Ten Days of Little Celebrations - November 2014

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations’ - as had been the usual for the past few months. Here are my top 10 for November 2014.

Noticing the seasonal change

A warm day. November had some perfect outdoor days this year. I celebrated by spending most of one of those days outdoors and, realizing that the warmth would be over soon,  celebrated the warm sun and blue sky.

Leaves flying. The breezes took the leaves from the trees and swirled them up and across and over the roadways. The view was a serendipity celebration on the way to someplace else. Did the idea of confetti for celebratory parades come from the natural process of leaves swirling away from the trees in the fall?

First snow of the season. We got our first snow the day before Thanksgiving! It was the perfect low impact snow: melted almost immediately on sidewalks and streets, stuck to grass and roofs enough to make everything pretty. I celebrated the beauty…and that I didn’t have to get out of the house at all.

Food

Thai food in a quiet restaurant. I was a little too far from home to get there for a lunch and I celebrated finding a quiet Thai food restaurant where the ambience was pleasant and the food was tasty. I read my Kindle book and savored the place…celebrated a lunch out.

Cranberry orange relish. It tasted so good. I like it so much that I eat it more as a dessert than a relish! I’ll eat up the batch I made for Thanksgiving over the next week or so….and then make another! This is one of my favorite foods between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is part of the celebration of the season for me.

Hot ginger root and lemon ‘tea.’ I enjoy the subtle flavor of fresh ginger in hot water. Sometimes I don’t even need the lemon…or the tea. The ginger root tea is the new additional to the celebration of the season this year.

Activities

Chincoteague - bald eagle soaring over the highway. It was hard to pick what I celebrated the most about our weekend in Chincoteague but I finally settled on the bald eagle soaring over the highway as we headed home. There is something about the bird that makes me celebrate every time I see one in the wild. They’ve made quite a comeback since the dark days of DDT.

Nature hikes (field trips). The fall season elementary school field trip nature hikes for the Howard Country Conservancy ended this month. I celebrate the enthusiasm and curiosity of the children - their joy at being outdoors.

Poetry experiments. I am never going to be a poet but the Coursera poetry course did give me ideas for word experiments…and I celebrate that spark that prompted it all.

The prospect of staying at home for several days. For some reason - it seemed like I was out and about more this month than in the past year and I realized as I headed into the Thanksgiving weekend that the prospect of staying at home for a few days was something I wanted to celebrate.  I can remember years ago when my husband and I were working full time, my middle school aged daughter told us that instead of going away for a 3 day week that she wanted us all to just stay home! And we all celebrated the ‘at home’ vacation. I am feeling like that again right now.

Zooming - November 2014

The theme for the November zooming post is fall color and texture. The burst of colors - greens, reds, yellows, oranges - is the finale of the growing season. They are fading fast in our area by the last weeks of November. The leaves crackle as they dry, their color fades to brown or black as they decay to mulch.

The seeds of many plants are surrounded by fluff (milkweed, cattails, and blazing stars) that acts as a parachute for the fall breezes to carry them away from their parent toward a place they can sprout next spring.

Centennial Lake in November 2014

I made a quick stop at Centennial Lake (in Centennial Park in Howard County, Maryland) on my way to an appointment this week after our first very cold weather of the season arrived. Most of the leaves had fallen off the trees but the reflections on the lake were still dramatic. There were a few intrepid souls on the path around the lake. None of them were sitting on the benches. It was a morning to keep moving.

The boat ramp are with the stones that extend into the water is one of my favorite vantage points. I took several vantage points. The angle of light makes a difference!

There were a few trees that retained some color. I wondered if it was the type of tree or the micro-climate along that part of the lake shore since so many other trees had dropped their leaves.

Closer to ground level I noticed some colorful vegetation closer to the ground.

As I drove out - I stopped to photograph a grouping of gingkoes. Most of the trees still held about half their leaves with the ones that had fallen in yellow drifts around their base.

Houseplants

I have three houseplants on the table in front of the breakfast area window - complete with a grow light to support their growth through the winter.

My experimental plant is ginger. A root that I had purchased to add to stir fries sprouted - and I cut off the two areas that sprouted and put the pieces in soil. They have done very well. The original sprouts now are stems and leaves...and there are additional sprouts at the base.

The aloe that had gotten way to large is survived by some smaller versions of itself as my second houseplant. How long will it be before these small ones graduate to the parent’s pot?

So far the sweet potato vines that I rooted in water and then planted in soil are not doing well at all. It is very frustrating. My goal had been to have three pots of the vines so that I could harvest the occasional leave to add to winter salads. Right now they are acting like they preferred to stay in water rather than grow in soil.

