Brookside Gardens - May 2013

Brookside Gardens was brimming with greenery and late spring flowers. I was there are on a sunny but breezy spring day. The layers of greenery were everywhere but I liked this scene the best: 

• The shiny leaves of a Southern magnolia in the left foreground then
• Looking over the hedge surrounding the garden to
• The arbor with spent a wisteria vine whose blossoms have been overcome by green leaves to
• The rounded shape of a willow and then
• The trees beyond….and
• The blue sky backdrop. 

Gardens are experienced with as much knowledge and observational energy we care to apply. For me - it is more about the visual appeal of the place and noticing the way plants have changed since the last time I walked around. The deciduous magnolias that were so full of blooms in April are full of green leaves now. Their Southern Magnolia cousins are just beginning to have buds. The beds of tulips are cleared for summer plantings (the gardeners were at work in the dirt while I was there). The almost hidden plants like a single flower standing out in the undergrowth or a hairy fern just unfurling are like finding hidden treasure.

I do not attempt to remember the name of everything I see. Surprising - I have come to recognize many of the plants over the years. I am pleased that I look for - and find - Jack-in-the-Pulpits almost every year but usually they are in undisturbed woodlands rather than gardens. This year there were quite a few at Brookside and they looked like they had been planted!  

Brookside has quite a collection of azaleas and rhododendron and I enjoy every year. Poppies are increasingly popular. The gingko tree near the entrance is a tree I always check; the shape of their leaves, the way the leaves flutter in the slightest breeze, the lighter green in the spring and summer then yellow in fall….it is probably my favorite tree of the gardens.

Enjoy the May 2013 at Brookside slide show!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 25, 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.

The Art of Data Visualization - Video about using geographic data.

Visual Rendering of Animal Sounds - Mandalas from colorized sound waves

Breakup of Physician, Drug Company Relationship Could Improve Health Care, Cut Cost - Published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine….and seems logical…but there is a lot of money that locks in the status quo

Onomap - Put in a name…and the tool will feedback cultural, ethnic, linguist roots based on patterns from a database that includes 28 countries.

Annotated Map of Moore, OK Tornado Damage

Scientific Tooth Fairies Investigate Neanderthal Breast-Feeding - Evidently during breast-feeding, barium levels in teeth are higher….making it possible to tell from teeth how long a child was breast-fed

The Nutrition class I am taking via Coursera was about dietary supplements this week and the list of sites below was provided. Since there is little regulation of supplements, it is much more up to the consumer to determine if a particular supplement is worthwhile for them. The last one provides abstracts of research papers; I did a quick search for Vitamin D….lots of interesting findings.

NIH Office of Dietary Supplements

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Medline Plus

Natural Products Foundation

Mayo Clinic - Drugs and Supplements

WebMD - Vitamins and Supplements Center

Natural Medicines Database

Consumer Lab

PubMed

Sunset and Sunrise as Assateague Island National Seashore - May 2013

I visited the Assateague Island National Seashore in Virginia this week. There was a brisk sea breeze at both sunrise and sunset - enough to keep the mosquitos away.

The sunset was observed from the Toms Cove Visitor Center. We arrived a bit too early but there things to photograph beforehand - birds getting a snack before darkness and the lighthouse. The lighthouse in undergoing renovation and the cables used are seen in the image. The sunset itself was made more interesting by a lower bank of clouds. After the sun was behind the horizon the swirls in the clouds became more apparent.

The sunrise was observed looking out over the Atlantic from the beach. Again we arrived early but were shortly joined by a few others. It was before 6 AM! One person arrived on a motorcycle and headed off down the beach with his camera. A group of five people walked halfway down to the beach but then stopped and just stood huddled in the morning coolness to watch the sunrise. A man got out a folding chair and walked halfway to the shore and then sat. After photographing the lighthouse in the near darkness, I walked down to the beach. There were no shells to pick up but there was a sandcastle that someone had constructed the day before that incorporated a horseshoe crab into its structure and the waves were crashing to shore; it was good to hear them without the beach repair machinery noise of the previous day.

There was a boat visible in the morning mist. I took a few pictures of birds waking up.

The clouds were thick enough that the sun was hidden until it was well above the horizon and the color did not extend to all the clouds. It was a misty dawn.

Goslings and Ducklings

When I went to Charleston, South Carolina at the end of April, the goslings and ducklings seemed to be everywhere. The ones I could observe easily were using the waterway through the resort as their base. The Canadian geese were quite plentiful and there were multiple broods - each with two attendants. The goslings were kept together and loud honking from the adults could be heard if anything got too close.

The Mallard ducks were not as good parents. When we first saw the brood, there were 5 ducklings. The next time there were only 4…and then right before we left there were only 3 ducklings. The adults seemed not as attentive to the young. The mother actually flew up onto a retaining wall and left her ducklings milling around in the water trying to figure out how to follow her. And there were turtles in the water. We didn’t see the demise of either of the missing ducklings but the turtles are likely suspects.

