Grass

May. 18, Post Time: 10:45AM Entries and comments provided by the Maryland Jockey Club First - Purse $55,000, AOC $25,000-$20,000, 3 yo's & up, One And One Sixteenth Miles Post, Horse, Jockey, Trainer, Odds 1 Aussi Austin, Rosario, R.Rodriguez, 3-1 2 Bob's Gone Wild, Vargas, J.Lopez, 20-1 3 Jarrod's Commando, Karamanos, C.Garcia, 10-1 4 Warrensburg, Boyce, D.Barr, 20-1 5 Benny Or Local, Cruise, D.Kobiskie,...

Michael Dresser got it right in describing the trajectory of the Baltimore school facilities bill as going from "non-starter to law," but the story goes far beyond the elected and appointed officials who worked hard to make the deals and shepherd the legislation to passage ("City schools bill a political showpiece," May 17). The deeper story must include the herculean efforts of the Baltimore Education Coalition (BEC), the innovative policy advocacy work done by the ACLU of Maryland and the powerful community organizing of groups like BUILD and Child First.

COVESVILLE, Va. -- On a recent drizzly Saturday, players smacked baseballs in batting cages and spectators sat under colorful awnings, watching children play game after game of baseball on fields worthy of the pros. Here, in the jagged foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains southwest of Charlottesville, a 45-year-old multimillionaire novelist has built his field of dreams: a $3.8 million, seven diamond ballpark for kids. John Grisham, author of such best sellers as "The Firm" and "The Client," completed Cove Creek Park to accolades in 1996 and the park keeps growing.

Great music has been happening at the Parkville Senior Center. On April 3, members were treated to a wonderful concert when tenor Rodrigo Garciarroyo and pianist Richard Dowling presented well-known opera and stage musical selections in the center's dining room This hourlong program, sponsored by the Baltimore County Department of Aging, was made possible by the Piatigorsky Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is...

When Baltimore City cut the grass on the Roland Avenue median for the last time this fall, an adjacent plot of grass was skipped. The point at the intersection of Roland Avenue, Ridgewood Road and Cold Spring Lane looked like a prairie for months.  With warmer temperatures into January, the grass continued to grow.   At the end of October, I called 311.  They said the city would take action in 14 business days. We watched. We waited. Nothing happened. During November and December, the point looked increasingly shabby.

There is at least one alternative available to reduce the use of harmful chemicals on lawns in Maryland ("Less-toxic lawns in Md.," March 16): Grow less grass. If you drive through Baltimore County in the winter you may have noticed that many lawns and highway medians are an ugly shade of brown. Instead of growing grass, better to use a variety of ground covering plants, native shrubs and trees and a variety of mulch that requires no mowing and very little water. For example, a butterfly garden can be beneficial to a variety of wildlife and be much more attractive than grass.

Since Baltimore is in tight financial straits, why build a grass median in the middle of any city street ("City erected six-foot fence to protect grass," May 27)? Grass requires maintenance - mowing, watering, clearing debris. Instead, use that $20,000 to plant vegetable gardens neighborhoods can use to provide food for the hungry or create grass playgrounds for children. Anne Hackney, Parkton

It is a fine spring day. The sun is shining and birds are chirping and I am sitting here wracked with lawn anxiety.I can see the lawn through my window now. It squats out there like some kind of horrible giant toad, brown and pitted and ugly beyond all conventional description.All the other lawns in the neighborhood are green and lush. I hate the people who tend those lawns. They think they're so cool with their rotary tillers and their exotic fertilizers and their seeders and spreaders.Did it ever occur to them that some people might like a lawn with lots of bare spots and crab grass infestation?

The Baltimore Department of Transportation has a message for the residents of Tuscany-Canterbury: Do not walk on our grass. But instead of little signs, the transportation department conveys that message with a six-foot, spike-topped fence. The barrier runs down the middle of the newly seeded median it is protecting. "They say it's to protect the grass, but a light layer of hay would have remedied that," said Sandra Snow, who lives and works in the neighborhood. "A nice path, a walkway, a low hedge - there are so many things that could have been done.

