Longwood’s Indoor Children’s Garden

On a recent day at Longwood Gardens, I got to the conservatory early. Surprise! - There were no children in the Indoor Children’s Garden. Normally it is a very popular part of the conservatory and there is no easy way to photograph its features. The photographs in this post are the results of that little serendipity (and my most significant ‘celebration’ for the day!).

The garden was redesigned/upgraded several years ago. The conservatory had an area for children even 20 years ago that my daughter enjoyed; the things she liked the most have been doubled and redoubled in the new garden - lots of water for little hands, musical instruments, sculptures and mosaics…low ceilings and narrow stairways….all with a nature theme.

Catoctin Mountain Park - August 2012

We took advantage of a cool, cloudy morning recently to revisit Catoctin Mountain Park near Thurmont, Maryland. It’s a forested area with hiking trails and winding roads. For us - it’s a place to celebrate all the times we’ve been there before (over the past 20+ years) and the beauty of the place even in August: (from the top down in the collage below) Catoctin geology, tiny mushrooms in moss, sunflowers at the visitors center, Cunningham Falls - not much water but the scour holes to the right of the water are indicators of how much there is at other times of the years, and a blue chicory flower.

This time of year the fungus steal the show from wildflowers. The slide show below captures some of my favorites. There are a lot of tree falls and forest mulch at Catoctin that provide lots substrate for these decomposers.

And last but not least - there were a few colorful leaves….reminding us that fall is just around the corner.

Little Celebrations of Each Day

Finding a way to be happy about life is easier if we celebrate - even in a small way - each day. Sure - there will still be the more substantial celebrations that happen less often but, for me, the little celebrations are more closely linked to feeling happy.

I am starting a project to write down one thing I celebrated at the end of each day to become more overt about recognizing and acknowledging the little celebrations. I’ve looked back over my notes for the past few days and picked one thing that stood out. Basically - I have a lot to celebrate so picking only one thing may be the challenge rather that searching for something.

Yesterday the little celebration was seeing one of the heron chicks from Sapsucker Woods on the heron cam. It was such a short few months ago that the chicks were just hatched and looking very fragile in their high nest…with owl attacks.

On Friday, I celebrated being able to eat banana. This may not be a celebration for many people but bananas made me violently ill for many years and I only recently discovered that I can eat them again. They are a great ingredient in smoothies.

On Thursday, I celebrated because there were a lot more iris rhizomes in my garden than I thought there were. They had not bloomed very well in the weed clogged and shady location but they were still making rhizomes every effectively. They will make a beautiful display next spring/early summer in their new location.

On Wednesday, I finally got around to asking my husband here the converted videos from our daughter’s babyhood were located on his computer and did some early celebrating of her 23rd birthday by watching some video of her 1st.

What have you celebrated today?

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 18, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #19 - From National Geographic

Prisoners pitch in to save endangered butterfly - Hurray for the Sustainability in Prisons Project

The Story of Stuff - a new movie (“The Story of Change”) has been posted…the others on the site are worth a look/listen too

Easiest Hot Bean Dip - Sounds yummy!

Should Doctors Treat Lack of Exercise as a Medical Condition? Expert Says 'Yes' - it would be great if doctors made this change - prescribe a gradual buildup of exercise rather than medication

An Artificial Retina with the Capacity to Restore Normal Vision - sight is often a challenge for otherwise healthy older people. This approach may be helpful. Hope the clinical trials get going and the technology/treatment becomes available sooner rather than later.

Fall Packages Make National Parks Attractive Destinations - Death Valley, Denali, Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verda, Olympic, Shenandoah, Yellowstone, and Zion….what a line up

How people spend money in America - Any surprises? Maybe the % spent on Transportation and Gasoline was a little surprising.

Andrea Marshall: An up-close look at the majestic manta ray - TED talk

Marianne North Online Gallery - North’s botanical paintings hosted by Kew Gardens; browse by country, plant group, or category

Summer Morning Gardening

The gardening time rule-of-thumb for me in August is - every morning from 7-8 that it is not raining. There is always something that needs to be done and something unexpected to note. The unexpected yesterday was this beautiful little mushroom with its gray pleats and white filaments.

I’ve caught up enough on the weeds to move iris and day lilies that have not done well in their current location because a young sycamore has gotten big enough to deny them enough sunlight - and they were getting too crowded. I didn’t realize the extent of the crowding until I started digging them up and found very dense bulbs/rhizomes. Next year there will be lots of flowers in the sunny bed where I’m moving them.

