Garden Gate

Sometimes the little presents are the hardest. A remembrance for the neighbor who fed the cat so faithfully when you were on vacation. A thank-you for a child's favorite teacher. The hostess gift. Wouldn't it be nice to be a little more original than the usual bottle of wine or yet another poinsettia?Well, make your holiday gift-giving list, then look to our list for 10 great home-oriented gifts for $20 or less (pictured clockwise from card holder on top).* Jaunty wire-and-bead card holders hold a lot more than place cards.

I FEEL AS IF I've really accomplished something this week. After an absence of six months, my front garden gate went back on its iron hinges. Not that I installed it or welded the metal security supports designed to keep it from walking away, as it almost did earlier this year. But when I left for work Friday morning, closed the wire gate behind me and heard it clank, I felt my St. Paul Street footage was safe. My gate was stolen once during a period when outdoor pieces were being grabbed in several of the city's older neighborhoods.

The strongest division in the 30-horse string of trainer Frannie Campitelli is his 3-year-old fillies."I've got five good ones right now, and they are about the best horses in my barn," Campitelli said yesterday.One of them, Logan's Mist, won her first start on the grass yesterday, drawing off in the stretch at Pimlico Race Course to defeat Good Looking Terri in the $35,000 Plankton Purse.It was the second straight day that jockey Charlie Fenwick had won the Pimlico feature. On Saturday, he won the Lady Baltimore Handicap with Ratings, then scored yesterday aboard Logan's Mist.

Police are looking for vandals who used a homemade bomb to blow up a mailbox in the 600 block of Pine Drive in Pasadena between 6 p.m. Wednesday and 7: 30 a.m. Thursday.Pieces of the black plastic mailbox were scattered around the street 15 feet from the post. In the rubble, police found a 1-liter plastic bottle with aluminum foil and an unknown liquid inside. They believe that the bomb was made with the plastic bottle.Police found a similar device shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Eighth Street and Riverside Drive in Pasadena.

Annapolis teens charged in car vandalism Two Annapolis teenagers were charged with vandalizing four cars after police found them with four cans of spray paint in their pockets, city police said. Police called to the area of Regent Street and Damsel Lane about 7:30 p.m. June 1 arrested the two youths there. A 13-year-old from Garden Gate Lane and a 14-year-old from the 1100 block of Tyler Ave. were charged with malicious destruction of property. Teen arrested in robbery at Quizno's An Annapolis teenager was arrested and charged with robbing a city sandwich shop at gunpoint, police said.

The story of Peter Rabbit is well-known to many, but the life of English author Beatrix Potter may not be as familiar a tale.Potter, who died in 1943 at age 77, was a naturalist, businesswoman, farmer and conservationist as well as the creator of beloved children's books.Her varied life is the subject of the exhibit "Through the Garden Gate: The World of Beatrix Potter," through May 15 at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County."I think, in the back of her mind, children's stories were the last thing she wanted to be known for," says Laura Lee Martin, traveling exhibits coordinator with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, which organized the exhibit.

The beginnings of next year's flower garden might be growing in your yard right now. Some of the annuals you planted in the spring can be whisked inside before the first frost and given a second chance, either as houseplants to brighten your home in winter or as flowers to plant in the garden next spring. Of course, not all plants are worth the bother. Some annuals are spent by the fall, or you may lack the space inside for too many of them. You also need to make sure you're not bringing insects in with the plant.

Tree roses look like children's drawings of plants, with their straight trunks, bushy green balls at the top and colorful blotches of blooms. They look like lollipops, fantasy plants: Tree roses dotted the Red Queen's croquet court in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." They are frivolous, but formal, like a party dress."Standards" is the technical term for roses and other plants trained to grow on tall, bare stems. That kind of training is atopiary technique that has moved in and out of garden fashion for thousands of years, as formal gardens and natural landscape styles have replaced each other in an endless cycle.

Earl Francis Hofmann, realist painter, teacherEarl Francis Hofmann, who painted and taught in Baltimore before moving to Southern Maryland, died Tuesday of cancer at St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown.A Mass of Christian burial for Mr. Hofmann, who was 64 and lived in Hollywood, will be offered at 10 a.m. today at St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in Leonardtown.He was one of a group of artists dubbed the Six Realists and opened a gallery of that name in 1961.He left Baltimore and a home in Bolton Hill in 1970 and served as artist-in-residence at St. Mary's College until the late 1970s, when he began teaching part-time at the Calvert County Branch of the Charles County Community College.