Still these few plants are my brace against the coming drabness outdoors. Right now there is still a lot of leaf color but it won’t be long before the color variety in the outdoor scene will be dominated by browns and piney greens….until it snows and we’ll enjoy the clean white for a few days.

Raking Leaves

BeforeRaking leaves is work --- but one of the enduring and endearing chores for our fall yard. The yard crews that swarm our neighborhood tend to use noisy blowers but I prefer a rake. I like to hear the noises of the birds in the trees….the crackles in the forest of deer or squirrels. I started on the part of the yard that had the densest covering of leaves. The grass is already sparse in that area; the trees are shading the area more thoroughly every year. I raked them into a big pile and into the forest.After

I left the leaves on the ground between the maple and the forest; the dirt is already exposed in the area. Maybe the leaf mulch will slow the runoff during the rain and snow to come. Next year we’ll have to try heavier mulching and planting some shade loving plants….and attempt to keep the deer away from the area long enough for them to become well established.

I still have to rake the front yard. Raking the leaves always seems like such a huge task when I first start but it gets done….and then the yard will sleep until spring.

Catoctin and Cunningham Falls

Just prior to write this blog post, I wrote a simple poem one about the scene from my office window and plan for the day. Do you see the title down the middle?

It sets the stage for my collection of images from Catoctin Mountain Park and Cunningham Falls State Park - now about 2 weeks old.  We stopped at the Catoctin Mountain visitor’s center as we usually do and then walked across the street to the short Blue Blazes Still Trail. There was a tree riddled with woodpecker holes and several kinds of shelf fungus (one fungus group had a slug feasting) that I include in the slide show below. The trees still had quite a few leaves. There was lots of color.

We drove over to Cunningham Falls State Park and took the steeper trail to the falls (I was sore for the next few days from that scramble).

As usual - there were a lot of people at the falls….and they were crawling all over the falls. It was hard to get any waterfalls without people!

I settled for the smaller scenes of moss, leaves, and fungus. Enjoy the slideshow!

Backyard View - October 2014

I’m continuing the monthly post of morning images of the trees in our backyard that I started in September. There has been quite a lot of change in October but there are still quite a lot of leaves remaining. There was added drama this month because of a broken branch high in the tulip poplar that had remained awkwardly suspended rather than falling to the ground. About mid-October (image 3 in the slide show below) - it fell. I was surprised that I didn’t hear it fall.

The tulip poplar turns yellow and drops most of its leaves before the maple completes its color change. I’ve done a quick raking on some of the thickest parts of the leaf drop (and pine needles too) because I want the grass to survive. I’ve started taking the leaves into the forest rather than bagging them for pickup at the curb. I used the big branch that fell to make a corral to keep the pile from blowing back into the yard! There will be a few more rakings before the yard slides into its winter mode. 

Fall Arabesques

I’ve been photographing leaves on the ground for the past few weeks and am sharing them today in celebration of fall. The leaves had to be positioned just as they had fallen - or been blown into position.

Some of the colors are muted yellow or brown. The vivid greens and reds are there too.

The backdrops are varied too: grass - asphalt - pebbles - forest mulch - bricks.

What about the other things in the pictures with some of the leaves? A feather, moss on a fallen log

How many trees can you recognize by their leaves in these pictures? Poplars - oaks - maples - dogwood….at least.

Clothes for Cooler Days

Yesterday was a cool, rainy day…perfect for putting away summer clothes and bringing out the layers that work for the range of temperatures during fall days.

Last spring I decided to re-purpose some suitcases that I rarely used to store out-of-season clothes. I started with the unpacking of the heavier pants/jeans and sweaters that were in the suitcase. I packed it up again with skirts, T-shirt dresses and capris. I found 2 old totes (one still had an address tag from over 20 years indicating that it had been stored away for a long time!) for shorts and summer tops.

I did not find many items to give-away.

Most of my warm weather items are things I actually wear even if there are too many of them. It will take me many years to wear out the all the shorts I’ve accumulated!

There could be some things in my closet that are too big now that I have stabilized at a lower weight and am confident I have to willpower to stay there.

I also have jackets from the last years of my career that I like too well to give away…but I don’t wear them very much these days. Some have been in dry cleaner bags for over a year. I’m considering dressing ‘business casual’ rather than ‘casual’ on any day I leave the house to create an opportunity to enjoy the jackets again this winter. I did wear two of them on my vacation to Rhode Island and now I want to wear the others too!