Kennett Square

HealthObjects Corp. of Baltimore announced its first contracts for its Accessible Clinical Environment (ACE) software.Pharmacy Corp. of America, a Tampa, Fla.-based company with 54 institutional pharmacies serving 225,000 nursing home beds in 25 states, will begin using the ACE system in January, Steven dTC G. Bass, president and chief executive of HealthObjects, said at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists' annual meeting Nashville, Tenn.HealthObjects...

Israeli celebration Learn about Israeli culture as Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., celebrates Tu Bi'Shevat, the Jewish New Year for Trees, Sunday. The event, offered as part of Longwood's Discovery Days, which gives visitors insights into other cultures, includes klezmer concerts, Israeli dance workshops, lectures and family programs on trees and Mediterranean plants. Margaret Presley, an environmental and Jewish educator from the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, will discuss the history of Tu Bi'Shevat and its present-day significance, at lectures at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in the visitor center auditorium.

Shaker Forest Festival Step back to yesteryear and experience the life of Shakers, an industrious group of craftsmen who invented many essentials still in use today - the flat broom, clothespin, packaged seeds, washing machine and the simple but exquisitely crafted Shaker furniture and nesting boxes. For the next two weekends, you can observe craftspeople, dressed in period clothing, demonstrate their skills at the annual Shaker Festival, held amid a canopy of trees and mulched pathways at Seneca Creek State Park in Gaithersburg.

Festival of Fountains begins summer at LongwoodThe Festival of Fountains opened yesterday at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., to the strains of bluegrass music. Visitors could attend the 33rd annual Del-Chester Rose Society Show, hear an afternoon bluegrass concert in the Rose Arbor and stay for two more bluegrass concerts in the evening. The festival, which continues through Sept. 5, offers 12 weeks of summer fare -- music, theater, fireworks and fountain displays among the changing summer blooms.

Kennett Square, Pa. -- The waiting game continued last night for Barbaro, his owners, his trainer and the doctors treating him. It has been a tumultuous week for the Kentucky Derby winner who pulled up in the Preakness, but yesterday his veterinary surgeon provided two separate encouraging updates that were markedly different in tone than the ominous prognosis he delivered Thursday. "His vital signs, including heart rate and pulse, remain good," Dr. Dean Richardson said in a statement released by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine at 4 p.m. yesterday.

Salon founder Elizabeth Arden. Aircraft manufacturer Olive Ann Beech. Media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Women have made an irrefutable mark on American business in a variety of disciplines, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts' Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business is designed to showcase this. The exhibition, opening tomorrow, celebrates the many feats of female entrepreneurs. It follows the rise of women-owned businesses in the applied arts, fashion, design, culinary arts and traditional business fields.

If you're tired of snow, sleet and frigid temperatures and can't afford a jaunt to the Caribbean, take a trip up U.S. 1 to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. There you can "Welcome Spring." The current garden display is a reminder that more agreeable days are ahead.The display, with its acres of colorful blooming bulbs, opened yesterday and continues through April 30. About 45,000 daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, lilies and other spring favorites create a panorama in pastel. In addition, acacia blossoms offer a touch of gold in January and February; in March, cymbidium orchids are the featured attraction; and in April, the gardens are filled with the heady scent of Easter lilies.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays you can find a quiet oasis at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., where an an old-fashioned garden blooms inside the conservatory. Here you can take a peaceful stroll through acres of brilliant poinsettias and fragrant Christmas flowers, attend a holiday concert, and, if you stay until dark, you will see thousands of lights twinkling down from the trees and dancing in fountains outside. The holiday display, "A Christmas Past," is on view daily -- including Christmas -- through New Year's Day.The trappings of the old-fashioned garden include wrought-iron gazebos, rustic benches, tiered fountains, cast-iron urns and other period garden ornaments, many of which are on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.

The Chrysanthemum Festival opened yesterday at LongwoodGardens in Kennett Square, Pa., transforming the conservatories into a sea of vivid color. More than 20,000 chrysanthemums can be seen through Nov. 21, growing in a variety of forms -- in cascading curtains, 6-foot-wide hanging baskets, bonsai topiaries and huge pompons.In keeping with the theme of "The Return of the Dinosaurs," horticulturists have created a Triceratops mother and baby, a Dromiceiomimus and an Archelon (an ancestor of the sea turtle)