Vertical

If you can stroll along the garden path without looking up, something is missing from your landscape. The element of height often is overlooked by gardeners as they create their ideal outdoor showplaces. No matter how generously planted, or how varied the textures and colors, every garden can be made more inviting and interesting with the addition of tall plants, art and structures with vertical lines. There is room, even in the tiniest garden or narrowest border, to add dimension without gobbling up precious space.

Fitness Together 3570 St. John's Lane, Suite 108 Ellicott City  410-750-2228 http://fitnesstogether.com/ellicottcity WHAT'S IN STORE: This fitness training operation not only has a new owner in Joan Schnorf, it moved to a new location in April. Schnorf got results through Fitness Together as a client, motivating her decision to buy the business. One-on-one private fitness programs with a personal trainer are based on individual body type, diet, daily routine, physical abilities and other factors.

The Denver Broncos will dare the Ravens to beat them with the pass, and the Ravens appear ready to accept that challenge. The Broncos commit eight players to stopping the run more often than any team the Ravens faced in the regular season. But can a struggling Ravens downfield passing game exploit the NFL's worst pass defense? "I've said since Day One ... that no matter how well we run the ball, if we don't have a certain vertical aspect of the passing game and hit plays down the field, we are not going to last long in the playoffs," Ravens coach Brian Billick said.

INDIANAPOLIS -The class of 2009 cornerbacks is conspicuous for its lack of height, but it might be better characterized by its extraordinary skills. Darius Butler of Connecticut is just 5 feet 10, but he has a phenomenal vertical leap and big-play ability. Alphonso Smith stands only 5-9, but who can argue with his 21 career interceptions for Wake Forest? D.J. Moore is 5-8 and unapologetic. Going against bigger receivers is something he's used to. "I'm 5-8, so everybody is bigger than me for the most part," the Vanderbilt cornerback said yesterday during NFL scouting combine interviews.

Regular readers of this column must know that I'm smitten with kitchens. Probably because I love to cook -- and owing also to my enjoyment of hanging out at home with friends and family -- no other room makes me feel more contented than an airy, efficient and comfortable kitchen.I'm fortunate to have just such a space. But I realize that not everyone is so blessed, especially those city dwellers who must cope with truly minuscule areas allocated for food preparation and storage.While it's often difficult and frustrating to work in that kind of kitchen, this need not be a permanent condition.

This week in A La Carte we're introducing a new recipe layout. In response to readers' requests, we've replaced our vertical recipe format with a more horizontal presentation that should make it easier not only to cut out the recipes, but also to paste and file them for future use.Pub Date: 12/03/97

Jon Isherwood and John Ruppert, two of the three sculptors in this month's Grimaldis show, investigate relationships between the natural and the man-made worlds.Isherwood takes huge pieces of rock and, by smoothing out sides, slicing through them or creating interior spaces, suggests man's aspirations and ambitions, with references to both past and future.His "Guardian," with its naturally rough sloping side and its smoothed-down vertical side punctuated by a mouth-like slit, reminds us of the mysterious stone sculptures of Easter Island -- not just because it looks a little like one, which it does, but because its quiet monumentality suggests an icon, an object of reverence, a reflection of the human desire for more than this earthly existence.

Off the Walls, the Baltimore Museum of Art Contemporary Performance Series, appropriately closed last night at the museum with the outrageous and amazing works of New York choreographer and performer Elizabeth Streb, who literally had her dancers bouncing off walls.Ms. Streb and her five dancers, who comprise Ringside, bring a new level of meaning to the term "slam-dancing" as she and her dancers aggressively and often seemingly brutally hurled themselves toward any immovable object.Throughout the four dances, this was the floor, or, as in the case of the opening work, "Wall," and the closing work, "Impact," they used a wall and a Plexiglas shield, respectively.

Yucca or Adam's needle (Yucca filamentosa) This cast-iron plant laughs at drought, humidity and high temperatures. Stiff, swordlike leaves bristle out of clumps 2 to 3 feet wide, making a strong statement in the landscape year-round. With modern varieties offering variegated leaves and whiter blooms, yuccas are more attractive than ever. Flower stalks several feet tall provide that elusive vertical element in the landscape. A deer-proof plant, yuccas are also wind and salt tolerant, making them suitable for seashore or roadside.

After the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1948, the great pundit Walter Lippmann distinguished the work of ''seers and saints'' from that of ''legislators, rulers and statesmen.''He devised a simple spatial metaphor. Statesmen were oriented ''horizontally. . . . They act in the present, with men as they are, with the knowledge they possess, with what they can now understand, with the mixture of their passions and desires and instincts. . . .''The insight of the seers, on the contrary, is vertical: They deal, however wide their appeal, with each person potentially, as he might be transformed, renewed and regenerated.

