Growing

Of course traffic gets worse ("Traffic getting worse? Survey says yes," Feb 25th). Those who study population dynamics in the U.S. know that the Baltimore-Washington area has been growing very rapidly, adding roughly 70,000-90,000 people per year, for quite a few years now. For the Baltimore area, if we consider the population increase of Howard, Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties (where many car commuters reside), data available show that the population increase for the combined counties since 2000 has averaged 13,000 people per year!

Something's rotten on the Baltimore area waterfront. Fish are washing ashore by the thousands in a mass die-off that officials say appears to be caused by a weather-driven worsening of the pollution that chronically plagues the Chesapeake Bay. State investigators expanded their probe Wednesday into what they believe are algae-related fish kills in Marley, Furnace and Curtis creeks in Glen Burnie, raising the estimated death toll there tenfold, while...

Question: The roots of my orchid are growing way out of the pot. Should I cut them off? Answer: No, wild flailing roots are business as usual for an orchid. Orchids are epiphytes which grow in tree crotches or wherever they can get purchase in the tree canopy. It's not normal for them to be confined to a pot, consequently potting medium for orchids is primarily shards of bark. When this decomposes it is too much like soil, and the roots are not happy. They may be signaling that it’s time to repot your orchid with new specialized orchid potting "soil."

A theft this month of 311 gallons of gasoline from a station in Baltimore is one in a series of similar incidents, according to the station's owner, who says people have been disabling pumps and allowing friends and relatives to fill their tanks for free Mehdi Rezakhan, who owns BP stations in Remington and East Baltimore, said each businesses has been hit once, and stations owned by friends have been taken several times, one for 1,800 gallons of...

Knills' Farm Market is a growing family enterprise nourished on hard work and cooperation that has taken root in the heart of Mount Airy.The market started three years ago with vegetable sales from a wooden cart along the driveway of the Knill farm, east of Route 27 across the road from Watkins Park. Business has grown each summer, enough to warrant a permanent location visible from Ridge Road and closer to Jim and Carol Knill's farm home. The market, which opened for the growing season June 30, is a joint venture of the Knills and Jim's father, Bill Knill.

Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America, by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel. HarperCollins. 272 pages. $24.95. Twenty years ago, a young journalist named Loretta Schwartz-Nobel found what the older and more experienced among her craft had failed to illustrate -- that millions of Americans were going hungry in the richest nation in the world. The result of her work, a groundbreaking book called Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, won awards and calls to action, promises that things would change.

"I do this because I need to dig in the soil," says Gail Barbosa, explaining why she spends weeks each spring toiling over a garden plot two miles from her King's Contrivance home.Ask other gardeners what draws them to Columbia's three community garden sites and a variety of reasons unfold. Some want truly fresh, vine-ripened produce -- "real" tomatoes top the list.Others are trying to keep down their grocery bills by growing their own vegetables. A few, including some immigrants from Southeast Asia, are growing exotic vegetables and herbs not available in stores here.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- President Clinton warned the Florida Legislature yesterday that fast-growing states could fall into a fiscal "trap" under GOP plans to convert welfare and crime-fighting programs to lump sum payments to the states.Seeking to forge a new alliance in his battle against the Republican proposals, Mr. Clinton told a legislative joint session that Congress' primary purpose in using block grant maneuvers is to save itself money.While awarding sums could generate a profit for states with stable or declining populations, it could penalize those forced to stretch the funds across a growing caseload, he said.

Marijuana growers in Maryland are getting more creative and perhaps more desperate, even willing to risk artillery fire to produce a good crop without its being detected.One "extremely clever" such effort yielded a huge harvest yesterday -- for state and federal drug agents who seized and destroyed more than 900 marijuana plants found in a highly secure "downrange" area of Aberdeen Proving Ground.The plants, representing one of the largest marijuana crops ever discovered in Maryland, had an estimated street value of more than $2 million, said Special Agent Andrew S. Manning of the FBI's Baltimore office.

NEW YORK -- Euphoria is a long way off, but a survey of conditions in Maryland released yesterday by the regional Federal Reserve Bank had a reassuring undercurrent of continued -- albeit slow -- growth and optimism.The survey was part of a broader "beige book" compilation of regional conditions, reported by each of the 12 regional banks to assist the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve Board in determining monetary policy.Nationwide conditions have been "uneven,"according to the Fed report, with manufacturing, retail sales and loan demand differing significantly by region.

