Around our (Maryland) Yard in March 2013

Early March is still winter this year but there are a few signs of spring. The hyacinths are up and their buds are showing, the tulips are just out of the ground -their leaves still spiraled and tipped with pink. The debris from last year’s lilies is protecting the tulips from the deer. The cairn is still tumbled. The buds on the maple and cherry are not quite as advanced as they were at this time last year although they are enlarging compared to last month. Only the very tips of the maple twigs are turning red so far. The aging self-fungus and moss add some welcome color among the browns of winter. The pine cones and tulip poplar shells lend texture but continue the brown theme of winter.

Fallen cairn

Tulip

Hyacinth

Shelf fungus

Moss

Pine Cone

Tulip Poplar shell

Cherry buds

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.

What if gardens replaced grass yards?

What is the value of a grassy yard?  Why is it always in the picture of an ideal house? Do we really need grass to hold the place around the house between the street and other houses?

It has uses and advantages. Children can play there. Grass tends to have dense enough roots to hold soil firmly even if it dies back in winter.

But there are disadvantage too. Most grass needs to be mowed; depending on the type of grass and the amount of moisture, this can be a frequent chore. And to look good it needs to be fertilized and weeded. It is very easy to put more than enough fertilizer which then causes streams to receive the burst of nutrients after each rain (adding to the pollution from other sources they already carry). It is a lot of work and consequence for a grass yard.

Why aren’t more grassy areas being turned into gardens? Food prices are going up but they have not gone up enough to motivate many of us to become new gardeners. I am a small time gardener but I have big ideas. I’m not going to enlarge my garden bed this year but I am going to plant more food items than flowers like I have in previous years. And maybe I’ll get even more ambitious in 2014 and make a larger garden where the grass still grows in 2013.

Learning Threads

Have you ever noticed how learning something new leads to learning tangential things - totally unanticipated at the beginning? It has been happening to me quite a lot lately.

One day this past week I listened to the introduction for the Aboriginal Worldviews course on Coursera and became intrigued by the indigenous worldview that values integration of knowledge more than specialization. I happened to be enjoying Reading the Landscape of Europe by May Theilgaard Watts on the same day and was intrigued by the way she combines geology, botany, zoology, history….and sees it all by careful observation of the landscape. I’d just finished the chapter on France and was so intrigued by the section on roses that I looked on the Internet Archive for the artists she had mentioned from the 1700s ….and found their works plus others. I remembered that my father planted hybrid tea roses along the driveway of our new house in the 60s (one for each member of the family) and wrote an email to him asking if he remembered their names. What a thread: indigenous world view to landscape reading to roses to family history!

It is so much easier to follow a tangential thought now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. A trip to the library or bookstore might have yielded some information  back then but it took so much effort that many threads were simply dropped. And I can remember making the effort and being disappointed by the lack of information the library had on its shelves.

How is this ease of finding exactly the information desired - in seconds - impacting the way we learn? We have an enormous wealth of resources. Are we enlightened by them or overwhelmed? It is natural to be both. I willingly accept the risk of being overwhelmed as the price for finding what I want to know shortly after deciding I want it.

Today - I am celebrating the adventure of following threads for as long and as deep as I want.

The Healthy Matriarch

Many of us enter our 60s without major health problems and have refined our strategies to sustain that health as long as possible. What are the top 5 things you are doing toward a healthy you? Mine are: 

• Take at least 12,000 steps per day (using a Fitbit to measure ‘steps’)
• Sleep 7-8 (but not more than 8) hours per day (also measured by the Fitbit )
• Eat a healthy diet - lots of fruits and veggies, some meat and grains, some fat (olive oil and nuts) - and take reasonable supplements
• Sustain or reduce weight to ‘normal’ for my height
• Continue a high level of continuous learning 

OK - I combined a whole lot in the ‘eat a healthy diet’ item and the ‘continuous learning’ items.

Eating a healthy diet requires tweaking. Your food should help you feel good - not bloated, tired, or break out in hives! Supplements are the backup of diet - not the main event. Take supplements for those vitamins and minerals that you cannot get through diet and keep up with the research. For example, recently there has been quite a lot in the media about the pluses and minuses of taking calcium supplements…with the minuses currently winning when it comes to people that do not have bone density issues already.