While I was digging and separating - I thought about how these plants are part of my heritage. The day lilies were a house warming present from my mother-in-law when she moved in with us 23 years ago. She’s been gone for about 22 years now - those day lilies are a wonderful reminder of her. I’m glad I remembered to dig them up to take with us when we moved to our current house. The irises are descended from some my mother dug from her Texas garden; they had been very prolific in her garden and she planted the excess for that year in my Maryland garden….over 15 years ago.

There were other items I’ve added to the garden over the years that I happened upon as I was digging

A small chunk of pale green glass purchased in a shop on the road to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Shells picked up on some beach

And tomorrow there are still more day lilies and iris to dig up and move!

Brookside Gardens - August 2012

Brookside Gardens in August - the plants are hanging on in the heat, making seed pods. There are quite a few with lots of buds brought on by the recent rains and the coming reduction in temperatures. The textures and shapes that I focused on during my walk included: 

• Fan-like gingko leaves
• Pleats of the yellow petals behind a fuzzy bee
• Folds of a hibiscus petal just opening
• Feathery papyrus
• Curved path through the rose garden and purple crepe myrtle
• Overlapping of petals of an old rose…the tight furl of a bud
• Compartments of a lotus pod
• The compactness of a passion flower bud
• The ripples behind two ducks

Gingko leaves

Bee

Hibiscus petal

Papyrus

Rose garden path

Old Rose

Lotus pod

Passion flower bud

Ducks

Serendipity at the Grocery Store - A Sunflower

My grocery store seems to have a new display of plants just outside the door almost every week. This week it was pots of sunflowers and I couldn’t resist.

There is one bloom on the plan - and a lot of potential with at least 3 buds. I’ll plant it out in the garden after a few weeks and hope it produces seed that will sprout next year so I’ll have many sunflowers next year. The goldfinches may visit the garden to enjoy the seeds as well.

Now that I have it home it is still a day brightener - just the thing for a humid August day in Maryland. Enjoy the slideshow below!

Preserving Herbs

August is the time to start preserving the bounty of the herb garden. I have basil, parsley, mint and stevia this year.

I prefer drying rather than freezing because it is ‘greener’ (uses less energy). Here’s the basic process (shown with basil but will work with most other herbs as well):

Gather herbs. I use kitchen scissors and the basket I use over the sink to rinse them so they are immediately ready for the next step. I leave a few plants to continue to use fresh and may harvest again for drying if enough grows back before the frost comes.

Rinse the herbs. You don’t want bugs, spider webs or insect eggs along with your herbs.

Chop them up. If you want small pieces, use a food processor. This time, I plan to use the herb in stir fry and soups so cutting with scissors was good enough.

Place in a breathable bag and hang where the herb can dry thoroughly. I chose to use a washable veggie bag this time. The drying can take several days or longer depending on the humidity in the air. Shake the bag or otherwise move the herb around in the bag to make sure it is drying evenly.

When thoroughly dry, place in an airtight container….and enjoy your herbs in the months to come.

Morning Walk in Colorado

Before I adjusted from Eastern to Mountain time on a recent trip to Breckenridge, Colorado - I took an early morning walk  and took pictures of flowers growing around the resort - some with water droplets left over from the shower the night before. Hope you enjoy the slideshow below!

Around our (Maryland) Yard in August 2012

I waited until I thought the dew would be dry from the grass - but misjudged it. At 9 AM, the grass was still very wet and I had to take my flip flops off to make it back up the slight incline of our back yard!

August is a month to start thinking about drying mint and basil. Both are blooming and growing profusely right now. Maybe I can get several harvests from the plants this month. I’ll do a later post on my technique for drying herbs.

Dahlias are the showy flowers in my flower beds this month. Other things are blooming too but somehow the dahlias always stand out above everything else.

I planted a sweet potato under the dahlias (I had one that sprouted before I could bake it) but the deer found it….it’s recovering but may not have enough time to actually grow sweet potatoes.

There are at least three different kinds of fungi in the back yard. The big bulky ones at the top of the picture collection below are the same ones growing on an oak stump from the ‘yard’ posting last month (and I posted about them at mid-month as well) - they’ve weathered from white curves to structures with rings and almost a clay like color. Two puff balls are a little further down on the mulch from where the oak stump is rotting. Then there are the very delicate mushrooms that come up in the grass. There always seem to be one or two in the back yard.