Saturday's editions of The Sun will include an article on Loyola junior long-stick midfielder Scott Ratliff, who narrowly missed out on being named one of five finalists for the Tewaaraton Award after recording one of the finer seasons in recent memory. Ratliff hails from Marietta, Ga., and graduated from George Walton Comprehensive High School there. The success of Ratliff and fellow Georgia natives Darius Bowling and Rick Lewis - both at Ohio State - has garnered the interest of a younger generation of lacrosse players in the Peach State.

Solar power is gaining a toehold in the Mid-Atlantic region.  As of this month, the amount of photovoltaic electric generating capacity installed surpassed 1 gigawatt, according to PJM Interconnection , which oversees the electricity transmission grid stretching from Delaware to northern Illinois and western Kentucky. That's enough - when the sun is shining - to power 800,000 to 1 million homes. Solar capacity has more than doubled in each of the past two years, PJM reports.

Howard County must act soon to improve its public transit options, the county's new transportation chief says, arguing that the growing population will be choked with traffic in coming years if people are not provided with better options. John Powell Jr., who took over Howard's transportation department in March, presented his first budget to the County Council last week. In defending the $7.4 million spending plan, Powell discussed the broad transportation issues for the department, created last year.

After the power failed in an Essex neighborhood earlier this year, BGE officials discovered that someone had been stealing copper wire from the tops of utility poles. Oddly enough, however, they found no marks on the poles indicating that the culprit had climbed roughly 40 feet to reach the wire. Baltimore County police figured they might have their suspect when an officer on patrol in Dundalk spotted an unmarked white Ford van equipped with a bucket lift, and a man alongside the van stripping insulation from copper wire, according to a police report.

Baltimore County's decision to cut nearly 200 teaching positions last year has had far-reaching consequences in high schools, where hundreds of classes have been dropped from the rolls, leaving many more students packed into classrooms. At Dulaney High School, for example, a chemistry teacher with a class of 34 said his students must take turns doing lab experiments because the stations are too small to accommodate more than three or four at a time. A journalism teacher doesn't have enough computers for each of her budding writers, so she sends part of the class to the library to do the work.

Dulaney High School parent Jean Suda came before the Baltimore County school board this winter to say the class sizes at her child's school had grown significantly this year. She had assembled some handmade charts, drilling down as far as the data she had would allow to document what had happened after the county decided to cut 196 teaching positions. The Sun decided to take her work a step further, and asked the county school system for a list of every high school class that was offered this school year and last. We wanted to see just how many classes had gotten bigger.

It's about this time of year, when ever-shorter days signal that killing frosts can't be too far off, that gardeners are apt to sigh and mutter, "I wish I had a greenhouse." If only we had a greenhouse, we figure, we could keep tender plants alive until next year, extend the fall season, get a jump on spring, and even -- maybe best of all -- create a warm, green oasis to sustain us through the winter. Now, apparently, more gardeners are making the wish a reality. "Greenhouse gardening is growing at an exponential rate," says Mike Helle of Sunshine GardenHouse, a company in Longview, Wash.

He demonstrates a growing sense of security and command of his roles. His bell-clear voice and flexible physical attributes make him a natural for comedy.County audiences will remember actor Roger Buchanan's excellent work as Shem in the recent Havilah-Hayes Theatre production of "Two By Two" and as Alfred Doolittle in "My Fair Lady," last year's September Song offering.Now the Westminster resident is exporting his considerable talents to Baltimore, where he is performing through September at The Spotlighters Theatre in a production of Larry Shue's farce, "The Nerd."

When it came time to choose her college lacrosse path, Shannon Aikens initially steered away from the place that had been her second home for half her life. Loyola appealed to the Mercy senior, but she wasn't sure she could forge her own identity playing in the program her mother built into a national power. Diane Geppi-Aikens' idomitable spirit remains with the team nine years after her death following a long and public battle with brain cancer. "Ever since I was little, I've been introduced as Diane's youngest," Aikens said.

Howard County's 19th-century courthouse has seen a 40 percent increase in jury trials in the past year, causing court officials to clamor for a new facility. "Our county is growing, our population is growing, and that means more case filing," said Administrative Judge Lenore R. Gelfman. "The demands have been significant for a while. " Gelfman, County State's Attorney Dario J. Broccolino and Sheriff James F. Fitzgerald told the County Council last week that the increase is too much for the 170-year-old Ellicott City courthouse, which is cramped and outdated.