‘Continuous learning’ makes it to my top 5 for sustaining health because healthy mind is so closely linked to healthy body. Whatever one does for ‘continuous learning’ needs occasional tweaking too. This year I have added Coursera to my regime and reduced the number of physical books that I read (even though the net books read is about the same…it is just a shift in media type). And I am on the lookout for volunteer activities that will be ‘learning experiences.’

The gist of all this is - articulate what you are doing to sustain your good health. It’s a way to make sure you are focused on the things that are right for you.

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

February 2013 Doodles

February was ‘pebble’ and ‘spirals’ month. Once I got started with those motifs - I just couldn’t stop. I also am working my way through the pack of 3x5 cards; there are a few left but I’ll move on to other types of paper or card stock in March. There are plenty of different kinds of papers in the ‘stuff’ in my house.

Enjoy the February 2013 doodles below! Doodle posts for previous months are here.

Clearing ‘Stuff’ - February

One of my goals in 2013 is to develop more discipline when it comes to ‘stuff’. I am posting monthly document my progress on this year long project. It is not quite the forcing function that moving would provide but (hopefully) will be enough of a reminder to keep focused.

~~~~~

I procrastinated to the last possible day for the February post. The progress has not been all that great in the month. I do have a few more books in the pile. The most substantial new boxes are VHS tapes. My husband and I decided it was time to give away the ones we had accumulated since our VHS player is no longer reliable and we are spoiled by watching everything in HD now. So I cataloged the titles for future reference and loaded up the boxes. We’ll revisit our need for some of them when and if we have grandchildren.

What if….our clothes adjusted to always keep us at the most comfortable temperature?

Our clothing has evolved from skins to natural fiber fabrics to synthetic fabrics. We add layers and weight to be warmer; jettison layers and heavy fabrics when we want to be cooler. The changing external environment and our own internal heat (from increased activity or ‘hot flashes’) means that we may need to make changes to our clothing during the day or wake up during the night to throw off blankets. The basics of clothing have not really changed very much.

What if our clothing detected changes that indicated we were hot or cold and changed subtly to warm us up or release heat, perhaps even overtly cooling us? We might learn more detailed information about ourselves - as a population and as individuals - once we started experimenting with the new clothing. Maybe some of us prefer to be warmer than others…perhaps everyone instances of higher metabolism producing more heat but we have simply ignored the extra bit of warmth in the past because it was not significant enough to change clothes.

If we had the clothing to keep us at the temperature we preferred, would we stop heating and cooling our dwellings? That might imply that ‘clothing’ would cover us completely. Would it filter the air we breathed and the food we ate?

Would style of clothing be important enough that the technology would need to include the ability to shift into different ‘looks’? Would color be structural and thus be programmable? Would we choose to shimmer like butterfly wings or peacock feathers if we had that choice?

Ten days of Little Celebrations - February 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:

Sweet potato with cinnamon. The smell of cinnamon wafting through the kitchen on a winter’s evening….its flavor melding with the sweet potato to make the vegetable the high point of the meal. It’s just a bonus that the rich orange of the sweet potato make is visually appealing too.

Low weight and high 401K. Having two metrics trend in the desired direction on the same day is something to celebrate!

Being a matriarch now rather than in 1913. I posted about this thought on the day I was celebrating. Even with the acrimonious political situation in the country right now - there are so many advantages to living now rather than 100 years ago.

A rainy day at home. Sometimes a gray day spent at home has such a huge recuperative power that it is worth celebrating.

A flock of blue jays. The jays looked like a cohort that had spent the winter together….and not a very easy one. They were scruffy looking. For all that - their morning chatter was cheerful and it enjoyed their presence on a cold day through the window.

Sounds of melting snow. The snow was only a little over an inch on the ground and rooftops but the temperature climbed so rapidly one the snow came up that the gurgling of water in the gutters and drain spouts….the plops of snow falling from branches….it sounded very much like a harbinger of spring.

Plans for travel. I enjoy travel but this month I’ve realized that I enjoy the planning and anticipation too. I’m celebrating that…..and looking forward to travels coming in the spring.

Dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is a food I celebrate every day because it is the treat I don’t give up completely no matter how strict the diet I pick for the day.

Nature Center Friends group. Finding a good fit for volunteer efforts is always something to celebrate. I found mine working with a Friends group for a local nature center.

Majesty of tall trees swaying in the wind. The trees of the forest behind our house are quite tall. They are dominated by tulip poplars. Their tops move significantly in the winds but - so far - they have all stayed upright. I suspect that the trees are supported by being in a forest rather than alone in a yard. Seeing the bare branches move against the sky is a celebration of life on earth reaching outward while still bound to the planet.

Walk around Centennial Lake

Yesterday morning was cold but sunny - a good morning for a brisk walk around Centennial Lake in Columbia, Maryland. There were quite a few other people that took the opportunity to get outside after the previous rainy days.

Of course - the park is still mostly in the grips of winter. The trees and their reflections were full of browns and grays. The paddle boats were stored on the dock. The birds were the ones acting as the harbingers of spring: 

• Red wing blackbirds were calling back and forth from their trees

Free Online Courses - Coursera

I had mentioned Coursera in several other blog posts (here and here). There was a news story about it this past week - More Elite Universities Offer Free Online Courses - that prompts me to write about them again.

The tangential learning has, on two occasions, been more significant for me that the main topic of the course. I was prompted to learn more about Genetically Modified Organisms by the Obesity Economics course (the topic came up in the forums….and off I went). The Critical Thinking course actually prompted tangential learning by asking students to pick one of 4 topics to practice their critical thinking skills. I picked Population and enjoyed the references provided plus the forum posts the students produced. It increased the critical thinking I do about items in the news.

The quality of the courses is inconsistent. Some of the videos are patched together from live lectures while some appear to be made with a web cam on the speaker’s PC. Almost all the videos switch between the speaker and charts with varying amounts of expertise. Sometimes the charts are created by the speaker as the lecture proceeds (like a white board) and other times they are formal charts. Sometimes the charts are available for download and sometimes not. Most of the courses have multiple choice questions embedded in the lectures although often it is just one question at the end of the lecture….and sometimes the embedded quiz is missing altogether.

The Modern World course is providing a good framework for things I learned long ago in school and via reading since then. Somehow the history courses when I was in school in the ‘60s and ‘70s rushed through the World Wars and what happened afterwards….up to the present. The energy that daround the early history of the US - from colonization to just past the Civil War petered out too soon. And the courses were only looking at the US perspective. World history classes also seemed more enthusiastic about Greek and Roman times than the 1900s. The increased discussion of ‘why?’ is also quite a welcome upgrade. Even in college in the 1970s - I don’t recall the history courses trying to help the student understand the perspective of people at the time to increase the understanding of why decisions or events were happened.

The forums are interesting but overwhelming for the larger classes. Several of the courses I am taking have over 10,000 students from around the world! If the course requires posting as part of the course - then there are a huge number of posts. Some are enlightening….some interesting….but wading through the ones that are not is time consuming/impossible/frustrating.

It is true that because they are “free” and not for credit - people that sign up may not complete the course requirements. Are they collecting data on why people do not complete the course? It is not obvious that they are. I’ve dropped one completely because I signed up for too many courses at one time and have gone into ‘sponge’ mode on another (i.e. just reading the forums rather than posting) because I am just too overwhelmed to dive into posting. Still - I am getting what I want from the second course even without completing all the requirements.

The bottom line of the whole experiment for me is that Coursera offerings are a worthwhile addition to the bevy of activities I use to continue to learn new things.

Bravo to Coursera and the universities that are contributing content!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 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.

It’s Getting Hot in Here, So … What, Exactly? - Strategies for adapting to a warmer world

Magnificent Frozen Waterfalls around the World - And people trying to climb them! My effort to capture a winter photo of Taughannock Falls from a few years ago is at the right.

