Nature

From dramatic cell phone camera images of flames as they choked off neighborhood escape routes to chilling online narratives of evacuation, citizen journalists covering the wildfires in California this week gave new meaning to the concept of reporting a natural disaster from the ground up. "I'm not knocking what we do in the mainstream media, but citizens are bringing the highly personal, close-up nature of these fires home to viewers in a way that traditional...

Two years into his retirement from the U.S. Forest Service, Jim Lockyer is still too busy painting and doing volunteer work to spend the kind of time he'd like on another favorite pastime: Recording outdoor sights and sounds in his nature journal. So at journaling workshops, the Delaware County, Pa., artist and naturalist urges his students to do as he says, not as he does: Take the time to be a witness. "Make the time to sit outside, quietly taking everything in and getting it all down."

Fluttering over your garden or impaled on your windshield wiper, those big, black-and-yellow butterflies seem to be everywhere in Maryland these days.Entomologists say the lovely bugs are most likely tiger swallowtails."From the last week of July into August, it really becomes common, and they're so beautiful it's hard not to notice," says Robert Robbins, chairman of entomology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.The 4- to 5-inch swallowtails, flashing patches of orange and blue near their tails, have emerged in recent weeks in their winged adult phase.

Mission: To preserve and augment the existing natural beauty and facilities of the Cylburn Arboretum, a 176-acre nature preserve in the heart of Baltimore with formal and woodland gardens and trails, and Cylburn Mansion, an outstanding example of a post-Civil War dwelling, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and containing original fireplaces, inlaid floors, mosaics, tapestries and ornate plasterworks. Its goal is also to promote knowledge and interest in nature study, conservation, ecology and horticulture through lectures and workshops.

The butterfly? So last year.This year's cutting-edge insect is the dragonfly.You see it embroidered on slim summer sheaths. Bright dragonfly pins sparkle on lapels. Dragonflies flit gracefully on every sort of home furnishings, from sheets to tableware to decorative lamps.Butterflies are pretty, ladybugs are cute, honey bees work best as folk art. None has the elegance and sophistication of the dragonfly as a design motif, with its slender, elongated body and gauzy double wings.The dragonfly is merely the latest bug to make it big in a country obsessed with gardening and nature symbols.

Some people call it Columbia's version of Central Park.That might be a stretch, but the 40-acre Symphony Woods in Town Center has for years been known as one of the planned community's largest unspoiled expanses of nature -- unspoiled, and some say, largely unused."

The county commissioners will present their annual Carroll County Environmental Awareness Awards at 3 p.m. today at the Environmental Affairs Advisory Board meeting. The awards recognize individuals, institutions and businesses for achievements in environmental protection and conservation.The winners are:Individual Award: Greg Becker, a Sierra Club member who often writes to local newspapers to make people aware of environmental concerns; Bill Becraft, who is involved in volunteer environmental projects and is committed to saving wildlife; and George Mozal, who works with nature daily.

January reveals the bones of a garden, the angles and planes, the stark uprights that leaf out in spring, the monolithic presence of walls or sheds. Like a room stripped of ornament, this pared-down state lends itself to imaginative redesign and opens the gate to year-round decoration -- a cairn of beautifully colored rocks in one corner over which the squash may vine in the summer, a ceramic frog among the chrysanthemums, statues of cranes, angels or...

I was only 2 years old when my parents left war-ravaged Belgium in 1955 to seek a new life. They arrived in the Galapagos Islands when almost no one knew the islands even existed and raised they their two children in the midst of nature.My earliest memories are of sunshine and endless beaches marked only by the footprints of turtles and seabirds, of diving among sea lions in search of abundant lobsters, of climbing volcanoes and helping my father hunt wild goats for the dinner table.I wore no shoes and few clothes, knew no electricity or running water, saw my first automobile when I was 10. But life was rich beyond measure.

ST. STEPHEN'S Reformed Episcopal Church in Eldersburg installed the Rev. Eric W. Jorgensen as its rector Sunday evening. Bishop Gregory Hotchkiss of Somerville, N.J., conducted the service.Jorgensen has been pastor at the Eldersburg church since July 1, when he and his family arrived after serving a parish in Tyler, Texas, for several years.Services at St. Stephen's are at 11 a.m. Sundays, with Sunday school classes for all ages at 9: 45 a.m. Youth groups for middle and high school teen-agers and family worship is at 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

Despite a coordinated, 25-year effort, the Chesapeake Bay is dying - plagued by massive dead zones, declining fisheries and water choked by bacteria and algae. Fortunately, there is still time to save it, if some basic tenets are followed: Good science must drive a "systems approach" to management that incorporates rigorous law enforcement and consequences for inaction. First, the science. Forty years of intense scientific investigation by leading estuarine scientists have documented precisely why the Chesapeake is degraded and how to fix it. From the molecular to the macro, we know how this marvel of nature works - or doesn't.

