Before Frost

We’ve already had a few mornings with temperatures in the 30s at our house in Maryland and have completed the outdoor chores that prepare us for winter this past week: 

• Bringing in the hoses
• Turning off the and draining the water lines on the outside
• Removing the solar sunflower and glass butterfly stakes from the outdoor pots - they will last longer without being in the outdoors during the freezes and thaws of winter
• Cleaning the glass birdbath bowl and brining it indoors for the winter (it is turning into the centerpiece on the dining room table) 

Of course, we still have the raking of leaves left to do. The maple tree that is usually the one that makes the thickest carpet on our lawn still has most of its leaves!

Brookside Gardens - October 2013

Brookside Gardens was full of fall last weekend - colorful foliage and the display of mums in the conservatory. I was a little disappointed that they did not have pumpkins and gourds on display as they have in the last few years - but it was interesting to see the preparations for the lights in the gardens that begin at Thanksgiving.

Indoors there is always the draw of lush tropical foliage in the conservatory and the literate frog sculpture in the visitor center.

 Outdoors the colors of fall abound - with some of the trees completely changed (like the dogwood) and some still mostly green (like the ginkgo).

And take a look at both directions from the entrance bridge of the conservatory parking lot:

Of course there was more...so the rest of my photo picks from my October walk around Brookside Gardens is in the slideshow below.

Zooming - October 2013

The ‘zooming’ post for the month has become one of my favorite posts to create. I enjoy selecting the images and getting them clipped perfectly…the arranging them in the post. My picks from my October photographs are below.

September 2013 Zoom

August 2013 Zoom (garden)

Around our (Maryland) Yard in October 2013

Our Maryland fall has been muted this year. Most of the trees have not achieved the brilliant colors of years past; the few that do are flashes of brilliance that provide a splash of color for a few day and then drop all their leaves to the ground. I find myself appreciating the play of light through oak leaves this year and the splotches of color on maple leaves that fill a tree that looks ‘green’ from a distance.

The front flower bed is mostly gone to seed. I haven’t seen the birds easting the seeds of the blazing stars but the bare rib of some of the seed plums is evidence that the feast is not going totally unnoticed. We’ve had freezing temperatures for the past few mornings but there is still a dahlia blooming - resting on the sidewalk that probably retains enough heat to keep it warm.

The tulip poplars are losing their leaves and their seeds without becoming the blaze of yellow. They tower over our yard and their leaves wave in the wind….and whirl away.

Last but not least - the onion seeds are scattering as the wind shakes them like at rattle out of their cases. I hope some of them come up next spring as new plants.

3 Free eBooks - October 2013

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for October 2013.

Mollhausen, Balduin. Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas Bd. 1. Leipzig: H. Constenoble. 1861. Available from the Internet Archive here. The images of the desert southwest that were published in 1861 are full of plants that are (mostly) realistically portrayed. 

 Macbeth-Evans Glass Company. Shades and Globes. Pittsburgh: Bartlett-Orr Press. 1912. Available from the Internet Archive here. This catalog from the early 1900s has some appealing ‘shades and globes’ for light fixtures that would not look out of place in a home today. I like the iridescent glass and the pattern of the one I clipped for this post.

Wittmack, L. Gartenflora Bd. 42. Berlin: Verlag von Paul Parey. 1893. Available from Internet Archive here. I am still savoring the volumes of Gartenflora ---- going through a few more each month. The chrysanthemum was one of my favorite images from October.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 19, 2013

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

1,200 Whimsical Stone Statues at Buddhist Temple in Kyoto - Small, mostly smiling statues capped with green moss. They were donated in 1981 to the temple but have a timeless quality. My favorite image is the sixth. The most prominent figure looks happy and calm; the one next to him looks worried about something.

Lost (and found) in Lahore: a photoessay - From the TED blog…images of Lahore, Pakistan from Khurram Siddiqi. If you tried to capture where you live in a photoessay, what would you include?

The Human Bionic Project - A collection of current state-of-the-art links about the interaction between human bodies and machines. The interface shows a human image with pink circles to indicate places where there is more information. There is a slider to move from outside the body to muscles, skeleton, organs, etc. This was one of the reference materials for a Neuroethics course I am enjoying on Coursera….part of the discussion about the changing definition of disability, illness, and disease.

Strength in Numbers: 5 Amazing Animal Swarms - Red crabs, free-tailed bats, desert locusts, monarch butterflies, and starling murmurations

The Uncanny Places on Earth That Look Like Alien Worlds - Sometimes they look alien from afar….and sometimes from within.

