Kite Festival in Washington DC

The kite festival at the Smithsonian Mall in Washington DC is held the last Saturday of March and usually coincides with cherry trees in full bloom. It was last Saturday (3/30). This year the cherry tree buds were yet to open - and the breeze was so light that the majority of kites did not make it up very high or stay aloft. The image in the center of the collage below is the myriad of kites looking down the Smithsonian Mall toward the Washington Monument (still undergoing repair from the earthquake damage). The kites were brightly colored. The butterfly and parrot kites were my favorites although the sky shark was fun too.

On the plus side - the day was the warmest of the week and that was enough for the crowds of people to enjoy the day. Joggers dodged in and out of walkers, parents or grandparents pushed strollers with babies and young children, toddlers were enjoying the different textures of turf or pebbles or concrete, elementary aged children were trying to fly their kites….everyone seemed to find something to enjoy.

Plants at the Desert Museum

There were only a few things blooming at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum when we went a few weeks ago. The dried out blossoms of century plants and dormant ocotillos were everywhere.

The bright yellow of the Arizona poppies stood out among the more subtle colors of cactus spines and edges of agave leaves. Soon there will be many flowers in the desert but for now enjoy the slide show of the situation in March!

Tohono Chul Gardens

The gardens at Tohono Chul in Tucson are one of my favorite places. I notice something different every time I go. This time was in the early spring. The desert poppies that I posted about a few days ago were one of the few flowers already blooming. The cactus spines added some color.

But the odd saguaros were what caught my attention. My mind jumps to name them: the one on the left is ‘crying Pinocchio’ and the one on the right is ‘Gumby (with lots of extra arms).’ What do they look like to you?

Last but not least - the sculpture of the horned toad caught my attention. It is many times larger than the actual animal but quite realistic looking. I remember seeing them frequently when I was a child in Texas.

March 2013 Snow

We got the best snow of the season yesterday in our area of Maryland. It clung to the trees until the little breezes and temperature caused it to plop to the ground or trickle away. One of the early pictures of the day was of the dense oak twigs piled high with snow (to the left). It looks like a black and white abstract drawing to me.

We went out for a drive to enjoy the beauty of the snow. I liked the way the snow clung to the dry grasses from last summer with the flocked spruce in the background. It was a shot from an open window - the car simply stopped in the middle of a country road.

When we got back from the outing, we made snow ice cream: fill a large bowl with snow, add milk (I used half-and-half that I had frozen from an early time when snow was forecast but didn’t materialize), 1 cup of sugar, and flavoring (I used 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon coconut). I add red food coloring so that I can tell when everything is thoroughly mixed. With an electric mixer it only takes a few minutes to create the treat.

By the afternoon the wind and melting had revealed red maple blooms and the hyacinth bed.

This was a year that the groundhog got it wrong….we are not having an early spring. With the snow scenes so beautiful and the streets cleared easily, I could simply celebrate the beauty of the day, take photos and remember that spring will be here soon.  

Desert Poppies

The desert poppies were blooming in Tucson when we were there. They are quick to respond to the early warm days of spring. The bright color of the flowers marks the springtime against the dull greens of other desert vegetation or the browns of the sand and pebbles on the ground.

There was a class of art students sketching them. It was breezy so keeping papers and materials in place was a little challenging…but all seemed to be enjoying their attempt to capture the essence of poppies in bloom. I snapped a few photographs of the poppies to commemorate the day.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - March 2013

Back in August 2012, I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:

A day at home. Even though I am not away from home as much as I was at the height of my career, there are still times that I welcome just being at home for a whole day. It is probably my favorite place to be.

A winter’s day at Brookside Gardens. The conservatories were pleasantly warm. And the brisk walk to look for signs of spring afterward was rewarded with sights of daffodils and witch hazel.

Up-to-date on course work. I got overwhelmed for a few days with the Aboriginal Worldviews and Education course (Coursera) and celebrated when I was finally able to catch up.

Snow day. We got enough snow to make snow ice cream! It ended up being more like a smoothie because the snow was so heavy (i.e. not the light fluffy stuff).

Great Horned Owl. I’d seen pictures and read about them but had never seen one in action until seeing the raptor presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The owl was well trained to swoop down for bits of food within easy viewing range of the crowd….until it spotted a bunny nearby and disappeared into the cactus and brush to enjoy its lunch.

Kratchner Caverns State Park. Kudos to the people who found it and owned the property for protecting it until the state and researchers could sustain it. This is the place to celebrate the beauty of caverns.

Airport art. Airports are often stressful places - lots of security and lines and hurry/wait flurry. Noticing the artwork helps. Mosaics…painting on glass….tiles…etchings…lights. They bring back the notion that airplane travel can be enjoyable.

