Suburbia

Hypocrisy in the suburbs is hardly a new theme for television, but seldom has it been explored with as much exuberance and intelligence as it is in the new Showtime comedy series Weeds, starring Mary-Louise Parker as a pot-dealing, single mom in the upscale community of Agrestic, Calif. Weeds, which premieres tonight, is meant to shock - even by the standards of premium cable - with a salty blend of four-letter words, graphic sex and a soccer mom who sells marijuana at her 8-year-old son's games.

LITTLE ORLEANS - A proposal to build 4,300 homes in a forested mountain valley near here has triggered debate over whether the development would be an economic shot in the arm for struggling Allegany County or an unwelcome intrusion of suburbia into the rural reaches of Western Maryland. If approved, Terrapin Run would be the largest housing development ever in Allegany, a county where only about 100 new homes are built a year. The nearest town, Little Orleans, had fewer than 700 residents in the 2000 census.

HERE'S A word you probably don't want to hear if you live in suburbia and have a deer problem and county officials are kicking around ways to control that deer problem: sharpshooters. Is it me? Am I being too squeamish here? Sharpshooters? To control the deer in Baltimore County? Look, I live in Baltimore County. And I live in a neighborhood where the deer problem ranges from Mild Nuisance to Deer Summer Jam 2005, depending on the time of year. You talk about brazen - our deer will practically come up and shake your hand and introduce themselves.

KEVIN E. OMLAND doesn't mind admitting what he did when he heard the news that an ivory-billed woodpecker had been sighted in the deep woods of Arkansas. "I cried a little," says the assistant professor of biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. There is no doubt that he was not alone. The announcement that this magnificent bird had been seen again after 60 years had that effect on people. "One thing it said to me is that there is hope," says Omland, who spends much of his time studying Baltimore orioles - the ones that fly and nest, not the ones that hit, run and catch.

Four years ago, in what was hailed then as the largest land preservation deal in Maryland history, officials paid $8 million to the owner of Chino Farms in Queen Anne's County to ensure that its 5,000 acres along the Chester River would remain home to bald eagles, endangered squirrels and thousands of ducks and geese. Now, 114 suburban homes are planned on a neighboring farm, and more may be on the way for Chino's other borders. The situation, playing out now before the county's planning commission, highlights the growing challenges of preserving farming in Maryland as suburbia spreads across the state.

Suburbia continued to spread out from Maryland's cities last year, with mostly rural Cecil and Calvert sharing top billing as the state's fastest-growing counties, according to population estimates released yesterday. The annual figures reported by the Census Bureau confirmed the rippling suburbanization that persists across the state, despite its nationally recognized Smart Growth policies aimed at concentrating development in and around cities and towns. `The fact that our outlying counties are the ones that are growing the fastest certainly points to the fact that maybe ... we haven't turned the supertanker of sprawl around yet," said Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland, a group advocating more compact development.

LEVITTOWN, N.Y. - More than 50 years ago, World War II veterans and their families swarmed to Long Island for the single-family homes and green lawns of a new, affordable, middle-class dreamland called suburbia. But these days many of their grandchildren can no longer afford to live here. With census figures showing the number of 18- to 34-year-olds on the island down 20 percent between 1990 and 2000, employers worry about a shrinking labor force, politicians fret about a declining tax base and Long Islanders debate how much change they're willing to consider to stanch the population hemorrhage.

There is no secret why Patapsco Valley State Park is so attractive to residents of western Baltimore County: It offers a bucolic setting within easy reach of the suburban landscape. That goes for residents of Catonsville and Relay, many of whom live within walking distance of the park. But it also goes for residents of Woodlawn, Randallstown, Owings Mills and Pikesville, who are no more than a 10-mile drive from one of five entrances to the park. What might be a secret is the diversity of recreational activities the park offers, including camping, canoeing, fishing, hiking, picnicking and tubing.

Baltimore County has always prided itself on having vast expanses of rural land just minutes from its suburban neighborhoods. But for many residents in the north county, the two worlds are getting a little too close for comfort. Where isolated country houses were once the only things to break up the woods and fields, clusters of colonials are cropping up, sparking worries among longtime residents that they are about to be enveloped by suburbia. Concerned about the pace of residential growth, two Baltimore County councilmen have proposed zoning changes that could sharply reduce the number of homes that can be built on nearly 10,000 acres in the valleys and farmland of the north county.

BOONSBORO - Joseph Michael has held invitation-only pheasant hunts on his family farm here for nearly five years. He has casually hunted other birds on the land for as long as he can remember. But high-priced McMansions have sprouted on the farm next door - when all are built, there will be 65 homes with sticker prices of more than $500,000. They bring concerns about bullets being fired so close to those new floor-to-ceiling windows. Situations like this have left officials struggling with questions of whether their rural way of life will have to be curtailed to make room for the suburban living that is coming their way, whether in this case it is too dangerous to allow hunting so close to where more and more outsiders plan to lay their heads.