Urban

The second annual Charm City Farm & Garden tour is scheduled for July 28. The tour will take participants, by bus or by bike, to community-managed green spaces. Both tours will end at the Vollmer Center at Cylburn Arboretum for a party open to tour guests and urban gardeners featuring local music, food, lawn games and more. Awards will be presented to exceptional gardens and farms throughout Baltimore. Also, a produce-judging contest will present awards for remarkable fruits, vegetables and flowers.

Marshall Klein, fourth-generation scion of the Klein's grocery store family, is proud of the sweet potato pies stacked near the entrance to his newest supermarket, ShopRite of Perring Crossing in Parkville. "We steam the potatoes ourselves," and on a busy day 50 pies go through the check out aisles, Klein said Wednesday as he balanced his 6-foot-5-inch frame on a folding chair in the community room of the new store off Perring Parkway just north of the city. The pies — like the store's urban setting — are new for the Klein family, which has run grocery stores in Harford County for almost 90 years.

Bill Satterfield, in his June 11 letter to the editor ("Urban waste, not chicken manure, is the bay's biggest threat") was right when he said "everyone has a role in protecting the Chesapeake Bay. " What he forgot is that "everyone" includes both the agricultural and urban sectors. Instead of shifting blame from one polluter to the next, we should focus on addressing all the major contributors of pollution. Instead of focusing on which kid on the block is polluting more, we should focus on the glaring similarity between agricultural and urban sources: both contribute dangerous levels of nutrient, bacterial, and toxic pollution into our local waterways and the bay. Another similarity between animal waste and human waste is that the public is outraged about both entering our waterways.

Farming in the city doesn't need a lot of land - and sometimes not even arable land. On a South Baltimore parking lot, inside six plastic-covered greenhouses, a handful of urban farmers are raising a cornucopia of greens in a thin layer of imported soil. Once the site of the city's maintenance garage, the half-acre "farm" on the paved-over brownfield by the Middle Branch now produces arugula, romaine, spring onions, basil, cilantro, fennel - even spicy edible flowers. And it's all organic, the growers say. Big City Farms is the name of this budding agricultural enterprise, operating on land now owned by the National Aquarium.

The Baltimore County Council on Monday made significant changes to a measure involving the county development approval process after preservationists said it would undermine an essential county growth-control tool and could run afoul of state law. Originally, the bill sponsored by Councilmen David Marks and Tom Quirk would have allowed development outside a growth-management boundary adopted 45 years ago, but the council removed that provision under...

The Potomac River, which flows between Maryland and Virginia, was named the nation's "most endangered" waterway today by a Washington-based environmental group. American Rivers put the Potomac atop its annual list of endangered rivers.  Though cleaner than it used to be, the "nation's river," so named because it flows through Washington, D.C., still faces threats from urban and agricultural pollution, the group says, and from cutbacks being pushed in Congress of federal environmental regulations.

The upcoming weekend is chock-full of green activities. Here are just some: Saturday is "Climate Impacts Day," meaning environmentalists intend to stage a flurry of demonstrations to get people to "connect the dots" between climate change and extreme weather. Folks will be donning gas masks to highlight their concerns during the "cyclovia" bike-walk from Roland Park to Druid Hill Park. Others will be kayaking amid the drowning wetlands at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, while still others plan to celebrate the installation of another solar array in Howard County.

With spring here, lots of green things to do this weekend. Baltimore Green Week wraps up on Saturday, with a flurry of activities: 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., there'll be tours and workshops at Real Food Farm , where the group Civic Works is growing produce on six acres in northeast Baltimore's Clifton Park, 2801 St. Lo Drive. Go here or call 410-366-8533 for info. 8 a.m. - 9:30 a.m., there'll be a guided bird-watching walk for all ages through Patterson Park. Led by the Audubon Society's conservation director.

Adam Sahhar spends his days prowling the waters of the Inner Harbor, looking for plunder and teaching passengers a lesson in Pirating 101. As general manager of Baltimore's Urban Pirates, Sahhar, aka Capt. Peppercorn, leads the crew aboard The Fearless, a pirate-themed, children-friendly tour boat armed with water cannons. This is the first week of pirate season, which runs through Oct. 31. Sahhar, a 27-year-old who lives in Fells Point, and the rest of the crew will be on hand for Saturday's Privateer Day in Fells Point.

The Orioles have new orange and black banners along Russell Street and Pratt Street, and aren't they pretty, and aren't they grand, and shouldn't we be grateful? The banners proclaim "20 Years," and we're all supposed to understand and appreciate what that means - two decades since the fabulous, taxpayer-funded Oriole Park opened at Camden Yards. But, who cares? It's been nearly 30 years since the Orioles were in a World Series, 14-soon-15 since they had a winning season. In the Angelos era of Baltimore baseball, pessimism springs eternal in the human breast.