The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments - A report published in Los Alamos Science in 1995 about the efforts to understand plutonium’s effects on health during the Manhattan Project….what was known…and what was not…what was done to determine exposure limits. The project’s mission was foremost but the leadership did not ignore the health issue in the frenzy to get an atomic bomb built and tested. The article is another reference from the Neuroethics class.

Map of San Francisco, Stripped of all the Urbanism - The terrain without bridges, cable cars, and housing.

Where Are Migratory Monarchs This Fall? - There have been fewer monarchs in our area of Maryland. There are fewer milkweeds too.

Butternut Squash Smoothie - I have been enjoying apple cider in my smoothies…so I am going to try without orange juice or other sweetener. Somehow the taste of butternut squash and apple cider appeals to me!

More Than 500 Million People Might Face Increasing Water Scarcity - I am probably sensitized to the issue because I am familiar with Tucson’s challenges today. It would not take much change in rainfall, continued concentration of toxins in the water, and/or increased population to result in shortages of good quality water.

Leaves of October 2013

Usually we are in full autumn color by about this time of October. This year some trees have not turned very much yet, although they have started dropping leaves.  Some branches of our oak are reddish brown in the sunlight while a lot of green leaves are still on the tree.

The same goes for the sycamore.

The maple had not dropped very many leaves at all although there is a brilliantly colored leaf among the green.

Elsewhere in our neighborhood individual trees have already dropped most of their leaves. We will not have the usual colorful swath up and down our street with the trees on each side turning in synchrony. Perhaps our very dry August is to blame. I’m still holding out hope that the maple I see from my office window (the one that is still green) is going to be full of yellow and red by the end of the month!

Monticello, Utah

We opted to stay in a vacation rental in Monticello, UT rather than Moab on our recent vacation. Monticello is higher (and cooler) than Moab and is further south. My husband had prioritized ‘Monument Valley’ as a destination for one of our days and the location of Monticello made it an easier day trip.

The small town turned out to be scenic too. The second morning, a dusting of snow became visible as the sun came up. It flocked the grass and provided a white backdrop to the fall foliage in the ‘rough’ of the golf course.

After the snow melted (it only lasted a few hours) - the green grass was visible again and the bright sunlight caused all the colors to glow.

Deer came to visit - seemingly used to people being near.

My eyes were drawn again and again to a tree that had lost its leaves already. The green of the golf course surrounded it - and I wondered if it was dead or just some tree that always lost its leaves early.

There were many birds around too - but only this one sat still long enough to be photographed.

Abajo Mountains and Newspaper Rock, Utah

Our trip to southeastern Utah coincided with the government shutdown - before the state managed to re-open the National Parks in the area with state funds. Consequently - my blog posts about the vacation will include sights from outside those parks. The drive west from Monticello UT through the Abajo mountains was quite scenic in the early days of October. There were swaths of aspen among the pine and scrubby oaks on the eastern side of the mountains….and colorful layers of rock in canyons seen from the western side. We turned around at the blockade at the Canyonlands National Park. Newspaper Rock - with images pecked into rock - was along our route back.

Sit back and enjoy the slide show of the mountain views - the large and small, the timeless and transient, the crystal clarity and hazy distances.

On the Road in Colorado - October 2013

The ‘paper airplane’ art seen at the top of the escalators in the Denver International Airport (picture above) is always something I appreciate upon arrival. There were a lot of travelers when I arrived in early October…and returned a week later.

Our final destination was Utah so the images of Colorado were what we could capture along I-70 while enroute. Fortunately - driving from Denver to Grand Junction is scenic any time and particular this time of year  when there is the addition of fall call to the mix: the dark green of pines, the yellow of aspens, older fall colors for scrubby trees, a scattering of snow on the highest peaks, and bands of rock colors anywhere the vegetation has been swept away or never grows in the first place. I also included an apple tree (with fruit) that was growing at a rest stop and the sunrise on the morning we flew home - in the slide show.

Longwood Gardens Sunflowers - September 2013

Sunflowers in the sun! They are one of my favorites for late summer and into fall. The sunflowers pictured in this post were at Longwood Gardens in September.  The large headed one was in a demonstration garden and the smaller ones were at the edge of the meadow (closed for renovation and expansion). 

The group of flowers I spent the longest time watching had gone to seed and birds were enjoying their bounty.

Longwood Gardens Datura - September 2013

Datura was in full bloom at Longwood Gardens in September. The large trumpet flowers sometimes seem very delicate - and other times frilly. As buds - still compact - they appear waxy. On some varieties, the flowers hang downward and sway like bells in the breeze; other varieties have flowers that point upward showcasing all their layers. Enjoy the collages I made for the purple, pink and yellow daturas.

