Volume XVII, Issue 30 # July 23 - July 29, 2009 |
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Correspondence
We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, 1629 Forest Drive, Annapolis, MD 21403 •E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters on-line by clicking here.
The Distribution of Prickly Pear
Dear Bay Weekly:
In Gary Pendleton’s column of June 25 [ftp://bayweekly.com/bayweekly/year09/issue_26/earthjournal.html], he describes the prickly pear cactus and its various locations in Maryland.
Years ago, I found a huge stand of them in the dusty vacant lots at Wayson’s Corner, near the old tobacco warehouses and the gravel aprons around the buildings. I’ll bet they are still there.
–Mercine Marshall, by email
Reader’s Earth Journal
Dear Bay Weekly:
While enjoying the quiet and warmth of a summer day, I was reading in my favorite, comfortable chair on the patio. I heard a familiar buzzing sound, looked over the top of my book and was pleasantly surprised to see a female hummingbird hovering about 18 inches from my eyeglasses. She was fascinated to see a competitor near her personal feeder, yet so close to a huge animal. Normally, she would have chased her competition at high speeds, but she refrained from approaching too closely to this unpredictable and large animal.
Hummingbirds are fascinating and sometimes can be oblivious to danger. I was watering a small, newly planted bush with a garden hose set to provide a very weak water stream. The bush was about four feet from me and only a foot tall. About midway in the stream, a female hummingbird decided to take a shower. She could not have been more than three feet from me.
–W. Rynone, Annapolis
Bay Weekly on a Summer’s Night
Dear Bay Weekly:
Just a note to you about July 9’s quintessential Annapolis evening. Eighteen-knot winds blustered up the Bay keeping mainsails and spinnakers taut in the Thursday night sailboat races as I sat with a crowd at the Annapolis Maritime Museum’s outdoor concert. Chesapeake’s own Calico Jack, the duo of Janie Meneely and Paul DiBlasi, joined with Danny Spooner of Australia and London to regale us with traditional and newly penned sea shanties and songs as ospreys wheeled overhead on the steady breeze.
What impressed me, though, was the man sitting beside me, who, despite the wind, held tightly to his Bay Weekly, and read it from cover to cover as he listened to the concert. Another testament to readers’ dedication to your wonderful publication.
–Dotty Holcomb Doherty, Annapolis
Bay Weekly on the Bay
Dear Bay Weekly:
Just thought I would drop you a note about Bay Weekly. I love this publication and have read it for years and hope it continues for a long time. I grew up fishing on the Bay and still get out a few times a year during rockfish season, so I enjoy your articles about the Bay and the surrounding area.