It was 403 years ago this month, in 1610, that Galileo Galilei trained his telescope at distant Jupiter, and discovered the first four and the largest of its many moons. The first discovery came on January 7, when the Italian scientist wrote of seeing in front of Jupiter “three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness.” Lo and behold, when he peered at the objects the next night, he found that they had changed positions, which led to the realization that these were not...

Resolved to lose weight this year? To eat healthier? Tackle the topic this Friday, January 11, when the Annapolis Community Health Initiative hosts a tasting, movie and discussion on healthful eating at the Pip Moyer Recreation Center in Annapolis.     Start the evening by tasting local chefs’ presentations of food that’s good and good for health.     You’ll sample and judge dishes by three local chefs. Azure at the Westin chef James Barrett...

If your roses have grown tall and have been in the ground for less than a year, pruning them back to within 18 inches of the ground will minimize wind whipping, which loosens the roots in the soil.     Grafted roses also need pruning to avoid damage to the graft union. You can identify grafted roses by the enlarged stem near the ground where the hybrid rose was joined to rootstock. Prune those tall stems back to about 18 inches from the ground. Aluminum vs Ammonium Q ...

It’s counter-intuitive during these long, cold nights of winter, but early January brings the earth its closest to the sun in its annual orbit. Wednesday the second marked the actual point of perihelion, when we were two percent closer to the sun than usual. Earth’s orbit is not quite circular but rather egg-shaped, which creates a difference of a little more than 3 million miles from perihelion to aphelion — our farthest point from the sun — in July. That difference,...