar, but it has arrived on my timetable. There was a time when I dreaded a Baltimore summer, but now I'm a convert.

THEY LURKED ON the back porch, waiting for me. They were Brussels sprouts, my avowed enemy. The enmity I hold for Brussels sprouts goes back decades. As a child they held me hostage. I grew up in a household where the kids could not leave the supper table until we had taken at least one bite of every dish served during the meal. The one-bite tactic backfired. I ended up hating Brussels sprouts, as did all but one of my three brothers. One of the few benefits of becoming an adult was getting the right to veto the appearance of that vegetable in my home.

I had considered slipping out of town this weekend, but when a friend of mine with a house facing the ocean called to say my bed would be the floor, I thought better of the idea. As muggy as Baltimore may be, I'll stay right at home. I've had too many nights trying to bunk down in overcrowded vacation homes.I guess it goes without saying that a family vacation means just that -- no privacy, 12 to a room and dubious horizontal back support.In the early 1950s, we had a cute little house in Dewey Beach, Del., built atop the sand dunes.