Now I wish I would have had my new camera in South Carolina. The picture below of a gosling in Maryland was taken last week with the new camera.

Adventures with a New Camera Part 1

I am experimenting with my new camera - a Canon PowerShot SX280 HS . So far - the experiment has included only the simplest aspects of the camera: using the zoom of my own position to frame the picture want. So far I am impressed with the results.

At first I expected that the camera would not focus for the close-up flower shots that I have enjoyed capturing with my older camera (a Canon PowerShot SD4500 IS)….but I was pleasantly surprised that it did so well with the azaleas at the left. I like the way the flowers pop out of the image with the light glowing through their petals.

How well would the camera capture ripples in water? I experimented with an Asian-type composition shown below. I like the results but will have to try again on a sunny day to see what the camera automation will handle the glare from water in brighter light.

The big improvement with the new camera was touted to be the ability to capture clear images with the zoom feature. Plants are easy since they are still (if the breezy does not interfere). The dandelion and fiddlehead were good tests. I liked the clarity of both images - and that I didn’t have to expose myself to the poison ivy that surrounded the dandelion!

Images of birds and small animals will be easier to capture with this camera. It will take some practice but the automatic settings are quite good. My initial attempts with some birds and a squirrel are below. The challenge will be to frame the animals in their natural setting - avoiding things like the twig in front of the squirrel’s nose in the image below.

I am going to enjoy this camera! Maybe I’ll gradually use some of the fancy settings too.

3 Free eBooks - May 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.

National Research Council. Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. December 2012. Available in several downloadable forms here. A new global trends report is published every 4 years following the US Presidential election. It is intended to provide a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications. Is our future going to be characterized by stalled engines, fusion, gini-out-of-the-bottle or nonstate world…or some combination?

Paxton, Sir Joseph. Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants. London: W.S. Orr and Co. 1834-1849. More than 10 volumes available on the Internet Archive here. I can’t resist including at least one eBook with botanical prints. Many of the images are quite recognizable - like the azalea at right.

Dobson, George; Grove, Henry M; Stewart, Hugh; Haenen, F. de. Russia. London, A. and C. Black. 1913. Available from the Internet Archive here. Look at this book for the pictures and realize that it is about that time just before World War I when everything was breaking…no one fathomed just how bad it was going to be or what would be built afterwards on the rubble.

Norfork Botanical Garden

I toured the Norfolk Botanical Garden the day after the Lewis Ginter which I posted about yesterday. The weather was still cool and cloudy but I was surprised at the difference being on the shore and a little further south meant. Quite a range of plants highlighted the visit.

There were the normal spring beauties like May Apples (left) and purple flags (on the right surrounding a Great Blue Heron sculpture).

Roses like cooler weather too. They are better now (and then again in the fall) than in the heat of summer. The yellow ones against the rough block wall relieve the harshness of its new construction.

But the rhododendrons stole the show - similarly to the peonies at the Lewis Ginter. I captured the phases of the clumps of flowers unfurling from tight buds. Don’t rhododendrons have the classic shape of a bouquet fit to be carried in a formal procesession?

There was glass sculpture by Craig Mitchell Smith displayed in the garden. My favorite was the blue jelly fish in the conservatory.

And what about a vine with white flowers unfurling - tight spirals expanding to gentle curves.

To end this very full post - enjoy the graceful curves of an aging tulip and spunky columbines. 

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

It was a cold day in early May when I walked around the

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

near Richmond VA. Peonies were the high point - along with pitcher plants growing in profusion near the water’s edge and sweet gum leaves seen from the vantage point of a tree house. The peonies were the flowers that seemed to have their own inner glow on a cold cloudy day.

The tulips were almost past their prime but their colors were still interesting. The double (maybe triple) white one in the picture below was quite a surprise both in colors and the number of petals.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 18, 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.

Cases Of Mysterious Valley Fever Rise In American Southwest - Will we see more stories like this with climate change?

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #42 - My favorite is last one - the plum-headed parakeet.

How Safe Is Your Medicine Cabinet? - With all the data collecting on computers - why are we not monitoring adverse effects of approved drugs more effectively?

Geologists Study Mystery of 'Eternal Flames' - The surprises out there in the natural world…

I am taking two Coursera course right now: Technicity and Nutrition, Health, Lifestyle: Issues and Insights. The links below were items referenced in the classes during the first week and news items that I paid more attention to because my awareness was increased by the lectures.