Home again. After being away for a week, coming home is always a little celebration.

A clean house. My house is always reasonably clean but gets even more so when I am expecting guests. It’s worth a celebration after the work!

A warm day. Typical of spring, there was one warm day sandwiched with cold ones. It was nice to feel the warmth.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 23, 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.

First Nations Holistic Lifelong Learning Model - Graphic used in Aboriginal Worldviews and Education course on Coursera

Redtail hawk and heron bird cams - First redtail egg laid on 3/14, herons expected soon….at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site

Photos of Glasswinged Butterfly - butterfly without pigment in their wings found in Central America

Sakurajima Volcano Eruptions - photos and video from February

Some Great Ideas For Spending Spring In The National Park System - I am going to enjoy the National Cherry Blossom Festival this year…but the other ideas on this list sound good as well.

Pantanal: Liquid heart of South America - Video about the giant South American wetlands

What Coke Contains - It is pretty complex

Which Google Reader Replacement Will You Use? - Aargh! I hate when things like this happen...Google Reader was my favorite way to keep up with my RSS feeds.

Where Siri Has Trouble Hearing, a Crowd of Humans Could Help  - Combining the best talents of machines and people for speech-recognition. What other problems might use this same approach? And use very inexpensive labor. Is this a new kind of sweatshop?

Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level in Decades - Sad. Years ago we raised monarch caterpillars to butterflies that we released. Now we rarely see monarchs in our part of Maryland.

US Home Energy Use Shift (Charts) - Changes between 1993 and 2009 (space heating down….appliances, electronics, and lighting up).

AmpleHarvest.org - A site to help coordinate gardeners that may have seasonal surplus with food pantries near them. 

Early Spring in Maryland

Our spring weather has been a bit colder than usual; some plants are holding off their rush to spring blossoms and foliage. Others, like the hyacinth and daffodils, are blooming but a little worn looking from the cold. Usually they are more numerous and robust looking than they are this year.

The maple has appeared to be going red at the end of its branches several times….then seems to retreat back into a drab color of winter.

Surprisingly, the moss between the rain gutter and driveway seems to be fruiting more than usual.

And the cherry and plum trees are not bursting into bloom as they were this time last year. I hope the buds protect the flowers enough so that we will eventually have the blossoms that make spring extra special in this area.

Some Birds at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The raptor presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum was something I had missed in an earlier visit. I was reminded of it by a volunteer holding an American kestrel near the entrance of the museum.

I snapped a few pictures of other birds on the saguaro and mesquite as we wondered around the displays waiting for the time for the presentation.

I didn’t get a picture of the raven or the red tailed hawk. The great horned owl was very photogenic before it spotted a bunny and went off in pursuit. And the prairie falcon was protogenic as well. I noticed the gear on the back in the bird when I looked at my images on a larger screen.

3 Free eBooks - March 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

Featon, Edward and Sarah. Art Album of New Zealand Flora. Wellington, New Zealand. Bock & Cousins. 1889. Available in two volumes: one and two. These volumes were the first full-color art book published in New Zealand. Now the botanical art (and the text) are digitized and available on the Internet Archive. A sample clip from one of the pages is to the left.

The second item on my list this month is a magazine archive rather than a book. I found it when I was looking for resources on the web about May Theilgaard Watts (and about ‘reading the landscape’). Chicago Wilderness Magazine was published from 1997-2009 by Chicago Wilderness (a regional alliance dedicated to protecting nature and enriching life). The archive can be found here. The articles and photographs are focused on the outdoors around Chicago in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

Toulouse, Pamela Rose. Integrating Aboriginal Teaching and Values into the Classroom. Canada. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat and the Ontario Association of Deans of Education. 2008. Available here. This is a research monograph from Canada but broadly applicable to diverse, inclusive classrooms. Who does not want children to learn respect, love, bravery, wisdom, humility, honesty, and truth? The site includes other education/teaching ‘research into practice’ monographs as well (follow the link at the bottom of the PDF). 

Arizona Sunset

We noted a turn out partway up Mount Lemon with a view to the west across Tucson below on a drive up the mountain earlier in the day then returned just before sunset. We were not the only ones with the idea. There were only a few parking places left after we parked.

The clear sky sunset was made better by the mountains on the other side of Tucson. Afterward a thin sliver of moon rose and the smudge of a comet could be seen as the darkness settled.

