Trees

Albert Lord doesn't like to wait - not in business or on the golf course. The colorful chairman of student loan behemoth Sallie Mae, who's embroiled in a nasty fight over the failed sale of the company, has spent 40 years in the accounting and banking industries. He said that experience should have instilled in him a measure of patience, but it hasn't. Whether in traffic, at the office or on the links, Lord said, he just doesn't like to wait. He can't do much about the first two, but he's got a sure-fire solution for the last one: He's building his own, an 18-hole golf course on land he's acquired amid shuttered tobacco farms and grazing horses in southern Anne Arundel County.

Your editorial on the restoration of historic Mt. Vernon revealed The Sun's lack intimacy with this issue ("Restoring Mount Vernon," May 14). The Mount Vernon Conservancy's plan for removing the site's trees is out of touch and ignores the environmental problems we face. No one disputes that the first designated historic site in the country needs help. The conservancy's work on the Washington Monument is a structural necessity, and the hard surfaces need to be refurbished as well.

A dispute over whose property three trees were on prompted one neighbor to fatally shoot another neighbor with a rifle in Western Maryland on Wednesday, and police said this morning they have a suspect in custody. Maryland State Police said the victim, Dennis E. Liller, 43, and the suspect, Alexander E. Malaska, 69, live next door to each other on Park Horse Trail in Allegany County. The shooting occurred Wednesday about 8 p.m. Malaska was charged with manslaughter and is being held in the Allegany County Detention Center on $300,000 bail.

I have lived in Rodgers Forge for 45 years, and I have some concerns about the wish of Larry Fogelson, head of the community tree committee, to plant many more trees ("Tree committee gets growing in Rodgers Forge," April 26). When the Forge houses on the hill were first constructed in the early 1950s, many of the trees planted by Keelty were silver maples. These maple trees grow quickly. At maturity, they often take down power, phone and cable lines, their roots seek out and invade homeowners' sewer lines and cause uneven pavements - which are a hazard - and they also lead to gutters that need to be cleaned of pods and leaves.

The emerald ash borer, a small beetle from Asia that is blamed for the destruction of 20 million trees in Michigan, has made its way to Maryland. Testing by the state Department of Agriculture last week detected beetle-infested ash trees in Prince George's County between Clinton and Brandywine. The state imposed a quarantine that prohibits moving ash trees, logs, fallen banches, stumps or roots in or out of Prince George's County until further notice. The quarantine also bans transporting of ash firewood or any hardwood firewood - including oak, maple and cherry - in or out of the county.

Inside Westminster Abbey, eight 20-foot-tall live trees lined the center aisle during the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William. The trees transformed the space, doing what even the most elaborate floral arrangement could not — providing a natural, living sense of permanence and an air of drama. The move was unexpected, unpretentious and bold. A potted tree on your patio or deck can have the same effect. While not every tree is well-suited for a container, there are a surprising number of options, ranging from crape myrtles to hollies.

I am a Baltimore resident who is saddened every year to watch so many city trees die needlessly due to lack of water. The city often does a poor job of planting trees, and I've observed trees being left near the planting sites for days to dry out before they are put in the ground. Then the soil in which they are planted is often poorly amended or completely unimproved. I've witnessed many trees that were planted too low or too high in the ground. Frequently, they are not mulched or sometimes mulched with fresh wood chips which suck some of the nitrogen from the soil, rather than aged mulch which returns nutrients and better retains moisture.

Editor, The Chesapeake Cancer Alliance is very appreciative of the sponsors, donors, volunteers and attendees who supported our recent fundraising event - The CCA Festival of Trees at the Bel Air Armory. All proceeds support Upper Chesapeake Health's Cancer LifeNet programs, which provide support and services to cancer patients in Harford and Cecil counties. Many thanks to our sponsors: Rosedale Federal Savings and Loan, Kissinger Financial Services, Susquehanna OB/GYN- Drs. Bellantoni & Gotzmann, PayPal Inc., Wells Fargo Advisors-Stephen Holland, Bay Counseling Services, Catherine & Vernon Jones, PNC Wealth Management, Taylor Pickett, George's Customs Towing, Churchville Ruritan, Vascular Surgery Associates, Harford Mutual Insurance Co., Harford's Heart and 2K Marketing.

Childs Walker 's recent article about the power outages ("Down come the trees, and off goes the power," Aug. 29), may be more appropriately titled, "Here come the environmentalists, up go the trees. " Where I live in Baltimore County, when you build you have the tree environmentalists dictating what trees can be removed. The same bureaucrat then dictates what trees you must replace. The county always forces you to add trees. Yet when it comes to utility disruptions, trees are the real culprit.

Question: I have 160 arborvitae trees lining my property that were planted by the previous owners about 2 to 2.5 feet apart. Ten have died. A tree company said they were planted too close together and I should remove every other tree. I'm not sure I want to do that! Answer: You do not mention the species or cultivar of arborvitae that are planted. Mature height and width varies and it is helpful to know for proper spacing. Some grow to 50 feet high and 10-15 feet wide or more, while dwarf varieties such as Green Emerald could be spaced like your trees.