The Next Age of Megacities - From Ericsson

How will cities secure their water future? - it is going to be quite a challenge with so many cities already depleting current supplies for part of the year

Fat Hormone Controls Diabetes - Research that could provide more options for the treatment of diabetes

Dietary Guidance Calculators and Counters - From USDA

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 - From USDA

International Food Information Council Foundation 2012 Food & Health Survey (exec summary and full report)

Cronometer tool - Log what you eat and it totals up the calories and nutrients. I learned that I never get enough potassium from food! Screen snap below. Using this tool has tweaked my diet in a positive way.

South Carolina Aquarium

The South Carolina Aquarium is located at the edge of the historic district of Charleston and right on the harbor - with a great view of the Ravenel Bridge. My favorites of the many pictures I took are in the slide show below. The maps behind water (1) and on the floor (10) provided orientation to the area. Alligators (4) and pelicans (5) were both animals we saw elsewhere during our vacation. I had never seen the underside of rays (6) like I did at this aquarium and it was all because there is a ‘feed the rays’ exhibit and they rays are very good at positioning themselves along the glass of the tank to get the food! Have you ever watched a tank of jelly fish (8)? I found it intriguing and soothing in equal measure; they seem so graceful and relaxed.

Charleston Tea Plantation

In late April, I visited the Charleston Tea Plantation - enjoying the beverage samples in the gift shop and the tour on a trolley around the place. I enjoyed the sign that pointed out how far this tea plantation is from the major tea production centers of the world. Growing tea requires warm and moist conditions - not found in the US in many places. Wadmalaw Island is one of the few places where is it possible. The plantation may be a little out of the way from other attractions around Charleston but it is a pleasant drive on a road bordered with large trees….and it is a unique experience.

The location and the flatness of this plantation make it usual for a tea plantation. The flatness here allows for automation that is not possible in mountainous terrain where tea is grown elsewhere. The one-of-a-kind machine shown below clips the new growth from the top of the bushes and collects the cuttings as it rolls down the rows of tea bushes 8-10 times a season.

The processing of the leaves into black, oolong and green tea is done on the plantation too. The factory can be viewed from two sides via big windows and filmed vignettes explain how the equipment operates to produce tea.

A factoid: Once tea bushes are established, they grow so densely that few weeds grow. 

Fiddler Crabs

The tide goes out and the mud comes alive with tiny crustaceans - fiddler crabs. From the boardwalk at Charles Towne Landing in South Carolina, they look like minute bits of flotsam but then their movement gives them away.

I use the zoom on my camera to get a better view. The one at the left gives the impression that he knew he was being watched!

They seem to keep their distance from their neighbors but move around their domain in the muck at peace with their fellow crab. One wonders how they perceive the world and recognize their use as models for aliens. If there were not so small they would be scary.

Patriots Point

Patriots Point is on the Mt. Pleasant SC side of Charleston Harbor - within sight of the Ravenel Bridge. The centerpiece of the museum is USS Yorktown, a World War II air craft carrier. It is so big that it will not fit in one picture frame from the parking lot.

There are tours available but we chose to take things at our own pace. The hanger and flight decks have planes displayed.

Walking on the flight deck is quite an experience; the metal deck made odd sounds as I walked toward the edge. I was more comfortable staying toward the center of the flight deck. The bridge towers above- with the World War II ‘kills’ indicated by the Japanese flags.

There were rooms on the other decks set up in museum style (I was disappointed that the room about Navy women did not mention Grace Murray Hopper). The arrows on the floor are helpful; it would be easy to get lost in the warren of rooms!

The ship is in Charleston Harbor and there is some degradation of the metal. Hopefully it can be maintained for years to come - enlightening visitors about a period of 20th Century history. It bridges World War II to the space again since it was the ship that recovered Apollo 8 from the sea in the 1960s.

Calla Lilies

Calla lilies have all kinds of curves - the spiral as the bud opens, a flaring trumpet around a tight yellow ovoid, gentle waves and curls. Was it serendipity that three of the places I went around Charleston showcased different colors of the flowers? 

The white was blooming at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

The pink was in Boone Hall Plantation’s garden.

The yellow was in a first floor window box in downtown Charleston.

Charleston in April

I visited Charleston SC at the end of this past April. Walking around the old downtown part of the city was quite a treat. I enjoyed the architecture of the churches and houses - 

• Majestic buildings on the aptly named ‘Church’ street,
• The early 1800s vintage Nathanial Russell House with ironwork above the front door like many of the buildings in the downtown area of Charleston and the plantation homes outside the city as well,
• The diverse and overflowing window-boxes that add color just about everywhere, and  
• The tile-clad coal burning fire places and colonial vintage kitchen of the Heyward-Washington House. 

The houses use every bit of ground not covered by building of sidewalk as garden area and the climate lends itself to a lushness that is quite appealing. It was an enjoyable and educational vacation destination.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 11, 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.

Printable Functional 'Bionic' Ear Melds Electronics and Biology  - What if this development really does live up to its potential?

