Ecology

Seventh-graders at Patapsco Middle School have been exploring nature -- in a mobile trailer parked behind the school. Inside the portable classroom, teacher Becky Hawkins has led the pupils in activities to illustrate the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Hawkins works for the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation, which supplied the trailer. It has bookshelves and work space. Eight fish tanks, some with aquatic plants and goldfish, stand against the walls. Seventh-grade science teachers Heather Vorhauer and Leora Caporaletti decided to have the trailer come to the school rather than arrange a field trip.

I'd like to start using a lawn service but am concerned about the use of pesticides. I want to be environmentally correct. What advice can you offer?Before contracting with any lawn service, ask for references. Interview representatives from several companies. The company you choose should demonstrate beforehand that it understands and follows the principles of integrated pest management (IPM), which means it will only spray when a particular pest threatens the health and long-term survival of your lawn and cannot be controlled by any other means.

"Death in the Andes," by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated by Edith Grossman. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 276 pages. $24 The title of Mario Vargas Llosa's new novel, "Death in the Andes," invites us to entertain expectations of a particular, and so conventionally, dramatic death. Indeed, within 15 pages a beatific young couple arriving for spiritual communion with the Andean heights is brutally murdered by blank-faced children of the Shining Path. But this is only the first of myriad deaths.

A few years ago a piece I'd written on the evolutionary adaptations of underwater bay grasses came back from review with this comment: "What makes you assume everyone who reads this believes in evolution?"The reviewer was an environmentalist I knew and respected, but my immediate reaction was shock: All this time I never knew he was one of those . . . creationists!Later, I wondered how often he must have felt a bit alienated around me and other environmentalists who sometimesunthinkingly mocked religious belief, and who just assumed that anyone who cared for the things we did must subscribe to evolutionary theory.

Under a cathedral of trees in the arboreal deep, a somewhat exasperated 11-year-old named Tony is looking for life in a stream.Tony is persistent with his net as he looks for fish and snails and crawfish and all manner of other creepy crawly things, but he isn't much good at this.It is, after all, one of his very first experiences loose in a place not hemmed in by concrete.Despite his poor luck, there are timeless lessons here in the shady woodland realm for the Halls Crossroads Elementary student as he patiently wades Plumtree Run, which courses through Harford Glen Environmental Education Center in Abingdon.

In 1987, when John Javna was on the verge of a mid-life crisis that would become a publishing phenomenon, Sandra Hornung was looking for a way to motivate a class of fourth-graders at Ocean City Elementary School."

Starting tomorrow, students taking a horticulture course at Anne Arundel Community College will get a chance to find out how labor-intensive ecological gardening can be.Their training ground will be a 1-acre garden on a historic property in Annapolis.During the six-session course, "Gardening Using Ecological Principles," students will learn everything from how to use storm water in gardens to composting, planting waterway buffers and planting trees so they shade houses.The point, said Anne Pearson, director of the Alliance for Sustainable Communities, is to teach people that "green" gardens can be efficient.

BEFORE the new year pushes 1991 far into the mists, all Marylanders should pause and give thanks for two centenarians of the Chesapeake -- Mrs. W. Alton Jones and Dr. Reginald van Trump Truitt. Both of them served the land of pleasant living long and well, and both of them said their final goodbyes in 1991 at age 100.Dr. Truitt, Maryland's earliest pioneer in the study of marine biology and ecology, concentrated on the Chesapeake Bay, while Mrs. Jones gave most of her attention to the land around the bay, particularly Talbot County and the upper Eastern Shore.

A new cable television channel offering environmental news and entertainment has selected Howard County for its national headquarters.Eric McLamb, an Ellicott City resident who is founder and chief executive officer of the ECOlogy Channel, said he and his partners chose Howard over Atlanta and other areas because of its proximity to Washington and the many environmental organizations and regulatory agencies there.Executives of the channel plan to air their first broadcast in December. But they face an uphill climb to get big cable system operators such as Comcast and TCI to offer their 24-hour programming to subscribers, industry analysts say."

Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary wants an artist to bring the marsh inside.The park in the southwestern corner of the county is looking for an artist to cover what is now a blank wall at the recently expanded McCann Wetlands Study Center. Park administrators are looking for an irregularly shaped mural about 20 feet by 14 feet -- in paint, tile or any other medium -- that is decorative and educational."The mural will be a teaching tool for us," said Chris Swarth, sanctuary director. "It needs to capture the ecosystem."