If there were a way to harness the gases its members produce with oratory, Congress would no longer need to burn dirty old coal to generate heat and air-conditioning for Capitol Hill. Alas, and remarkably, nearly a decade into the 21st century, offices of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Library of Congress and several other buildings still get their heating and cooling from a 99-year-old power plant that burns the most carbon-packed of fossil fuels and produces emissions that cause global warming.

Bad ideas abound these days. It's not so much that the people advancing them are stupid, but rather that they can't find many good ones under the circumstances we now face. In the matter of the world's seriously ill economy, for example, virtually all the "experts" - that is, those people whose previous policies and prescriptions resulted in this illness - are joining the chorus singing the Keynesian hymn, "We Must Spend Ourselves Out of Trouble, Dear Lord." OK, I made that up - the hymn part, that is - but what the mock title pronounces is the plan most economists and virtually all politicians are touting as a remedy for the ailing economy.

Nature photographer Michael Oberman, a resident of Harper's Choice, will teach beginning nature photography from 7:15 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. Sept. 8 and 15 at Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village Center. An outdoor photo shoot is planned for Sept. 13. Oberman's nature photos have appeared in national magazines and newspapers. www.howardcountymd.gov/oa/50+expo.htm.

Simone Collins smiled shyly as she wiped dirt-splotched hands on her limp T-shirt, a bead of sweat sliding from her hairline down her neck. "This dirt gives me a sense of honor," said the Baltimore teen, her gaze switching from her hands to a newly refurbished trail at Gunpowder Falls State Park. "I, we all, did this." Instead of sitting home, waiting for summer to end and school to start, 145 city kids are out at Gunpowder and at Patapsco Valley State Park, giving the landscape and buildings a little love.

Green seems to be the new "it" color in contemporary art. The Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalists: Artscape at the BMA, a juried exhibit running Saturday-Aug. 3 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, reflects the growing interest in representing ecological issues. Though the competition, which annually awards $25,000 to a visual artist who works or lives in Maryland, Washington, Northern Virginia or southeastern Pennsylvania, doesn't specify a theme, many of the works by this year's finalists -- some of which will be created on site -- have a noticeable eco bent.

Kirk Dreier Senior naturalist Oregon Ridge Nature Center, Cockeysville Salary: $60,000 Age: 48 Years on the job : 21 How he got started : With a degree in natural science from West Virginia University, Dreier began his career with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as a field ecologist and educator. At the same time, he also worked part time at the Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks' Oregon Ridge Nature Center. In 1987, he left the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and switched to full-time employment at the nature center.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder By Richard Louv Algonquin Books / 348 pages / $15 A few years ago, Richard Louv's book created a sensation and a movement. Kids were too busy, too distracted, too protected to spend much time outdoors, he argued. The book drew attention to the problem and helped spark initiatives across the country to get kids back outdoors where they could play, enjoy nature and learn about the environment. In this revised and updated edition, out in paperback in time for Earth Day on Wednesday, Louv issues a "progress report," cites new studies that document the benefits of being outdoors and includes new ideas for how to get the kids off the sofa and into nature.

Donna Hepner said she generally avoids nature whenever she can. But when the opportunity arose to take an outdoor art class, she took it. On a recent afternoon, she sat in a garden and sketched reflections of a tree in a pond, with ink, pencils, and charcoal. As she made marks on the paper, her work took on life. "When you create art outdoors you need to be relaxed and open," said Hepner, 41, of Joppa. "If you try to control nature, it doesn't work well." Hepner was one of several students who participated in art classes offered by the Maryland Institute College of Art at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton.

Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature By Linda Lear Bethesda writer Linda Lear spent eight years researching this biography of the English author who created such beloved characters as Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle-Duck. Poring over Potter's code-written diary and correspondences, she created a richly detailed story of a woman who was a passionate naturalist and astute businesswoman. Growing up in Victorian England, Potter enjoyed summer holidays in the English Lake District, where she began studying fungi.