Noticing Matriarchs

I am noticing matriarchs more these days…now that I am setting a pace that is my own rather than meeting the demands of a challenging career overlaid on family life. When I travel I see them on everywhere - sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner or sibling, sometimes with a grandchild. Most of them seem as comfortable as I am to reach this part of their life. Here are some that I noticed on my recent travel between Baltimore and Tucson: 

• She was sitting in the row in front of me on the flight from Denver to Baltimore - holding a grandchild that was probably between 1 and 2 years old. The child must have slept most of the flight because I didn’t notice her until we were getting off the plane when the matriarch handed the child to the man next to her (I assume the grandfather of the child) with a smile and he chuckled that the child tasted like cheesy crackers when he kissed the little girl before standing up to get off the plane.
• The two women were standing in front of the booth with materials for Arizona State Parks when I went to pick up a brochure for a park we would tour later in the week. I asked about what might be blooming at the park and they both were full of information on what to look for when we got to the park.
• The helper for our tour of a cavern - bringing up the end of the group - was a matriarch. She must have led the tours on occasion because she knew about as much as the guide, helping people understand what the guide had explained and even adding information for those around her. 

The baby boomer women are already - or will be soon - joining the matriarch ranks….and bringing their zest for life and huge talents into this stage of life. Some of us may continue in careers; others may try something completely different from their primary career either to earn money or keep from being bored; still others may become full-time grandmothers, savoring the time with young children; or some will simply do all those things they didn’t have time to do while in their primary career. Maybe we still can have it all (or at the part that we really want)!

Arizona Living

Living in Tucson is somewhat different than living in Maryland. As a visitor - these are the ones I noticed. 

• The houses and apartments tend to be stucco with flat or tile roofs. Many houses have courtyards or walled gardens. There are small, carefully tended areas of greenery clustered close to housing: oleanders, palms, eucalyptus, cactus, and orange trees. A fountain with round river stones in its base graces an apartment complex courtyard. In a dry place, water noise is the sound of luxury…maybe decadence as well. The most practical yards are sand and pebbles. The surface is sometimes raked to arrange the pebbles uniformly - or create a pattern; there is nothing to mow. The temperature changes between day and night mean that windows are opened or closed at various times almost every day; opened in the early morning to let the cool are into the house before the day warms or in the warm afternoon to let warm air in if the nights have been cold. There is not as much temperature variation during a single day in Maryland.

• The Tucson water has a lot more minerals than the water in Maryland. Most people filter their drinking water in some way and take steps to keep their kitchenware (and anything exposed to water) from developing deposits. The water pipes must be encrusted on the inside too.
• Tucson is a city but the traffic is very light compared to the Washington DC and Baltimore traffic. What a luxury!
• In Tucson, the lighting around houses and along residential streets seems more localized. The sky is darker at night. Even in the city, stars can be seen. Being able to see the stars on clear nights should be a long term goal even for major metropolitan areas.
• Last but not least - the traffic lights have different timing for left turns. In Tucson it is after the straight ahead traffic and in Maryland it is before. 

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 16, 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.

Are Surgical Robots Worth It? - Evaluating technology is difficult. We want to believe that medical devices are better than what they replace...but they may not always be.

50 Disruptive Companies 2013 - The list from MIT Technology Review

Shell’s New Lens Scenarios - projections for 50 years from now…or even in 2100

30 Literary Cakes

Rebuilding after Sandy: How Assateague Island National Seashore Officials Are Dealing With Climate Change - barrier islands….and infrastructure on them...the islands will change and so will what man puts there

Frank Jay Haynes, A Photography Pioneer in Yellowstone National Park - also take a look at a book published by Haynes available on the Internet Archive

Science of Sinkholes: 20 Percent of U.S. Lies in Susceptible Areas - includes pointers to USGS resources about sinkholes toward the bottom.

Mothers of Invention -- Women who made it happen - I’d known about most of them…but there were a few that were new to me. It’s always interesting to get a quick slice of historical perspective this way.

Uplifting Posters Show One Positive Thing We Can Do Every Day - art of the positive

Get your Shit Together - life and death planning: low effort, high reward

Daylight Saving Time is Rife with Human Suffering - why do we put ourselves through the twice yearly time change?

Baltimore and Tucson Airport Art

On a recent trip between Baltimore and Tucson I captured some airport art.

In the Southwest Airlines terminal at Baltimore - there are dabs of paint on the windows. They add color on gray days and filter the sunlight on days when the sun is shining - very much like stained glass.

The baggage carousel in Tucson had an image of a pot etched into metal with an arc of color to one side. It was a good welcome to the city.

And then there were the Arizona scenes made with ceramics at the entrances to the restrooms - cholla and barrel cactus...with birds.

Previous posts about airport art: Dallas, other Tucson art.

Brookside Gardens Outdoors - March 2013

My walk around Brookside Gardens this month was brisk; it was quite cold. There was some progress toward spring since last month’s walk. More twigs have brightened in color. Sometimes - it is the growth from last year that is the most brilliantly colored.

