Southern Maryland

Enrique Villa can walk from his condominium on Water Street to his job at St. Paul and Baltimore streets in about five minutes. In Maryland, that's rare. Villa and his wife, Kathryn, a physician whose commute by subway to Johns Hopkins Hospital is nearly as short, say they can't stand spending their spare time in the car. Villa, a 34-year-old architect, used to spend an hour getting to work, but cut it short by moving closer to the office. "We saw our standard of living, just from a personal psychological perspective, improve dramatically," he said.

— It wasn't just the wind whipping up the crowd of about 200 outside Calvert County Republican headquarters Friday afternoon. "In Maryland of all places, we know we can win because we have done it before," former Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele told GOP supporters. Now chairman of the Republican National Committee, Steele has spent the past six weeks on a 48-state "Fire Pelosi" tour, promoting Republican congressional candidates to turn out the Democratic House speaker. The odyssey arrives in Severna Park today for a rally with Andy Harris, the Republican state lawmaker attempting to unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil in the 1st Congressional District.

It's not dawn yet, but Rep. Steny H. Hoyer is already greeting voters at a park-and-ride lot in Southern Maryland. His seat in the House of Representatives is considered safe in Tuesday's election, but his status as its second-ranking member certainly isn't. If Democrats lose the House, as analysts predict, Hoyer will be out as majority leader. He has been working hard to prevent such an outcome, and to increase his own victory margin as much as possible. He raised money at Washington events and campaigned for Democratic colleagues around the country.

– In the mid-1950's Washington architect and builder Francis Koenig was advised by his doctors to escape the city and find a place to rest from the tensions of his work, so he and his wife, Ann Marie, found a retreat among the tobacco farms of Calvert County. They built a waterfront home in Long Beach, took up sailing and grew to love the area and its watermen so deeply that in 1991 they donated 30 acres on St. John's Creek to the county and asked that it be used as a sculpture garden like those they had seen in their European travels.

Maryland is home to the nation's best-educated and most technologically skilled work force. Such a dynamic and knowledge-based population reaps many benefits. In recent years, Maryland has enjoyed periods of job growth that outperformed nearly every other state and economic prosperity that has positioned the state to survive and pull out of the current economic recession more quickly than others. Still, new ideas and approaches are required to protect the state's highly competitive work force, especially as Maryland prepares for economic expansion, job growth and population increases.

Two to head U.S. attorney's team on violent crimes 3 Two men have been named heads of the Maryland U.S. attorney's office's Violent Crimes Section, which oversees prosecutions and investigations of violent repeat offenders and gangs. Michael Hanlon, deputy chief since the fall, is now chief of the section, replacing Jason Weinstein, who left the office to join the U.S. attorney general's office as a deputy assistant in the Criminal Division. Kwame Manley, who is a prosecutor in a federal death penalty trial that went to the jury Tuesday, will become deputy chief.

A few observations from the first sentencing of a waterman who was part of the black market that stole millions of dollars worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River. It was nice that U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte recognized that his decision on prison time, fine and restitution for Thomas Hallock would be watched by officials, recreational anglers and watermen along the East Coast. He called it a "serious crime" that "deserved time." What a breath of fresh air when compared with state district court judges - especially those on the lower Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland - who don't seem to mind seeing the same bad actors again and again because the puny penalties are just the cost of doing buinsess.

The thorny questions of granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and how aggressively to regulate electricity markets await the Maryland General Assembly as it enters its final week of the 2009 session. And there's still a budget to balance amid the country's worst fiscal crisis in decades. Senators and delegates have yet to resolve several fiscal disagreements, such as funding to buy land for preservation and how much to cut aid to local governments. Still, the discord could have been worse.

I've had a lemon tree growing by my driveway in Southern Maryland for at least five years. It's 20 feet tall and bore fruit for the first time this summer. Obviously it can withstand snow, freezing temperatures and drought. The lemons are mostly large and delicious. Isn't this unusual in Maryland? Lemon trees are classified as tropical. They normally need to be placed indoors as protection against Maryland's winters. However, a couple of cultivars are hardy down to 17 degrees, namely, Meyer and Lisbon.

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.