Sensing that I was in way too fine a mood and needing to get in touch with the customary gloom that surrounds me, I went out yesterday and inspected my lawn.The lawn squats like a giant ugly toad on all four sides of the house.It has more ruts and holes in it than the Ho Chi Minh Trail, circa 1968. And now, as spring comes grudgingly to the Mid-Atlantic region, the grass is a lovely shade of grayish brown, reminiscent of an abandoned strip-mining site in Appalachia.Staring at the lawn and envisioning the work it would take to make this eyesore even semi-presentable, I became more and more depressed.

The Chesapeake Bay and its rivers have lost 44 percent of their underwater grasses over the past three years, scientists reported Thursday, reducing vital habitat for crabs and fish to a level not seen in nearly three decades. Scientists blamed weather and storms for much of the decline seen last year, but they said an as-yet unexplained long-term decline in the bay's water clarity has played havoc with this key indicator of the Chesapeake's health. An aerial survey flown from late spring to early fall last year found 48,191 acres of submerged vegetation, down 21 percent from the extent of grasses seen in 2011, according to scientists from Maryland and Virginia.

Please settle an argument. You say to spread no more than 1-2 inches of mulch around a tree. Since mulch holds moisture in soil, isn't more mulch even better? Seems logical - but more isn't always better in this case. Mulch does shade soil and slow evaporation by about 25 percent. When mulch gets too deep, however, tree roots will begin to grow into the mulch seeking moisture. This happens partly because in a light rain mulch gets moist, but the water never trickles down past the mulch.

The heat of summertime is when roaring wildfires are fodder for reports on the national news, but for a few weeks in early spring and mid autumn, the outdoor conditions in northeastern Maryland make this area prone to field and woods fires. Late last week, and earlier this week brush fires were put out in wooded areas in Joppatowne and Fallston. Other fires have kept the volunteer fire service busy, and can be expected to do so for another two or three weeks. In the past, Maryland Forest Service staff have explained that in the springtime, a combination of factors make the outdoors vulnerable to errant sparks.

Kudos to Dan Rodricks for his article celebrating St. Patrick's Day ("Why we love all things Irish this week," March 12). I have been a Sun subscriber for more than 40 years and this is one of the 10 best articles I have seen during that time. I am still a member of the Emerald Owl (Isle) Club and a survivor of the Irish weekend warriors of St. Patrick's Cemetery. One of the principal reasons why the cemetery was in disarray was that many of the Irish built 6-inch-high iron fences around their graves and this prevented mechanical grass cutting.

After leading the Johns Hopkins University to a national title in lacrosse, Kyle Harrison figured he might make a living off the sport for three years. Eight years later, lacrosse continues to pay his bills. "There was no real path for a lacrosse player to go out and continue doing that for a living," Harrison said. "Candidly, that felt like an abrupt end to something I'd dedicated so much time to. It didn't feel fair. " After several years in the sport's most established pro league, Major League Lacrosse, Harrison joined some other entrepreneurial lacrosse players to forge their own path in Southern California.

Mark Twain supposedly quipped, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. " For Maryland Republicans, the joke is no laughing matter. Gov. Martin O'Malley and Democrats all but engineered the demise of the Maryland GOP through redistricting at the congressional level. It showed in the trouncing of Republican candidates in the election earlier this month. The contest between 10-term Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett and challenger John Delaney in the 6th Congressional District says it all: 58.6 percent for Mr. Delaney and 38.1 for Mr. Bartlett.

Eighteen NFL stadiums still feature natural grass, and one of those stadiums is Heinz Field, the site of Sunday night's showdown between the Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. With a projected low of 35 degrees Sunday night, punter Sam Koch is hopeful that the above-freezing temperatures will keep the grass inside Heinz Field soft enough to kill punts inside the 20. “When you watched [Monday] night with Kansas City, some of their punts when they hit the ground, they landed soft,” Koch said.

Two companies trying to win approval of a Prince George's County casino have turned over almost $1 million to former County Executive Wayne K. Curry to run a "grass-roots" operation to deliver votes for Question 7 on Election Day. The Peterson Cos., developer of National Harbor, and Gaylord Entertainment, which owns a hotel and convention center there, have given $700,000 and $250,000, respectively, since mid-October to a committee controlled by...