And there are more bulbs up. The snow drops are beginning to fade.

The shelf fungus on an old stump that I check from time to time had been damaged. Pieces had been torn off. I left the pieces where they were and noticed the gill structure that is so hard to see when they are still attached to the stump.

The witch hazel that was blooming last month is still blooming - a welcome bit of color among other trees that are still winter bare.

The buds on the rhododendron are swelling. They are primed for spring.

In general the scene near the front of the conservatories was a good summary of the outdoor state of Brookside in early March: cold wilted ivy, a sprinkling of daffodils, and witch hazel.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory - March 2013

It was a gray and cold morning when I went to the Brookside Gardens conservatory this month. The warmth and gurgling water through the lush tropical plantings was a respite from all winter thoughts. Doesn’t the little water fall and river rocks framed by green look welcoming?

The tropical food plants continue to be displayed. I noticed a very small pineapple. Notice how the skin looks very prickly at this stage; the segments flatten as the fruit expands. The star fruit, chocolate and bananas seen on previous visits were still around. A new addition that I had not noticed before was cardamom in bloom.

Many orchids were in full bloom. The orange ones at the left were growing from a hanging pot. 

There were pink poinsettias tucked underneath some other plants. Were they left over from Christmas and just too pretty to jettison?

I always enjoy a walk around the conservatory - checking on plants from the last time I was there and discovering new ones.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 09, 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.

What’s Happening to Great Lakes Ice - Compare 2010 and 2013 then watch the video of ice forming this winter

Vibrant Paint Patterns Brighten Up Urban Landscapes - Color in Beirut

The Science of Smart - Infographic.

Visual Storytelling through Intricate Paper Designs - Design in cut in paper always seem appealing to me. I probably include collections of them in my gleanings every time I find them. these are by Australian artist Emma Van Leest.

'Behind The Brands' Oxfam Report Evaluates Social, Environmental Impacts Of World's Largest Food Companies - None of them are doing very well when it comes to women, small scale farmers, farm workers, water, land, climate change, or transparency.

Education Indigenous to Place: Western Science Meets Native Reality - Article from the Alaska native Knowledge Network from 1999. The argument for integrative thinking relative to place rather than deep specialization (which has been the trend for some time in the sciences and medicine) is beautifully made in this article.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #38 - My favorite is oriental dwarf kingfisher. The size and shape of the head/beak make it clear that it is a kingfisher but the colors are extraordinary. I am in awe of photograhers that capture birdlife so vividly. My most recent (and poor) attempt is at the right; at least you can tell that it is a redwing blackbird.

Namibia: The Big Empty, part 1 - A short video from National Geographic

First Confirmed Sighting Of Rare Whooping Cranes At Natchez Trace Parkway - Hurray! Maybe an effort to establish an Eastern Migratory Population of these cranes is succeeding.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud - TED talk

Reading the Landscape

May Theilgaard Watts popularized the idea of ‘Reading the Landscape.’ I’m reading her book about Europe now. Of course, it easier when you are out and walking around a landscape - but a picture can be a start. What can you tell from the picture above of the Robinson Nature Center and its immediate surroundings?

It is winter.

The building must not be that old since the plants do not appear to be universally well established.

The trees are not very big but they do appear to be several different types. Can you recognize them from their bark? It may be difficult or impossible from the picture but certainly something that would be possible with closer inspection.

There are some new trees that have mesh around their trunks. Someone is trying to help a forest become re-established here. Deer must be around - perhaps over abundant.

There is lot of undergrowth and downed limbs. Have the winds blown down some branches recently? We can’t tell if there are spots or shelves of fungus on the windfall. That would be clue about how long it had been on the ground.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 02, 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.

Point me to a brain area - neuro-anatomy (head - neck- brain - spine) tutorials

Shimmering Mosaic of Earth Made of Stained Glass and Jewels

The World's 20 Most Amazing Tunnels - lots of photos

Windows On Nature: The Ten Best National Park Webcam Sites In America - A list from National Parks Traveler. The collage of pictures at the right shows the snow and fog from earlier this week….a virtual tour of the parks!

4 surprising lessons about education learned from data collected around the world - TED talk

Want To Be In The Dark? Death Valley Is Among 20 Recommended Places

More Antioxidants In Your Diet May Not Mean Better Health - not all antioxidants are equal

Choosing Wisely Lists - information on when medical tests and procedures are appropriate…good information to have before you see your doctor

Jagged Worldviews Colliding by Leroy Little Bear- an introduction to the differences between Indigenous and Eurocentric worldviews

Technology Upends another Industry: Homebuilding - doing the same amount of work with half the staff