When Trish Lannon decided to pose for a 2009 calendar, she figured it would be a good idea to tell her boss. After all, as an administrator with the Howard County public school system, Lannon has a reputation to uphold. And now, as Miss March, the Elkridge resident is projecting a different kind of image. Wearing workout clothes that reveal her toned midriff, Lannon stands in her photograph with hips thrust to the side and left thumb tugging the waistband of her pants. The five men and six other women featured in the calendar gaze confidently into the camera as they display enviable torsos in the stylish portraits.

I remember getting my first computer with its 13-inch green-phosphor monitor. Then I went to a 15-inch screen, then a 17-inch. When I got my 19-inch screen, I thought I would never need anything bigger. Today I own a 30-inch, flat panel, LCD computer monitor that can display HDTV images. Along the way, I owned a screen that had the ability to pivot but the company that made it faded from view. Still it was really very different, and I was wondering when I would see something like it again.

Yucca or Adam's needle (Yucca filamentosa) This cast-iron plant laughs at drought, humidity and high temperatures. Stiff, swordlike leaves bristle out of clumps 2 to 3 feet wide, making a strong statement in the landscape year-round. With modern varieties offering variegated leaves and whiter blooms, yuccas are more attractive than ever. Flower stalks several feet tall provide that elusive vertical element in the landscape. A deer-proof plant, yuccas are also wind and salt tolerant, making them suitable for seashore or roadside.

Gary Neal's favorite basketball player is the sleek Ray Allen, but at one point last year he felt as immobile as Charles Barkley. Neal is listed at 200 pounds, down from 210 last season, but those are media guide weights. After spending chunks of a 21-month break from the college game snacking and in seclusion, Neal ballooned to 227 in 2005. He proudly reported at 195 when Towson began practice two months ago. "I wasn't sloppy fat, but I had no definition last year," Neal said. "The bulk wasn't a problem at the offensive end. It might have actually helped me post up smaller guys, but I'd get winded, and that would make it hard to play defense and rebound.

Nightlife Thomas Perry Crossfire Miyuki Miyabe Vertical / 300 pages / $25 One of the most exciting developments in crime fiction is the increasing availability of Japanese authors (such as the Edgar-nominated Natsuo Kirino and best-seller Koji Suzuki) to our borders. But the best export might well be Miyuki Miyabe, who serves up a stunner of a book in Crossfire. Superficially, there's some resemblance to Stephen King's Firestarter (the main protagonist, Junko Aoki, has the power to start fires using her mind)

Tulane loves to travel by air, so Navy's assignment tonight is to disrupt its flight plans. "They're going to test us early," said veteran Midshipman corner Vaughn Kelley. "I wouldn't put that past them. I don't know what it is about New Orleans, all the scoring they've done against us here. We plan on trying to change that. It's a challenge to hold them down." Kelley and his mates in the defensive secondary will be on center stage when the rivals with contrasting approaches to offense clash tonight at the Superdome, starting at 7 p.m. Navy pits its third-ranked rushing offense, paced by quarterback Aaron Polanco and fullback Kyle Eckel, against the Green Wave's fast fleet of receivers, paced by NFL prospect Roydell Williams, in a game between teams that have typically produced a ton of points when they meet.

Bank insurance fund recoversRecord bank profits and plummeting failures have allowed the fund that insures deposits to build up to $6.8 billion and repay the last of the money it borrowed from taxpayers.The fund's balance, up from $1.2 billion three months ago and a $101 million deficit six months ago, is the best in three years, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said yesterday. A year and a half ago, the fund was $7 billion in the red.U.S. workers' productivity fallsAmerican worker productivity tumbled at the steepest rate in more than four years from April through June, but analysts predicted modest gains during the second half of 1993 as the economy improves.

When I was in my early 20s I had a black-and-white pantsuit that I just loved. Then I married, had two children and put on weight. Now after six months of dieting I am back to my original 130 pounds. As a reward I want to get myself another striped pantsuit. But every time I try one on my husband says I look like a jailbird. Should I give up?Of course not. A striped pantsuit is young, dashing and always looks modern. That's why so many designers like stripes and keep using them in different width and color combinations.

On days when Marcus Robinson is constantly sent deep in practice, or when he runs reverses in full-contact drills against desperate third-stringers and gets pummeled, it almost appears Ravens coaches are intentionally punishing their free-agent receiver. Really, the coaches want to prove a point. "We've done it because Marcus hasn't played a lot of football in two years," receivers/quarterbacks coach David Shaw said. "We needed Marcus to get in as many live situations, take a lot of hits, take some pounding and make sure that his knee is going to hold up. He says he feels good, so we are going to keep doing it."

It's understandable if you hear trumpets playing the Olympic theme as you push off for a run down Whiteface Mountain. It's on these slopes that Sweden's Ingemar Sten-mark won two gold medals in 1980 and American Phil Mahre took a silver. In more recent years, gold and silver medallist Picabo Street competed in Gold Cup action here. But you don't have to be Olympic-caliber to enjoy a little 'Face time. The 4,867-foot mountain in upstate New York, once synonymous with bone-chilling cold and spine-rattling runs, has softened its visage.