Around our (Maryland) Yard in February 2013

There was a dusting of snow of fell after dark - that made the yard look cold and brittle on the morning I walked around to take the pictures for this post. The tumbled cairn of rocks and shells was almost covered. The neighbors’ blue spruce and pines still held tufts of snow as did the dried flowers of the hydrangea and onion. The old logs of the abandoned wood pile at the edge of the forest were buried under leaves and snow. I left muddy footprints in the pristine snow that had filled the dip in the yard that drains away the melt and rain water.

tumbled cairn

blue spruce

pine

hydrangea

onion

abandoned wood pile

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 2, 2013

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.

Masterful Textured Oil Paintings of Ships at Sea - from Polish Artist Justyna Kopania

Health and Environment: A Closer Look at Plastics - trying to balance risks and rewards

The Whirlpool Galaxy

Morning Glory Muffins - nutrition rich - to start the day

Population Density in the US from 1790-2000 - from Stanford University’s Spatial History Project.

Simon Beck Snow Art - this post is almost a year old…but I only found it recently

Test for Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Gets Global Seal of Approval - both the international Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and the US Government ….good that they are agreed on how to test for the chemicals

Silhouettes and Moonrise in Real Time - video of a moon rise from a New Zealand mountain top

Archaic Native Americans Built Massive Louisiana Mound in Less Than 90 Days - At Poverty Point…the largest mound was built between rains; the hunter gatherers must have been a lot more organized - and in larger numbers - that previously thought

Romantic Textured Paintings of Couples Walking Together - just in time for Valentine’s Day

Glass as Art

I’ve posed about glass as art before - Corning Museum of Glass, Chihuly at the Dallas Arboretum (here and here), Karen LaMonte’s Reclining Dress made of glass. Today’s post is a series of macro shots of glass paper weights and a vase. Enjoy!

Chocolate and Pineapple (at Brookside)

I check the banana palms every time I visit the Brookside Gardens conservatories; they usually have bananas in various stages of development. This past visit two other plans from warmer climes were bearing fruit as well:

Pineapple. I had seen pictures of the plant but had not actually seen one before. The fruit was well along in its development.

Cacao (chocolate!). I had seen a tree with the pods in another conservatory but finding one at Brookside almost hidden in the other tropical foliage was a pleasant surprise. The change in color that comes as the pods ripen was clearly visible.

Both plants are so different looking than plants that are native to Maryland. What a delight on a winter’s day to feel the warmth and be surrounded by tropical plants in the Brookside Gardens conservatory!

Details Seen in Photographs

In my last walk around Brookside Gardens, I took my usual large number of pictures - and then enjoyed the detail of what I captured after I got home and could look at the images on a large screen.

I didn’t notice the imperfections in the succulent pictured below when I took the picture; the colors and the frame filling shape of it was what caused me to take it. Now - it is the imperfections that cause it to be one of my favorite images from this visit to the gardens.

I held my camera upside down and took the picture below blindly - pointed upward into the angel trumpet flower. The light from the conservatory roof was bright enough to give the flower a central glow. The delicate fibers within the flower show through. The green core of the flower looks like an asterisk pinned to the stem by the flower parts and framed by the fused petals.

Did I say that it was a sunny day? The photo below is the only image in this post that was taken outdoors. The shadow and burn out areas are what makes this image a favorite for me.

Last but not least, the coiled fronds in the center of a fern. I always like to catch the spirals of nature since they are never that way for long; they’ll unfurl into the outer ring of green while new fiddleheads form in the center.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory Flowers - January 2013

The conservatories at Brookside Gardens are lush with greenery and flowers - a welcome contrast to outdoor vegetation this time of year. Begonias and bird of paradise…crown of thorns and petunias. Today is a celebration of the flowers!

The Sun Coming Down from the Trees

Years ago - on an annual fall foliage camping trip - we got up at dawn because it was too cold to stay in the tents any longer. As we built the fire to cook breakfast - someone noticed the sunlight in the tops of the trees. It looked so warm compared to where we were at the forest floor - still in deep shade. And the description of what was happening became “the sun coming down from the trees.” We all watched as the light made its way down the trees and anticipating the day warming up.

I caught the same time of morning behind my house this week. The tree tops were glowing with the reflected light of dawn - much more colorful that the washed out light later in the morning that reached all the way to the forest floor.

On that cold morning almost 40 years ago - we bundled up, had a hot breakfast and took a hike. We still have some of the prints of sumac seed pods from that morning!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 19, 2013

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.

Where US R&D dollars go

Geometric Sculpture by George W. Hart - the ‘skinks’ is my favorite

Tap into the 2013 Natchez Trace Parkway Visitors Guide - available in PDF

What You Don’t Know About Home Burglaries - infographic. 65% of burglaries happen during the day and other factoids

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #33 - my favorite is the Indian peafowl

Australian Heat Wave Is Literally Off the Color Scale

Marc Goodman: A vision of crimes in the future - TED talk

These Days, Darwin Would Need To Know More About Jupiter - What Can Astronomers Teach Biologists? - 4 perspectives

Americans Have Worse Health Than People in Other High-Income Countries; Health Disadvantage Is Pervasive Across Age and Socio-Economic Groups - from the National research Council and Institute for Medicine. Full report can be found here.

