Magnolia

Let's talk trash. You have to get rid of it, right? Bury, mulch, compost, recycle, burn.To burn it, you need an incinerator, which reduces trash to the smallest denominator. You pay for the construction, operating costs, including collection, screening, burning and maintenance, disposal of residue ash, etc. Since it costs a lot of money to run, you want to make the most efficient use of it.So try to understand what's happening at Harford County's Magnolia incinerator, where trash is burned to create steam used to heat buildings at nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground in winter.

Two terrific shows premiered last weekend in Annapolis, set in nearly the same period and dealing with history-making creative artists. At Colonial Players, "Moonlight and Magnolias" is set in 1939 and tells the behind-the-scenes story of making the film version of "Gone with the Wind. " Appropriately, it evokes gales of audience laughter. Infinity Theatre presents "Sisters of Swing," a musical biography of the World War II-era harmonizing Andrews Sisters that inspired the opening-night audience to applaud every familiar song.

The top of my magnolia looks dead. Is there anything I can do? Hollies and evergreen magnolias got hammered this winter by temperatures that seesawed from abnormally warm to very cold. This caused winterburn, especially at the top of trees. Now is when leaves normally brown and drop, too. Give your tree more time to put out top foliage. Even if it suffered dieback, magnolias are remarkably resilient; they can regrow from their roots when the entire top dies. Burlap is sticking out of the ground under my maples.

Editor: One of our members lost everything when lightning struck the family home while they were on vacation in late August. We quickly put together a fund raiser at the fire house and these local businesses came through in a large way. The Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company would like to express our sincere gratitude to Papa John's and Pizza Hut, both in the Edgewood area, for their generous contributions to the fund raiser. We cannot thank them enough for their help. We would also like to thank the local community and the other volunteer fire companies who made contributions of clothing, gift cards and money so that one of our members could begin rebuilding.

For five years, our pink-flowered magnolia had large black ants on it. Now it also has black and white bees. The leaves are turning black. It gets full sun. Any suggestions? It's likely that your magnolia tree suffers from a scale insect. Magnolias are susceptible to three types. Look for bumps along the 1- to 2-year-old twigs of the tree. Scale insects excrete a sweet substance called honeydew. Honeydew provides an ideal substrate for black sooty mold to develop. Usually foliage blackened by sooty mold is the homeowner's first clue that there is a scale problem.

Aaliyah Lewis put her books and coat down on a table in the cafeteria at Magnolia Elementary School and munched on animal crackers. "I'm here to learn to read better," said Aaliyah, a fifth-grader at the Joppa school. "I can read now, but I want to learn all the big words and suffixes and stuff like that." She is honing her reading skills in Magnolia's after-school academic programs, which were started as an attempt to boost pupils' performance. Magnolia is one of six schools in Harford that have fallen short of academic requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school was identified by the state four years ago when pupils in special-education programs scored low on state assessment tests.

The magnolia has long been declared by both horticulturists and homeowners to be one of the, if not the, most elegant flowering tree for the spring landscape. And with the show they put on this year, it's hard to disagree. With this past winter being such a mild one, it's been a bumper year for blossoms on this magnificent family of trees. One of the showiest magnolias is the saucer magnolia, also known as Magnolia x soulangiana. This is the tree with the huge purplish-pink blossoms that resemble tea cups in both size (the petals can extend outward 8 to 12-inches)

Like many a mystery, this one began with a walk in the woods. Joseph Gochar discovered an unusual tree with 2-foot leaves in the park near his Catonsville home. His curiosity turned him into an amateur botanical detective. He learned the mystery tree was the rare bigleaf magnolia, a species not previously documented in Maryland. His sleuthing eventually helped lead to the recent discovery, in Howard County, of the largest bigleaf magnolia believed to exist in the nation. And there's another mystery: What is this huge specimen doing so far outside its home range in the Southeastern United States?

A heroic sadness weaves its way through "Magnolia," Paul Thomas Anderson's oversized musing on alienation, connectedness and random acts of spiritual grace. While not as fully realized as Anderson's last movie, "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia" is filmed with the same skillful abandon, and takes many more artistic risks. Throwing out all conventional notions of plot and narrative coherence, Anderson instead indulges his love of character. The result is a movie as fascinating for its flaws as for its considerable successes.