Next-Generation Lithium-Ion Battery Designed - Projected to hold more than 3 times the charge and recharge in around 10 minutes…and available in 2-3 years. In this design the current graphite anodes are replaces with porous silicon nanoparticles.

Photography in The National Parks: Capturing Moonbows in Yosemite National Park - I felt lucky to see a moonbow at Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky….glad someone is skilled enough to photograph them and that they happen at Yosemite

What does 200 calories look like? - Lots of pictures….a way to gain perspective on the importance of portion size

Field Guide to National Parks App - From the National Parks Conservation Association; for iPhone and Android. I have not tried it yet and the reviews are mixed. I like the idea of it though.

Global Health Observatory - From the World Health Organization. The map gallery is a good place to browse.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #37 - My favorite images are the Anna’s Hummingbird and the Storks (in silhouette)

5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think

The How-To Guide to Windows 8 - A series of articles (organized by this page) from CIO magazine

February 2013 Sunrise

The sunrise is creeping earlier but the trees are still bare so there is still a sunrise view from my front porch. By March it will be iffy.

I like the stark blackness of the branches against the brightening sky and the sun just peeking from a rooftop.

The morning I captured this picture seemed to be full of school buses coming through the neighborhood. I noticed the first one before 6:30 AM! That is an early morning for the students. And it was below freezing with the sun not yet contributing any warmth to the day.

3 Free eBooks - February 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.

Bulliard, Pierre. Flora Parisiensis Volume 2. Paris, P.F. Didot. 1776. Available here. This is a botanical text that was produced in France while the American Revolution was happening. Multiple volumes are available at the Internet Archive and all contain many color plates like the one to the left of a tulip. This must have been a very expensive book when it was produced!

Ernst, James A. Drawing the Line, Fine and Commercial Art. New York, Reinhold Publishing Corporation. 1962.  Available here. Skipping ahead almost 200 years from the first book, this book does not contain color. It is a book that encourages action…it's a great way to build up your motivation to make some drawings. Any book that causes me to do something is one that goes on my favorites list!

The last item for this month is not a specific eBook. It is a reminder that many public libraries offer eBooks via their web presence that can be checked out for 2 or 3 weeks. Check to see what yours offers. Many libraries use the Overdrive service to drive their selections;  search the Overdrive list of participating libraries to see if your library is on the list. I’ve read over 100 books on my Kindle from my local library. Right now I am working my way through the mysteries written by Nevada Barr!

Brookside Gardens Conservatory - February 2013

The Brookside Gardens Conservatory is a warm, lush place for a pleasant winter afternoon. There are lots of colors to enjoy - dominated by greens. I always look for the spirals of ferns unfurling. There was some construction going on at the main door when I was there so it was more noticeable than usual that the smaller plants are moved around.

The tropical fruits I noticed in January - pineapple, bananas, and chocolate - were still there. And I noticed the star fruit ripening. The begonias always seem to be blooming and the variegated crotons fill their corner with their bright leaves. Camellias were full of buds - and a few early blooms. They’ll be spectacular in March. I even found myself appreciating the lettuce for its translucent green leaves with reddish margins. I usually photograph the bird-of-paradise flowers that are dominated with orange but this time I tried the white ones instead; they are very large and produced by one of the oldest plants in the conservatory.

As I was leaving Brookside an older woman ask me what there was to see at the gardens and I recommended the conservatory as a richness of plants to see and an easy walk. She was in her 90s! I hope she enjoyed her outing to Brookside Gardens.

Matriarch Inflection Points

Today’s post is about inflection points of life. I got the idea of inflection points from a book by Andrew Grove - Only the Paranoid Survive  - that I read years ago. Or course, his book was about strategic inflection points for business and ways to anticipate those inflection points. He defined a strategic inflection point as ‘a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change.’ The inflection point is much easier to see looking backward. The idea stuck in my mind.  I like the notion of recognizing that some changes in life are more than a milestone - they are an inflection point because your life is forever changed afterwards.