Previous Months: July 2012, June 2012, May 2012, April 2012, March 2012, January 2012 

Photography experiments

Today’s blog posting shares some results from some recent photography experiments.

The first one is quite simple - some hydrangea leaves photographed on a white kitchen counter top with shadows from natural light from the window on the left. The way the shadows accentuate the shapes of the leaves and the intersection of the shadows of the middle and right leaf intrigue me the most about the image.

The next photograph is of a hydrangea flower - taken with natural light using an old television stand for the black background. It turned out that it provided a very flat black even if it did make for a rather awkward position to be photographing (i.e. essentially lying on the floor). 

I did an earlier post on Blue Tulip Depression Glass. This is a photograph of a salad plate from the set photographed on a drying rack covered in deep red tissue with a small halogen light source shining from below.  

The image to the right is a gladiola photographed lying on a black deskpad using light from a halogen lamp. The flower looked pinker with natural light but I liked the color shift caused by the difference in light.

This is probably my favorite picture of the group. The swirls and puckers are gladiola petals with a background of black felt taken with natural light. To me, it is easy to imagine that they are swirls of fabric - around dancers just off the frame.

Brookside Gardens Reflections - July 2012

On a cloudy day at Brookside Gardens - after a rain - there were plenty of summer reflections.

The reflections of the treetop canopy by water filling the depression in a boulder marking a path 

Cattails and thick vegetation along the edge of the pond reflected in the water

And the panorama of the Japanese Teahouse and hill behind reflected in the pond as some Canadian geese swim into view.

Magnolia at Brookside Gardens

Earlier this month I posted some photographs of Southern Magnolias from Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The photographs in the slide show below are all from one tree in Brookside Gardens in Maryland taken in the early morning of 7/20 after a good soaking rain the night before. The sign at the base of the tree (picture at right) said that is was a Magnolia virginiana var. Pumila or a Dwarf Sweet Bay. This one tree had all stages of the bloom - from bud to the bright red seeds popping out of the pod.   

Enjoy!

Bush Trimming Think Time

Bush trimming is one of those activities that can be done almost on autopilot (as long as you are not using an electric trimmer) and thoughts can go in just about any direction - i.e. bush trimming does not require a lot of brain power. The activity is an opportunity for thinking.

There is a bush growing beside my garage that I call my ‘therapy bush’ because trimming it always ends with the satisfaction of a job done and improved perspective on other aspects of my life. That hour or so of thinking time while trimming the bush always works its magic. Its ‘before trimming’ state from a few days ago is to the left.

Small hand pruners are always my preference. They are quiet (compared to anything with a motor) and I can easily cut with one hand and catch the branches with the other to pile neatly on the side. I’m always surprised that some of the branches grow so much in a relatively short period of time and also notice that the large ones have thorns while the smaller ones do not.

Some of my discoveries about the bush during this trimming: 

• Last time I trimmed the bush - there were at least two other bushes growing with it. I trimmed both of them as close to the soil as I could and this time discovered one had not come back but the other one had…and it was the one that may have caused some skin irritation last time (the plant didn’t look like poison ivy but my skin certainly reacted like it was a close kin). Hopefully I was more successful in keeping it from my skin this time.
• A pleasant find under the bush - wild strawberry plants. One had a red berry. They are too small to be edible but the red color against the carpet of green leaves was pleasant. It’s made a nice ground cover under the bush.
• There was a white spider that was hanging on an invisible silk from one of the branches. I waited until he regained the branch and then trimmed the other side of the bush.
• Trimming the bush when it still had droplets on it from a rain or heavy dew is a plus on a hot day. Getting a little wet is a good thing. 

While I was trimming I thought about the little things that happen that are unplanned triggers for memories - good or bad, about losing respect for people (mostly politicians) that I’d rather be able to respect, and about how it seemed to take longer to trim the bush last time.

And the ‘after trimming’ state of the bush is to the right. The pile on the ground does not seem as big as it did when it was on the bush. I hauled the clippings off to the woods behind our house. The task was done and it only took about 1,000 steps (based on what my Fitbit counted)!

Brookside Gardens Lotus Blossom - July 2012

On Friday (7/20/2012) when we made our trip to Brookside Gardens - the only Lotus blossom was facing into some leaves and too far away to photograph…but there were buds.

On Sunday (7/22/2012) when we returned - after almost 24 straight hours of rain - one of the buds had opened fully. I took a number of pictures and noticed that there seemed to be a lot of bees coming and going from the flower.

