3 Free eBooks - November 2014

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for November 2014.

Fritzinger, Leopold Joseph Franz Johann. Bilder-Atlas zur wissenschaftlich-popularen Naturgeschichte der Wirbelthiere. 1867. Available from the Internet Archive here. A volume of color prints of lizards and other reptiles.

Verneuil, Maurice Pillard. Etude de la plante : son application aux industries d'art : pochoir, papier peint, etoffes, céramique, marqueterie, tapis, ferronnerie, reliure, dentelles, broderies, vitrail, mosaïque, bijouterie, bronze, orfévrerie. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts. 1903. Available on the Internet Archive here. It is interesting to see how botanicals were translated into interior design elements in the early 1900s. I’ve made collages of the iris designs.

Adams, Robert. Ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia. London: printed for the author. 1764. Available at the Internet Archive here. This book had been on my ‘too read’ list since last fall when I enjoyed a Roman Architecture course via Coursera. The drawings are quite good. The author includes images of the ruins as they were in the 1760s as well as what he thought they were like when they were first built.

Lull in the Flower Beds

The very last iris is blooming in our flowerbeds. We have a sea of green that is studded with potential:

There lilies are sending up their bud stalks (not all of them yet - but every day I notice more emerging above the dense core of leaves). That part of the flower beds will be full of yellow and orange by the time the hot weather is consistent.

The blazing stars are clustered around the bird bath. They’ll be almost the same color as the irises as some point.

The dahlias are purple and pink and white…..I don’t dig them up in the fall and our winters are cold enough to challenge their survival. Most of the plants from last year seem to have survived the winter.

I’ll miss the color at our front door for the length of time it takes the new flowers to begin their season.  Right now I have to simply love the green!

Road Trip - Columbia MD to Corning NY

Earlier this week we started our short vacation to the area around Corning NY. It’s an area we have visited more than a handful of times over the past 25 years. The route takes us around Baltimore and heading to York and then Harrisburg Pennsylvania. The Welcome Center as we passed into Pennsylvania has a wonderful display of irises. I remembered that they looked just a gorgeous as the year we drove up for my daughter’s college graduation - about this same time of year. What was different about the rest stop this year was the milkweed coming up in many of the beds; the shoots were so dense that it has to be planted intentionally. Hurray for the state of helping out the Monarch butterflies!

After Harrisburg the route heads toward Williamsport. It follows a very scenic stretch of the Susquehanna. It is possible to catch glimpses of the river. Many of the islands have been designated Wildlife Management Areas. We noticed this time that US 15 has signs that say ‘Future Corridor of I99.’

The stretch of road through the Allegheny’s - where clouds frequently kiss the rounded mountain tops on either side of the highway - is very scenic but there are no rest stops and very few places to find something to eat!

We made such good time that we rolled into Corning early enough that we forged ahead to take a look at Watkins Glen State Park. More about that in a few days….and Montour Falls….and Letchworth State Park.  It was a waterfall extravaganza!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - May 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;’ here are my top 10 for May 2014.

Daughter’s visit. What’s not to like about having a daughter around! It was a very short visit - every part was a celebration of family.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits. This was the first year I found them blooming at the forest’s edge in our yard. These plants always seem special to me because I saw them only in pictures until I moved to the east coast.

Getting seedlings planted. I got all the seedlings planted and celebrated they were all thriving (until the hail battered a couple to oblivion last week. Still - enough are growing rapidly in there pots on the deck that I am pleased with the results of my efforts to get them started early.

Wall of green. Every my I celebrate the return of the wall of green view from my office window. The tulip poplar and maple trees are through the spring greens and looking as lush always get in summer. The sycamore that I see from my kitchen window is a little later unfurling; it’s leaves will continue getting larger and larger all during the summer.

Blueberries and yogurt. It is my favorite mini-meal in May and June….a way to celebration almost every day.

Driving neighbors. I thoroughly enjoy volunteering to drive senior citizens to their appointments in my community. What a joy it is to have them stay in the community where they have lived for years!

Hiking in the forest. Spring is one of my favorite times to hike: wildflowers, not a lot of biting insects, water gurgling. It was wonderful to be outdoors after the cold and wet!

Phone conversations. I find myself celebrating the normal ebb and flow of conversation with people far away. Sometimes it is the ordinary that turns out to be a treasure.

Birdbath and iris. Every time I go by the front door of my house (either outside or inside) I glance and the view and celebrate!

Chives. Here’s to celebrating plants that just come up every year on their own….and taste wonderful in salads!

The Joy of Irises at the Front Door

The irises that are blooming at our front door were planted originally in a bed where they did not do well. Each year there were fewer that bloomed so last year I dug up the rhizomes and moved them to the space on either side of our front porch so I could see them from windows on either side of the front door. They sent up green leaves last year after they were moved but there were not many blooms. But this spring……most of the clumps of leaves produced stalks with 3 or more buds!

I like the color and height of the flowers around the bird bath. The flowers look frilly and delicate compared to the toughness of the plant’s leaves...and the hardness of the glass bowl. They hold up reasonably well to most rains.

Yesterday was an exception. We had quite a rain storm - with pea sized hail mixed with the raindrops that battered all the tender plants including the iris flowers. I was glad to have captured the images of the irises before it came! Now the flowers look bedraggled; one of the large buds was completely detached from its stalk. Hopefully the buds still on the stalks will open into fresh new blooms in a day or two and prolong the season of irises at our front door.