You won’t find the word invasive — at least in connection with plants — in gardener, award-winning author, photographer and consultant Rick Darke’s vocabulary. Meet him on March 2, when he makes the trek from his garden oasis in Pennsylvania to Annapolis, and you’ll hear about balancing natives and exotics in the garden. His talk and slide show come at just the right time for gardeners thinking about spring plantings.     For Darke, what to include...

Picture this: A chilly night cloaked in mist with vultures roosting by the dozens on lampposts, in trees behind the grocery store.     That was a rare sight at Bay Hills Shopping Center, but I see vultures almost every day. Usually turkey vultures, distinguished from their black cousins by red heads and outer feathers of black and brown. They often perch on the signs or lampposts on the eastern approach to the Severn River Bridge. They circle the skies around Broadneck, riding...

Elvis lives. You’ll find him — and his spirit — in The Talent Machine’s musical comedy All Shook Up, a compilation of two-dozen Elvis songs arranged to tell a story of rocky love.     Sparks fly when Chad — a guitar-playing, motorcycle riding, leather jacketed stranger — rides into a mid-century American town where good times have been outlawed. Natalie — and all the girls — fall in love with him, and the town rocks. But there are...

Why does a three-time Tony-nominated New York director and choreographer come to a way-off Broadway stage in Annapolis?     Dames at Sea at Infinity Theatre Company is a blast from the deep past for Randy Skinner, who choreographed it as  a student in the mid-’70s. Nowadays, Skinner says, “people don’t write songs so tuneful.”     Skinner should know: Dancing since he was four, he has worked with some of the industry’s best. His...