Good News from the ­Bottom of the Bay Grasses surpass 100,000 acres       When you get back to the water this spring, expect to see things growing in it. Rooted grasses rise in columns from the bottom. Horizontally, long fronds swim in the current. Those Bay grasses are firsthand evidence of good news proclaimed this week.

      The sun’s energy is free, natural, infinitely renewable and completely clean. Getting our energy from the sun seems like a no-brainer.       The Maryland General Assembly thinks so, too. Two years ago, lawmakers passed the Clean Energy Jobs Act increasing renewable sources, including wind and sun. But good as the switch to sun and wind seems, the devil is in the details — details that have bedeviled wind proposals for Maryland’s mountains and oceans.

      Go to just about any dinosaur exhibit and you are sure to see the fossilized remains of the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex. But what if you are more interested in the lesser-known Deinonychus, Tenontosaurus or Astrodon johnstoni, the official Maryland state dinosaur? Then, you will want to visit Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons.

        You could celebrate Cinco de Mayo with tacos and Mexican beer. But one Southern Anne Arundel County fitness center is hoping you will also celebrate fitness and health this May 5.        Chesapeake Health and Fitness Club in Deale is sponsoring its first 5K that day, taking runners on an easy, picturesque path along Rockhold Creek.

      The woods near Lynne Cherry’s girlhood home were her “whole world.” She spent her free time there, inspired by the plants and wildlife to hone skills that would become her livelihood and mission: drawing and writing. When the woods were razed for development, a fire ignited in Cherry’s youthful heart that burns still. Her life’s work has been to ignite that fire in other young hearts, because kids, she says, are hugely instrumental in addressing our planet’s environmental challenges.

      When the federal budget request for 2018 proposed to eliminate funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office, Bay-lovers were alarmed. The EPA’s Bay program is “the glue that holds the state/federal partnership together,” in the analysis of Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker. EPA program office money is the primary source of support for coordinating, monitoring and modeling progress toward Bay restoration.

      Anne Arundel County’s celebration of Maryland Day, officially March 25, shifts to a hopefully sunnier, warmer weekend this year.       April 6 thru 8, we celebrate our shared stake in the territory and body politic planted 384 years ago on March 25, 1634, when Lord Baltimore’s colonists made land on a tiny island in a big river in an unknown world: Maryland Day.

         Spring is on the calendar. We had another lovely taste of warm weather last week. Yet the forecasters say not to pack away the winter gear as the thermometer struggles to reconcile with our expectations of spring.          Prepare your sacrifices to the weather gods, for as April moves forward, more and more outdoor events call us out of hibernation.          Here’s a look at some of the reasons to pray for warm weather.

Antique and vintage items can be used to enhance the garden and other outdoor spaces, even pools and ponds. Japanese fisherman’s floats, small garden sculptures and metal pieces can become focal points and can add whimsy and flair. –Jane Walter and Paula Tanis, A Vintage Deale  

      The woods behind St. Luke’s Church in Eastport looked pretty natural. But if you’d trained your eye to nature’s ways, you saw a tangle of invasive plants strangling the native trees and shrubs. Deeper in, a 42-inch wide underground pipe drained stormwater along with sediment, ­toxins, pet waste and other unpleasant things from 28 surrounding acres directly into Back Creek.        Not so pretty. Or natural.