Nine-year-old Jeffrey Allen of St. Mary’s County has had a passion for music since birth, says his mom Kimberly Allen. Specifically the music of country music star Brad Paisley.        “He went to his first concert at the age of three to see Brad Paisley perform in Baltimore,” Kimberly says. “He likes to make signs for concerts, where we may be closer to the stage.”

      No one has ever become poor by giving. –Anne Frank           Susan Thomas is breaking in some new shoes, walking a path blazed by Food Bank founder Bruce Michalec. 

         The minimum keepable size for Atlantic blue crabs is five to five and one-quarter inches, depending on the season. Crabs that size are ranked as smalls. Mediums range up to six inches, large six and a half and jumbo up to seven. Crabs seven inches and up are ranked as behemoths, also called heavyweights or whales.           So what do you call a blue crab measuring nine and one half inches tip to tip?

         The latest is a new book, Chesapeake Requiem by Earl Swift, who spent 14 months documenting the tiny, storied island in the Bay that may be America’s first casualty of climate change.          The 1.3-square-mile island off of Virginia, inhabited since the 1600s, loses swaths of shoreline each year to rising waters.

The historic Sotterley Plantation is sitting on 200,000 square feet of potatoes — ready for harvest.           On St. Patrick’s Day, Hollywood, Marylanders stepped up to plant more than five acres of red and Yukon gold potatoes, reserved for donation.           Facility manager Joe Goldsmith is reviving the 1703 plantation’s working fields with hay and kale as winter cover crops. Summer’s crop is potatoes.

         Your creative mind can earn you some cash this fall. Design the best float for the Patuxent River Appreciation Days parade, and your group or organization can win $300. Second and third places net a nice hunk of change as well.          Held annually on Columbus Day weekend, PRAD celebrates all the river means to Southern Maryland. The parade wraps up the festivities Sunday afternoon. 

         Art is a powerful force for change. Art can raise awareness, inspire thought and even drive action. So maybe, just maybe, a poem can fight hunger.          “I think it can be a real effective tool in raising the public’s awareness to the cause,” says local poet Hiram Larew.

         Ten-year-old dog fortune-teller ­Elizabeth Nolan held her client’s furry paw and looked deep into his eyes. “You are a small dog with a big heart. You make people happy. I see kibble in your future,” she told him before being rewarded with excited puppy kisses and a $5 donation for the SPCA.

      It is never a good idea to introduce a newcomer to the clan at a family crab feast. Case in point, my cousin Ricky.        Ricky invited to a family gathering a lovely young woman from the Midwest he met during his college spring semester. That gathering turned into a crab feast after his Uncle Paul and Uncle Bobby went crabbing that morning. Ricky didn’t know this until he and his date arrived around 3pm.

      The dogwood and redbud trees are now in their full green-leaf splendor, and another school year will be soon coming to a close. In your neighborhood the smell of charcoal permeates the evening air and the songbirds are singing. Spring is transferring into summer. From marsh to forest, Chesapeake Country invites you to experience a new season.