Addiction Fact and Fiction - Infographic

Robot discovers secret chambers in Mexico - Underneath the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan

APPLE-ALMOND BUTTER PANCAKES - Sounds yummy!

How Petals Get Their Shape: Hidden Map Located Within Plant's Growing Buds - Research about how different parts of plants take on different shapes

Geography in the news: hot chocolate - A healthy indulgence

Saturn Hurricane (at its north pole) - Video and pictures on NASA site

The Fine Art of Photographing Living Portuguese Man O' War

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors - Lower Manhattan’s 60 Hudson Street….a concentrated hub of Internet connectivity

Nature’s Most Transparent Animals - from National Geographic

Diet Linked to Daytime Sleepiness and Alertness in Healthy Adults - High fat consumption associated with daytime sleepiness

Art Installations Inspired by Solar Panels - My favorite is the second one (Solar Intersections by Robert Behrens)

On the Road

I have been on the road quite a lot the past few weeks. There were some long stretches where I was driving and kept myself focused on that activity rather than noticing too much of the scenery. This blog is about the times I was not driving and the road itself drew my attention.

There was an unpaved road of an oak allee. In the 1860s, the trees would not have been as massive but the road would have been like this - a white, sandy track near Charleston, South Carolina. I saw it on a tram tour. It is just a road to nowhere now since the plantation house is gone.

I posted about the Ravenel Bridge a few days ago. This picture shows the approach to the bridge and the graceful arc the bridge makes between the supports. The traffic moved at highway speeds the 10 or so times we crossed the bridge. Is the beauty and uniqueness of the bridge distracting enough to cause accidents? I didn’t see any but was glad I was not driving.

On foot in Charleston, we walked along tourist clogged sidewalks on Church Street. This was a place where being on foot was better than being in a car. The palm trees and window boxes added color to the brick and ironwork of the buildings. And sometimes the street pavement was cobblestones rather than asphalt!

The bridge and tunnel between Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia was another opportunity to photograph the road from a passenger seat. The choppy water under the bridge sometimes formed white foam against the pillars of the bridge. The tile in the tunnel reflected the red tail lights.

And now I am home again - for a little while.

Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens

Boone Hall was a pleasant surprise. It is across the Cooper River from Charleston SC. It started out as a cotton plantation, supplemented that crop with pecans and a brick yard, and now is a farm using precision growing techniques for fruits and vegetables offered in their own store and pick-your-own. The only cotton grown now is a small test plot that still showed last year’s crop when I was there in late April.

The brick slave cabins with clay tile roofs are unusual; slave cabins were usually built of more flimsy material. But Boone Hall included a brick yard so the cabins for the slaves associated with the house were built of bricks. The cabins have displays and recorded narrative to explain the life there prior to the 1860s.

The gardens are full of hearty flowers of the season and the mature oak allee dates from the 1600s. The people in the picture provide some notion of the size of the trees.

There is a two story cotton gin that had shored up walls - awaiting renovation. The gin was on the top floor and there were holes in the floor to push the cotton below where it could be baled for shipment.

Interesting ironwork is part of the Charleston scene - and Boone Hall’s gate is no exception.

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens

There is always a lot to do at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (near Charleston, SC). When I was there in late April, it was still cool. That meant that there were still a few camellias but the azaleas and irises were blooming too. There was plenty of activity to see from the boat tour through the old rice fields: lolling alligators, hunting herons/water birds and plenty of duckweed to reduce mosquitos (even though it was too cool for insects to be very active anyway). The huge live oaks with graceful veils of Spanish moss (all the tour guides emphasized that it is not Spanish and not a moss…it is an epiphyte native to the Americas) were everywhere. The gardens were a contrast of natural, formal, and escaped vegetation. It was obvius they had been gardens for a long time and still constantly changing - both from the efforts of gardeners and the natural environment of the place. There were crepe myrtles that were growing quite happily among dense natural vegetation that had taken over at the edge of one garden area. I posted about the peacock at Magnolia Plantation last week. I took so many other pictures that it was difficult to pick the 25 in the slide show below. Enjoy!

Audubon Swamp Garden

The Audubon Swamp Garden is part of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens near Charleston, South Caroline. In late April, the egrets were nesting. The alligators and turtles were trying to warm up on a cool cloudy day. The boardwalk had quite a few photographers - some with fancy tripods and big lenses that were capturing the many birds and reptiles of the swamp.

The high point was an anhinga with hungry chicks.

This was my second trip to this location. Back in 2008, we were a few weeks earlier and the egrets were still doing mating displays rather than sitting on their nests with eggs or hatched chicks. It was a warmer day as well. Every platform held either an alligator or turtle. One held both - and the big excitement of the day for us was when the alligator ate one of the turtles!

A new electronic gate had been added to the garden….and the metal sculpture was new. I particularly liked the fiddling frog surrounded by spring green leaves.