Plans for a controversial and bitterly opposed recycling center near two elementary schools and a middle school in Magnolia have been spiked, according to county officials. The so-called Wiggins project, a plan to locate a waste recycling plant at the Harford Sands Inc. property off Fort Hoyle Road, will not be included in the county's new solid waste plan, said Frank Henderson, deputy director of environmental affairs at the Department of Public Works. "It won't be in the plan at that site," he said.

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On October 11, 2009, Carolyn Joan Frederick, Services to be held at a later date. Interment will be in Oak Lawn Cemetery, Baltimore, MD. Those who desire may make a contribution to the Joppa Magnolia Fire Company, 1403 Old Mountain Road-South, Joppa, MD 21085. Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.com.

On August 8, 2009, Stacey Ellison Waynick; A Graveside Service will be held at Parkwood Cemetery, (3310 Taylor Avenue) on Tuesday, August 11 at 11:00 AM. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to the H. Lee Moffit Cancer Center & Research Institute, 12902 Magnolia Drive, WCB-12507, Tampa, FL 33612-9416. Arrangements by the family owned Ruck Towson Funeral Home, Inc. www.ruckfuneralhomes.com

On January 15, 2009, INEZ MAGNOLIA BROWN PINDER. Memorial services will be held on Saturday, January 24, 2009, at 2 P.M at the family owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 E. North Avenue. In lieu of flowers, please make contributions to the great-grandchil

Deer stripped a lot of bark off my magnolia 2-3 feet from the ground. I fenced the magnolia, but should I wrap the damaged branches to protect them from winter cold? The living part of trees is located immediately under the bark. This cambium layer is only about 1/4 inch thick but is where the trees' vascular system is located. When the bark is damaged or removed, the cambium layer is usually destroyed also. Deer rub their antlers on trees in the fall, and if bark is stripped all the way around the trunk, the tree will die above the damage.

On November 3, 2008 ESTELLE MAGNOLIA SEARLES MAKEL. Friends may visit the family-owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST INC. 4300 Wabash Avenue on Friday after 8:30 A.M. The family will receive friends on Saturday at the Berean Baptist Church, 3523 Hayward Avenue at 10 A.M. followed by funeral services at 10:30 A.M.

John L. Hughes, a retired gunnery foreman at Aberdeen Proving Ground, died of cancer Saturday at Fallston General Hospital. He was 72 and lived in Magnolia.Services for Mr. Hughes will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Cokesbury United Methodist Church in Abingdon.He is survived by his wife of 53 years, the former Viola Gunther; a son, State Police Capt. Johnny L. Hughes of Abingdon; a daughter, Jeanne Tourville of Edgewood; two brothers, William Hughes of Magnolia and Lloyd Hughes of Urbanna, Va.; a sister, Linda Polansky of Cooper City, Fla.; seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

On October 11, 2009, Carolyn Joan Frederick, Services to be held at a later date. Interment will be in Oak Lawn Cemetery, Baltimore, MD. Those who desire may make a contribution to the Joppa Magnolia Fire Company, 1403 Old Mountain Road-South, Joppa, MD 21085. Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.com.

While beauty-shop camaraderie will appeal more to women than men in the audience of Prince George's Little Theatre's production of Steel Magnolias, the strong friendships and barbed wit that allow us to cope with hardship should have near-universal appeal. Robert Harling's comic play was first produced off-Broadway in 1987 with an all-female cast and ran for 1,126 performances. In 1989 Steel Magnolias became a movie starring Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts in a role that garnered her her first Oscar nomination.

The Fallston girls won a fourth consecutive team title in the Harford County swimming championships last night at Magnolia Middle School. The Cougars finished with 289 points, beating C. Milton Wright (240) and Bel Air (225). The boys will swim their round tonight at 5:45 at Magnolia Middle. Emily Wagner was Fallston's only two-event winner. She captured the 100-yard breaststroke and the 200 individual medley. Bel Air's Julie Loiland was the night's only other swimmer to win more than one event.