The only way to see inside the flower was to reach as far as I could and point the camera into the flower from above (in other words - taking the picture without being able to see the screen of the camera at all). The best one is below. It clearly shows that bees love lotus flowers! I think there are 6 bees visible!

Brookside Gardens Cloudy Day - July 2012

Brookside Gardens - high humidity relieved a bit with an occasional breeze - was between rain showers. We were there first thing in the morning before the heat of the day became overwhelming and the water droplets dried. The gardens were lush with greenery even though there was still some visible damage from the storm in early July and the more recent rains: freshly cut marks on some trees where limbs had broken, trampled high grass and buds nibbled by deer that got in when part of the fence was down, mulch washed to the side of paths leaving mud behind. I particularly liked the papyrus in pots in one of the pools and the garden with a low wall looking toward the wisteria arbor and tall trees beyond.

The slide show below includes my favorites of the closer study pictures: flowers with water droplets and shiny from overall moisture, a small stem of leaves blown into a pine, water droplets on a large leaf, and a classical looking tree trunk.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 21, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Jared Ficklin video - (TED talk) sound visualization

Photos: Big sunspot kicks ball of energy toward Earth - views from the STEREO Ahead spacecraft and the Solar Dynamics Observatory over the past year

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #16 - from National Geographic

Brits Top Energy Efficiency Ranking; US Ranks 9th (Out of 12) - Wow! Even China is ahead of us. How can we be competitive with so many of the major economies of the world ahead of us in this arena

States Lead in Freeing the Grid for Small-Scale Renewable Energy - How well is your state doing?

New Metric for Obesity Strongly Correlated to Premature Death - A Body Shape Index (ABSI) is a combination of Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference

Web Quiz Tells You Which Presidential Candidate Best Fits Your Worldview - Interesting quiz

Cassini Spots Daytime Lightning On Saturn - Seen for the first time on the side illuminated by the sun

Green Plants Reduce City Street Pollution Up to Eight Times More Than Previously Believed - and they look good too! Green 'billboards' of vines or grass may be more effective than trees.

Storm Scents: It's True, You Can Smell Oncoming Summer Rain - Just what are you smelling before, during and after a summer rainstorm? Here are some answers from Scientific American

Mushrooms on an Oak Stump

One of the outdoor discoveries from our days without electricity was some mushrooms growing on the stump of an oak tree our neighbor cut down several years ago. I decided to take some pictures of them for as long as they lasted. On July 1st they looked creamy white at the margins. Notice the brown filament in the center of the one on the left; that will be a way to orient yourself in the upcoming pictures.

On 7/7, the white had flattened and enlarged. There were rings that began to appear.

On 7/11, the rings had become even more apparent and the rusty gold color was quite appealing. I also took another picture to show how they were oriented on the stump.

Finally, this morning - on 7/19, the mushrooms have browned more with time and the pelting of rain yesterday afternoon. They are looking a little battered at this point. I'll do a follow up post to document what happens to them in upcoming weeks.

Summer Lotus

Over the past month, I’ve seen lotus plants in two separate gardens and photographed them. The pink ones were in the Dallas Arboretum (with the Chihuly glass) and the white ones were in Brookside Gardens in Montgomery County Maryland.

I like the big leaves of the lotus. They 

• Are almost circular.
• Curve into a shallow bowl to capture a pool of water in their centers when it rains.
• Unfurl like lily pads, starting out in two curls toward the center.
• Are veined from the center outward.
• Flutter gently in the breeze on their long stalks that are anchored in muddy shallow water.
• Have gentle waves around their edges. 

Enjoy the lotus slideshow below!

Favorite Smells of Summer

What are your favorite smells of summer?

The smells I most strongly associate with summer are:

Fresh herbs from the garden - either outdoors while I am gardening or indoors when I am preparing a meal that includes them. Mint, rosemary, and basil are my favorites.

I like the smell at the beginning of rain. In the summer - there is so much vegetation where I live that the smells are rich and vary considerably…but they always remind me of crisp greenery and warmth.

Citrus. Somehow citrus is a summer sun smell to me. I like orange and lemon. There are a lot of products that include the scent. I love to have orange zest drying in my kitchen giving the whole kitchen its smell (and then using it in a stir fry or baking….and getting the smell again).

Cucumber. It has a very light scent…but certainly one that is cool in the midst summer heat and brightness.

What are your favorite smells of summer?