Longwood Gardens Water in Motion - September 2013

The water features at Longwood Gardens are an integral part of the gardens during the warmer months. Sometimes my favorite is the Main Fountain Garden. We have often stayed for the lights on the water on summer evenings so I find them less exciting during the day.

Other times the Eye of Water is my favorite just because of the sheer volume of water flowing over the structure and then downhill toward the Chimes Tower.

But recently - the Italian Water Garden has been my favorite. Many years ago when we first went to Longwood Gardens, the Italian Water Garden was open and people wandered around on the grass among the fountains. It was beautiful but crumbling. After a renovation, the fountains look much better but the area around the gardens is gated.

I’ve always liked the water stairs, the large central fountain, the smaller fountains along the edges shaded by trees, and the frogs contributing arcs of water to the fountain at the far end. 

Fall Chores (before Leaf Raking)

There are not enough leaves on the ground yet to make raking worthwhile. My husband chopped up the few around when he mowed the grass - probably for the last time this year. This morning I did the other chores that had accumulated:  

• Trimmed the bush that always seems to need a trim - one last time before winter. Keeping it short enough to trim without a step-ladder is the goal. I can just barely reach the middle of the top with the pruners while standing on my toes.
• One of the bushes in the front of the house had some branches from the base that were leaning too far to the side and were almost covering an azalea. I cut them off as close to the base as I could. The whole area looks better now and I won’t have to worry about snow weighing them down enough to crush the azalea this winter.
• The last chore was trimming the pyracantha. This bush rarely gets trimmed; the thorns are quite effective in discouraging close contact. I was motivated by the idea that the orange berries would show more if the bush was trimmed so the heavy gloves were found and the long handled pruners were retrieved. It didn’t take long and one scraggly branch that needed to be cut had a lot of berries. It looks great on the mantle above the fireplace: my reward for getting the fall chores done! 

Are you done with your fall chores too?

Longwood Gardens Ferns - September 2013

There are always a few ferns that catch my attention in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory. There is a Fern Passage that is lined with them. Usually I am focused on fiddleheads - those tightly curled beginnings of fronds.

This time I noticed one but was almost immediately more interested in the sporangia on the underside of the fronds. This is where the spores are produced that will become the next generation of ferns. The patterns of the fronds and the sporangia have a precision and symmetry that is quite appealing.

Longwood Gardens Pitcher Plants - September 2013

In a short hallway off the fern passage at Longwood Gardens there were planters dense with pitcher plants.

I remember being intensely interested in insectivorous plants when I was in elementary school. They were so different than anything I had ever seen in north Texas where I lived. One year I found some in a catalog and managed to convince my mother to order them for me. I got tiny plants: a Venus Fly Trap and a Pitcher Plant. The Venus Fly Trap did not last very long but the Pitcher Plant endured for about 6 months.

They never got as big as the plants at Longwood and they never flowered. It still is thrilling to see them - and know what they are - in the gardens I visit.

Zooming - September 2013

I did a ‘Zooming the in Garden’ post last month and enjoyed it so much that I am initiating a monthly ‘Zooming’ post. Here are my favorites from September 2013. They are all either insects or plants!

 

Longwood Gardens Slipper Orchids - September 2013

The Orchid House in the Longwood Gardens conservatory is not large but its walls are full of blooms from floor to ceiling. This time I focused on the slipppers. My favorites are the ones that have dainty slipper toes and trailing ties that I image would tie around an ankle. It isn’t clear how the large striped structure at the back fits into the slipper image….but the whole flower is quite appealing on its thin stalk growing from a base of green leaves.

Which are your favorites? I tend to always take pictures of the green and white ones first.

Longwood Gardens Water Lilies - September 2013

The courtyard of pools that hold the water lilies at Longwood Gardens is one of my favorite places in the gardens. The lilies were full of blooms and bees. I always like to capture the flowers with the most insect activity. The magnification often gives the flowers an unworldly look. Their colors are so vibrant and that is just what our human eyes can see; the insects probably pick up on even more. There are also some lotus pictures mixed in the slide show below. The pink or white flowers with petals that look crumpled are the Victoria Regia water lily; a book from 1854 available on the Internet Archive includes lithographs by William Sharp of this water lily.

I posted several times before about the water lilies at Longwood: November 2011 and August 2012. 

Around our (Maryland) Yard - September 2013

The temperature trend is down (not cold exactly but definitely cooler than August) and the flowers are fading. There is one dahlia still blooming.

The chives that were just beginning to bloom in August are already creating seed pods this month.

The highpoint for color are the clusters of pyracantha berries. This has been a good year for the bush. I’ll cut a small bunch to bring into my office soon.