In September 2000, I was sitting on a bench facing the Mediterranean Sea in the French Riviera town of Nice. I had flown there during a three-day break in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in Camp Ziest, Netherlands, where I was expected to testify. As I sat on this bench eating lunch, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed by emotion. It was an awakening: I realized that my being there was the fulfillment of one of my many life dreams and goals that were launched thirty-one years earlier from another bench facing the Three Sisters Ponds in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park. Now, from a bench in the French Riviera, I began to chronicle the manifestation of those dreams and goals, accomplished through my thirty-six-year law enforcement career as a Baltimore City policeman and FBI agent. I'm hoping my story catches on with anyone who dares to dream and set challenging and aggressive life goals. While writing Three Sisters Ponds, there were areas of my story where I felt compelled to express myself poetically.

The Wilderness Concept and the Three Sisters Wilderness is a guide to understanding the Three Sisters Wilderness as wilderness -- its natural and cultural history as well as the philosophical, legal, and management concepts that keep it a wilderness.

Build a natural pond for wildlife, beauty, and quiet contemplation Typical backyard ponds are a complicated mess of pipes, pumps, filters, and nasty chemicals designed to adjust pH and keep algae at bay. Hardly the bucolic, natural ecosystem beloved by dragonflies, frogs, and songbirds. The antidote is a natural pond, free of hassle, cost, and complexity and designed as a fully functional ecosystem, ideal for biodiversity, swimming, irrigation, and quiet contemplation. Building Natural Ponds is the first step-by-step guide to designing and building natural ponds that use no pumps, filters, chemicals, or electricity and mimic native ponds in both aesthetics and functionality. Highly illustrated with how-to drawings and photographs, coverage includes: Understanding pond ecosystems and natural algae control Planning, design, siting, and pond aesthetics Step-by-step guidance for construction, plants and fish, and maintenance and trouble shooting Scaling up to large ponds, pools, bogs, and rain gardens. Whether you're a backyard gardener looking to add a small serene natural water feature or a homesteader with visions of a large pond for fish, swimming, and irrigation, Building Natural Ponds is the complete guide to building ponds in tune with nature, where plants, insects, and amphibians thrive in blissful serenity. Robert Pavlis , a Master Gardener with over 40 years of gardening experience, is owner and developer of Aspen Grove Gardens, a six-acre botanical garden featuring over 2,500 varieties of plants. A well-respected speaker and teacher, Robert has published articles in Mother Earth News , Ontario Gardening magazine, the widely read blog GardenMyths.com, which explodes common gardening myths and gardening information site GardenFundamentals.com.

Explores the novel, environmentally friendly organic-gardening system of the Three Sisters Farm, which centers around a bioshelter--a solar greenhouse that integrates growing facilities, poultry housing, a potting room, storage, kitchen facilities, compost bins, a reference library and classroom area. Original.