 Human Numbers Through Time - the graphics show population growth over the past 2 millennia. It was created in 2004 but I just found it this past week

Spectacular Macro shots of Underwater Corals

Flower Parts

Flowers are often the most studied part of plants. They are usually colorful and intricate - forged to propagate their kind. I decided to photography the part of an Alstroemeria flower on a recent rainy day. I cut a flower from the bouquet I posted about last Friday and then used several light sources to rearrange the petals. The shape and curvature of the petals are still appealing even when the flower it taken apart. No wonder the botanical prints that were so painstakingly made in the 1800s have such an appeal even today.

I used two different light sources. One gave the flower petals and warm glowing color while the other turned them cool. Which did I prefer? I'm including both in the slide show below because I can't quite decide.

And finally the inner parts of the flower - looking fragile away from their surrounding petals. It is easy to see these as the models for delicate spirals in even our earliest art.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 12, 2013

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.

Mexican Hot Chocolate - yum. My variation of this uses hot tea to replace half the milk and stevia instead of the agave. I make it by the (large) cup…and haven’t quite got up the courage to add the cayenne.

Beautiful and Dramatic Thunderhead Clouds - my favorite is the Jason Clark one with the orange of sunset…lightning…and barbed wire in the foreground

12 tips to clean up, de-clutter and revamp your home - from Marlo Thomas. I’m going to try the grapefruit and salt idea for cleaning my bathtub and shower

Interlocking Origami Stars and Prisms by Byriah Loper

Moving through waters of human attention - Apollo Robbins…pickpocket and illusionist

Modern Parenting May Hinder Brain Development - new is not always better

Top Four Reasons Why Diets Fail - Inadequate sleep is one of the 4!

A Very, Very, Very Delicate Balance - rocks balanced by Michael Grab (watch the video)

Slices of Life, circa 1872 - some of the work referred to in the article that was published by Christian Wilhelm Braune in the 1870s is available on the Internet Archive here

Medallion Snowflakes - you don’t have to be a child to enjoy this little project

Alstroemeria

There is so little color outdoors in the Maryland winter that I sometimes give in and buy a bouquet of flowers along with my groceries. My favorite is probably alstroemeria. They have a relatively long vase-life (longer than roses).

I put them in a vase on the table and inevitably try macro shorts. The petal markings and venation are easy to capture.

And now I am thinking about whether I want to try planting some in garden in the spring. It may be a bit too cold to leave them in the ground over the winter here in Maryland so I may plant them in pots that I can easily bring indoors.

January 2013 Sunrise

It is easy to capture the sunrise in January because I am already up and about at sunrise. The one in this post was taken at 7:15 AM yesterday from my front porch. The only negative was the temperature; it was in the low 20s so I got the picture I wanted and retreated to the warmth indoors.

Dawn is an every day celebration….the overcoming of night….another day full of potential…the return of color to the world.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in January 2013

The temperature was in the 20s on the morning I walked around our yard this month. There was still frost on the ground - coating the hardest of weeds that are green (lower left). The cairn of rock and shells (upper right) has been knocked over by foraging deer; I left the toppled pieces for another day. Most of the seeds from the onion have scattered (upper left) and the seed casings are tattered. Surprisingly the tulip poplar (middle left) seems full of the dried remnants of flowers and seeds from last spring. The trunk of our oak tree (bottom right) has smooth areas from its younger self.

Winter is the starkest of seasons. Every color that breaks the monotony of browns is appreciated: the blue of the sky, the green of a weed, the white of an old shell. Now, as I write this post, I am looking at the maple from my window and noticing a little movement of the branches from a breeze and am glad I am in the warmth of the indoors.

Dallas Airport Mosaics

I photographed the mosaics near my gate in Terminal D of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. It was a last interlude after being in the Dallas area for a month…finally on my way home to Maryland.

I had seen some of the medallions before. The one I saw first several years ago is still my favorite: Cypress Trees by Arthello Beck. The slideshow below shows different parts of it.

I didn’t walk the whole terminal but there were other mosaic medallions nearby.

A bird

Concentric circles

Golden shapes and geometrics

There were a few other people that paused to look at the mosaics. They too made the circuit around each one to take in the images created from the small pieces of color. Most people hurried along their way - focused on their destination rather than the art under their feet.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 5, 2013

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.

Frosty Morning Walk - photographs from the Prairie Ecologist

Your Amazing, Aging Brain - from Lynne Spreen

2012: The year’s science and tech news in one graphic - from the BBC. How many of these did you spot during the year?

Rita Levi-Montalcini has left the building - the Nobel-Prize winning neurologist died recently at 103

Stunning Satellite Photos of Earth From Outer Space - my favorite is the one of Painted Desert, Arizona

12 Awe-Inspiring Photos of Lightning - the very first one (of the Eiffel Tower) was the one that caught my attention…but all of them are spectacular

Should Jerry Brown Just Ignore His Cancer? - too much medicine?

Tomorrow’s world: A guide to the next 150 years - from the BBC

Gorgeous Otherworldly Photos of Colorful Forests

Antarctica’s Adorable Emperor Penguins - my favorite is the one with the larger chick with a wing/flipper around the small chick next to it

Can You Spot These Camouflaged Animals? - maximize the window before you start to look. Some of these are really tough.