With Memorial Day about to kick off the unofficial start of summer, agriculture officials are warning the public not to take firewood with them if they go on camping or cookout trips - those logs could harbor some unseen, tree-destroying hitchhikers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared this Emerald Ash Borer Awareness Week, in hopes it will slow the spread of this destructive beetle from Asia, which officials say has killed tens of millions of ash trees so far. Probably brought in on some imported packing material, the borer was first spotted in Michigan in 2002, but has spread to 14 other states since, including Maryland.

Who doesn't love a tree? Apparently, criminals. Researchers have found that leafier places in Baltimore tend to have lower crime rates than those with few or no trees. A new study looking across Baltimore City and Baltimore County has found that with few exceptions, the frequency of crimes reported in a particular block or neighborhood goes down as the tree cover gets thicker. Just a 10 percent increase in leaf canopy was associated with a 12 percent drop in crime, it concluded. The study, published online in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, supports arguments by advocates that environmental factors, and not just more police, can fight crime.

To what heights would you go to make your child happy? Earlier this month, I found myself 20 feet in the air as I took my tween on an climbing and zipline course in Sandy Springs. I offered to treat him and a few friends to the outing for his 11th birthday, but I had no intention of participating myself. I expected to be on the ground, taking pictures and toting the water bottles. But once we were there, the boys asked me to join them and ... well, it looked like too much fun to refuse.

A 42-year-old man died early Thursday morning from injuries sustained after the vehicle he was driving hit a tree in the Glen Burnie area. Rafet Gerigiden of the unit block of Marley Neck Road in Glen Burnie was trapped in the vehicle with extensive injuries and pronounced dead at the scene on Route 10 near Furnace Branch Road, police said. Officers responded at 1:43 a.m. to a report of a collision and found a 2004 Ford Ranger pickup off the road in the woods. The initial investigation showed that the driver was traveling south on Route 10, when his vehicle left the road for unknown reasons and continued into a wooded area, until it struck a tree.

B'more Green generally stays away from touting commercial products or companies, largely because we lack the time or resources to vet them.  But my green-thumbed colleague Susan Reimer passed this along, and it seemed too worthwhile to ignore: Nature Hills Nursery , which claims to be the largest online nursery and garden center in the nation, is offering to award a total of $4,500 in plants, shrubs and trees to four noteworthy community gardening...

It's said good things come to those who wait. But somebody still has to pay for them. On Friday, a contractor commissioned by the city began planting 150 trees around downtown, fulfilling a pledge made - and broken - by the now-defunct organization behind last summer's Grand Prix auto race. Baltimore Racing Development had agreed to plant a total of 198 trees downtown by last fall, after a public furor erupted over trees the city had permitted the group to cut down or move in the Inner Harbor to make way for the three-day event.

So now the architects are going to cut down the old trees in Mt. Vernon Park because the tree wells they're in aren't deep enough ("Tree swap is proposed in Mt. Vernon upgrade plan," Sept. 14). Have they never heard that there are old growth trees all over this country in arboretums, parks, town centers, cemeteries and most amazingly the redwood forests in California that have survived for centuries without tree wells? Architects should leave tree planting or, in this case, tree digging-up, to the arborists and other tree experts.

Thanks to Timothy Wheeler for his recent article about Baltimore's tree loss, some reasons for it and the importance of canopy within cities ("Study finds Baltimore, other cities losing trees," Feb. 28). I appreciate city forester Erik Dihle's description of Baltimore's plan for doubling the city's tree canopy by 2037. What was not mentioned as a threat to the longevity of older trees is English ivy. Like a boa constrictor, it can squeeze the life out of a tree. Northern Baltimore, where I live, is rampant with it. My hope is that home owners will recognize this threat and cut the life out of the ivy near the base of their trees before the life in their trees is cut short.

A 21-year-old Sykesville woman was fatally injured in a one-vehicle accident early Saturday morning in Westminster, the Carroll County Sheriff's Office said. Authorities say driver Adriana Maria Passaretti died after being taken to a Baltimore hospital. Passenger Kristopher Lee Myers, 23, of Union Bridge, was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Passaretti was behind the wheel of a 2006 Ford F-250 truck around 1 a.m. when she failed to negotiate a curve in the 1900 block of Nicodemus Road, the sheriff's office said.

There's the 15-foot orange tree with its menacing 11/2-inch-long thorns, a bushy affair that sprouted from small seeds like those most of us just spit out. Nearby is a kiwi plant, its aggressive tendrils snaking vertically up a nearby tree. And then there's the ramrod-straight, 100-foot-tall sequoia that appears happily unaware that its natural home is in California. Welcome to the Ellicott City property of Donald Dunn, where the uncommon is commonplace and unusual species thrive in blissful ignorance of the fact that they're spectacular misfits beating long odds.