Back Yard

Brookline, Massachusetts -- Suddenly it's in our back yard.Suddenly the scene of the crime is not in some isolated abortion-clinic building on a Southern highway or a strip mall. It's on Beacon Street, along the Boston Marathon route, two minutes from my front door.This time it's not Michael Griffin. It's not Paul Hill. The suspect is another man, John C. Salvi 3d, handsome, curly-haired, clean-shaven, dressed in black.This time the murder victim isn't even a doctor or a clinic escort. It's two young receptionists.

Chicago. -- The president has been accused of covert (if unconscious) racism in his reluctance to admit to our shores Haitian refugees (who are black), though Cuban refugees were earlier admitted in large numbers.What few people realize is that Mr. Clinton has reason to feel chary even about Cubans, at least in any large numbers. His sensitivity to complaints from local officials, in Florida and elsewhere, about the influx of people without jobs or homes or places to put them, comes from his own tough experience.

The city Zoning Board has ruled that a Hamilton man cannot keep his pigeon coops in his back yard, but the man says he will appeal the ruling."I'm going to take it to court, if necessary," says Ronald A. Wacker Jr. "I'll get a lawyer and appeal it. I'm going to stand up for my rights."The Zoning Board heard the case last week after some of Wacker's neighbors complained that his pedigreed racing pigeons are unsanitary. They challenged the issuance of the permit allowing Wacker to erect the coops.

An unidentified woman was found shot today, lying on a mattress in the rear yard of a vacant house in Govans, Baltimore police said.Police said the woman, about 30 years old, was found about noon at the house in the 600 block of McCabe Ave. She was reported in critical condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital.She was suffering from gunshot wounds to her head, ankle and finger, and from exposure, police said.

Every time it rains or snows, Howard County dumps drainage into Joseph Mahony's back yard in the Laurel area.It flows in a stream a couple feet wide and 2 or 3 inches deep, washing away his grass and eroding his land. And before the water escapes through a culvert underneath Route 29, it forms a small pool in his neighbor's back yard."I could get a kayak and take a ride," said Mr. Mahony, 63, while following the stream's path through the woods behind his house. "It gets worse and worse every year."

Q. I want to plant a few apple trees in my back yard this spring but I have little room. What variety of apples should I plant and what kind of rootstock should I ask for? A. Disease-resistant cultivars like Liberty Goldrush, Enterprise or Jonafree. Plant more than one cultivar to ensure good cross-pollination and fruit set. The M-9 rootstock will give you a very manageable tree -- only a third the size of a standard apple tree. Your trees will need permanent staking or trellising because the roots are brittle and such a tree can be easily blown over by a strong wind.

An Annapolis man whose body was found Tuesday in the back yard of a house in the 100 block of Market St. apparently choked to death Tuesday when he tried to eat a steak, Annapolis police said yesterday.The 39-year-old man -- whose name is being withheld pending notification of relatives -- was found about 12:50 p.m. Police found him lying on his side in the grass, dressed in beige shorts and a green polo shirt, officials said.William Morgan, who lives on the block, arrived home Tuesday and saw the man lying in the yard across from his house.

Carl Sagan, a key proponent of the "nuclear winter" theory of how soot, dust and smoke from nuclear bomb blasts could chill the world's climate, says Iraq's continued burning of Kuwaiti oil facilities, supplemented by fires in Iran, southern Iraq and Saudi Arabia, could alter the climate of areas as far off as Pakistan and India.Oil smoke is thicker and blacker than the ash that darkened the skies after the Tambora volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815 and caused "the year without summer," Dr. Sagan says.

Three Canada geese struggled to gain altitude as they lifted from a grassy patch atop a small, rocky island -- wings stroking powerfully while they rose on thermal currents over the river.Simultaneously, a woolly bugger drifted down a narrow chute of current and a smallmouth bass hit it like a freight train.OK, a model freight train. It was, after all, the Patapsco, where bass fishing is usually small scale compared with regional reservoirs and the upper Potomac and Susquehanna rivers.But the Patapsco, which runs some 30 miles north and west of Baltimore, is well-suited to a quick outing before or after work, and fly-fishing gear or light spinning tackle can put angling in the proper balance.