How did you fall in love? That’s a question worth dwelling on. Girls at least — perhaps boys, too, though they’ll never tell — grow up dreaming of how they’ll fall in love. Most of us eventually achieve our own love story, some of us many times over. Common as the love story is, it never grows stale. An aging couple joins me at the table at a bed and breakfast, and, before our coffee cups are drained, she’s reported their love story, with him adding Amens!...

The black walnut is a unique tree. It selects its neighbors and wipes out its competition. The roots, bark, wood, leaves and husks of the black walnut contain an enzyme called juglanace. This enzyme remains in the tissues until they are decomposed beyond recognition. The horticultural term used to describe the competition-controlling properties of black walnut is allelopathic response. Juglanace acts like a selective weed killer, allowing only certain noncompetitive species to grow in close...

Dowell Road bisects a strip of land sandwiched between Back and Mill creeks in Solomons. Past new homes under construction, the road runs out of asphalt. There a hard-packed dirt road parallels sidewalks leading nowhere, crumbling foundations with no buildings to support and rusty fire hydrants with nothing to protect. In the middle of these ruins sits a long-empty swimming pool.  No disaster wiped out this abandoned village. Its demise was predetermined; it was never intended to be...

Point 1: Why Are Calvert’s Cliffs Exposed? The Miocene epoch of geology lasted from 23 to 5.3 million years ago. The middle Miocene was a time of high sea levels worldwide. The fact that we have these marine sediments exposed today, above present sea level, partly reflects that sea levels are generally down from what they were.  Shallow seas, embayments of the Atlantic, episodically covered much of Southern Maryland from about 18 to 20 and eight to 10 million years ago. Sea level...