Garden Show

`Art+Fun=BMA Packs' It all adds up to extreme fun at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Visitors can try out the new "Art+Fun=BMA Packs" -- interactive, portable kits created to help folks explore museum exhibits. The packs come in three different themes. Children ages 4 through 12 will take interest in the Costume Pack that lets them dress up to match select paintings. Teens and adults will enjoy the Sketch Pack that comes with pad and paper for their own interpretive doodling. And visitors of all ages will enjoy the Song Pack, which features a collection of original songs inspired by BMA artwork.

Home, art show in Ocean City Furnish or refurnish your home or condo with innovative products ranging from cutlery to spas to security systems and artwork. You'll find all those and more this weekend at the 17th annual Home, Condo & Garden Show and Art & Craft Fair at the Ocean City Convention Center. The Home, Condo & Garden Show includes more than 175 exhibits for products and services. At the Art & Craft Fair, you can browse among works by more than 100 local and national artists. Highlights include a "Fine Arts Row," with a presentation by the Art League of Ocean City, free drawings, door prizes and a Health Craft Cooking Show.

Buying a ticket to enter a place where people want to sell things has always been difficult for me. Commercial auto shows, boat shows andthe like leave me cold.But then several years ago, when I discovered flower and garden shows, I softened.A good show has more to offer than sales pitches -- although thisisn't a bad place to get an overview, compare products and prices.I enjoy the inspiring landscape displays, chatting with plant retailers about what's in and what's out, seeing new products, and meetingrepresentatives of local garden groups and finding out what they aredoing.

THIS WEEKEND WILL mark Taneytown's Swing into Spring home, garden and craft show. Also on tap this weekend is the seventh annual car show at the opposite end of town. An unusual feature of this year's garden show will be an open-air trolley car to transport visitors to and from both events. "This is a replica of an 1895 electric trolley car," said Pam Harlow, event coordinator. She and garden show chairwoman Pam Shorb first spotted the trolley at a craft show in Frederick. The car is owned by Jim Burns of Hagerstown.

If the weather has you down, just remember that spring is around the corner. Sure signs are the announcements of flower shows, garden parties and garden tours to come.Let's begin with the World's Largest Garden Party, which will take place throughout spring in the Delaware Valley (eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware), home of more public gardens than anywhere in North America and rivaled only by London as the world's premier garden showcase. The garden party encompasses 28 institutions, including Longwood Gardens.

A million bloomsLet your love of flowers come into bloom at the 38th Annual Washington Flower & Garden Show, "Cherry Blossom Time," where vendors and enthusiasts will converge for a weekend of horticultural heaven.The show will include more than a million blooms and full-sized landscaped gardens such as an Asian garden decorated with Oriental antiques, a golfer's "dream garden" with a putting green and a lavish "relaxation" garden and pond.The feature attraction will be "Containing Eden," a collaborative effort by landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James Van Sweden and the president emeritus of the American Horticultural Society, Dr. H. Marc Cathey.

Tasting the waters at a spa Tastelessness will be the most sought after quality at the 12th Annual International Water Tasting Saturday in historic Berkeley Springs, W.Va., the country's first spa. Throughout the day, media judges will be quaffing more than 100 waters from across the country and around the globe, including Bosnia, Moldavia, Scotland, New Zealand and Tajikistan. Categories include municipal, bottled noncarbonated, international sparkling and purified drinking water. The public will vote for the People's Choice award for best packaging, and can taste the competing waters along with the judges.

Make maple syrup Learn how one of America's first agricultural products is made at Cunningham Falls State Park's 35th Maple Syrup Making Demonstration this weekend in Thurmont. Park staff will demonstratetree tapping, boiling and packaging and give talks on maple syrup's history. Music will be provided both days by local bluegrass band Hangfire. Visitors can have a sausage-and-pancake breakfast at an additional cost. The demonstration runs 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the William Houck Area at Cunningham Falls State Park, 14039 Catoctin Hollow Road, Thurmont.

Home & Garden Show Landscaped gardens and more than a million floral blooms - from tulips, magnolias and orchids to rhododendrons and daffodils - highlight the annual Washington Home & Garden Show, running today through Sunday at the Washington Convention Center. Stroll through a summer garden that features a cocktail pool, a vanishing-edge waterfall and full outdoor kitchen with a brick pizza oven, or relax in an Asian-inspired garden with a romantic water garden filled with pastel flowering trees.

Craft and Folk Art FestivalA juried craft show features the work of 100 craftsmen and artists. This "visually exciting" show includes blown glasswork, eclectic and naive paintings, quilts, turned-wood vessels, designer clothing and jewelry, paint-decorated furniture, hooked and rag rugs, woodcarvings, porcelain lamps, redware pottery and many more one-of-a-kind art objects.The festival will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Community Cultural Center, Northern Virginia Community College, 8333 Little River Turnpike, Annandale, Va. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.