Thinking about inflection points of my life - there are some that are pretty common life changing points: marriage and having child (many years later). Others I forced because of a decision I made - switching to an entirely different area of study for graduate school, moving half-way across the country from my family to pursue my career, and deciding to leave my primary career in my late 50s rather than waiting until my mid-60s. Those inflection points are ones I see looking back. They are slightly skewed toward the earlier decades of my life: 2 happened in my 20s, 2 in my 30s, and 1 in my 50s. It’s interesting that I don’t see inflection points inside my career; the 40 years was a gradual path that included increased technical savvy and responsibility that didn’t have any sharp turns of an inflection point.

Now I am anticipating inflection points over the next 30 years. What might they be: the first arrival of the next generation (either grandchild or grandniece/nephew), moving to be close to family and living in a smaller space, not driving? Of course - there could be ones that involve injury, disease, and other loss. Those things are worth some contingency planning….but not too much focus.

 I’m too busy enjoying the present and anticipating the inflection points that I choose for my life.

Household Tools - Cleaning

The tools I use around the house for cleaning have not changed tremendously over the past 40 years. Scrub brushes are the constants. What I use with the scrub brush has changed more than the tool itself; I’m all for the ‘greener’ cleaners like soda and vinegar - always relying on the brush to get the cleaner to the scum on the shower base or the worn-in dirt from heavy traffic areas of the carpet. My favorite brush is one that has a handle that allows a comfortable grip and keeps my hand well above the fray of dirt and cleaner.

I have another brush with a long handle made out of recycled plastic that I use for scrubbing vegetables or getting the larger clumps of food off dishes going into the dishwasher. The brush itself goes through the dishwasher cycle as well.

I remember using steel wool and soap-filled pads in the past but I don’t seem to need them as much these days. We do our grilling on a gas grill and burn off the mess rather than scrubbing it off. Soaking and the dishwasher handles most of the other kitchen messes.

I’ve tried various kinds of mops for non-carpeted floors. I have an old sponge mop which I haven’t used in years. It’s been so long that the sponge is probably rotten. The bucket sees more action than the old mop. The Swiffer is my current choice although I do not like the idea of creating trash with the pads. On the plus side, I find that I don’t need to mop all that frequently since we take our shoes off at the door if they are messy.

And what about brooms? I found one that has a dust pan attached in my basement that I don’t remember having. Did my daughter leave it here when she moved cross country? I tend to use a vacuum cleaner - and this series of posts is steering clear of electronic tools - rather than a broom. The brooms we use are relegated to outdoor jobs like sweeping leaves from the garage or deck.

Vanishing Snow

Last week it snowed overnight. It wasn’t more than an inch and the streets had retained enough heat from the daytime to melt what fell on them. The snow was lumpy on the grass and bushes. It stuck to the trees. I went out to take pictures as the sun was coming up and then several times over the next couple of hours. It was just below freezing at sunrise then warmed up very quickly. Surprisingly the last walk around was the one that interested me the most - and not for photographic reasons. It was the sounds - 

• bits of snow falling from the oak and fracturing on the driveway and
• water running down the gutters

The snow was mostly gone by noon.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 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.

Bird-of-Paradise Project - from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology - lots of videos of the birds and how the images were captured too

Image of the Day: ‘Goose Bump’ Muscles - mouse hair follicles

Hans Rosling shatters the myth of “developed” versus “developing” nations - TED talk

Videos From Northeast Blizzard - National Geographic’s pick of 6 videos

Amazing Animal Hearts - heart trivia from the National Wildlife Federations. Did you know that a blue whale’s hear beats only 7 times per minute?

Geocaching - technology supported treasure hunting

Thousands of Merged Photos Display Sun's Surface

Desalination Seen Booming at 15% a Year as World Water Dries Up

A US high speed rail network shouldn't just be a dream - Wouldn’t it be nice to have the option to go high speed rail rather than airplane?

Table of Trends and Technologies for the World in 2020 - A thought provoking list of ideas from Richard Watson. His blog posts about the table is here and here (the second one provides a list of references).

Self-Assembling, Origami-Inspired Particles - lots of nanotechnology potential….how long until truly useful reality?