Mt. Pleasant Farm

The Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant has been the site for many field trips for county elementary schools this fall. With only a few more to go - I took the short walk along the kindergarten hike route before the buses arrived; it was another celebration of fall in Maryland. 

The flower pot people are always on display on a shady bench….suitably styled for the season.

Many of the trees are labeled - including this Witch Hazel

And the Saucer Magnolia.

I liked both of them for their color and the way the light was striking the leaves. Somehow the children always enjoy the discovery of the rabbit sculpture under a bush.

Many of the pines seem to have more cones near the top. Pretty soon we’ll be emulating the way the cones hang from the branches on our Christmas tree!

The buses arrived shortly after my walk and my focus shifted to hiking with children and their chaperones….and that too is a celebration of the season.

Zooming - September 2014

Late summer and early fall is a time of transition…lots of changes to capture in photos. There are seed pods

And seeds.

Insects going about the business of feeding,

Mating and growing large enough to move to the phase of their life to overwinter.

The birds are through their nesting and getting ready for migration. There was a bright yellow mold that emerged from a knot in our deck railing after a rain.

And - last but not least in this collection of zoomed images - the bright colors of flowers and chard stems.

Magnolias at the National Arboretum

We walked around the US National Arboretum’s Holly and Magnolia Collection. I never pass up an opportunity to photograph magnolia. The last time I got such an opportunity was a little over a year ago at Mount Vernon. The arboretum has quite a collection of large southern magnolias with blooms low enough for easy photography. This late in the season there are a lot of different stages of blooms and seed pods.

The southern magnolias I was photographing were full of color:

-- Glossy greens and felt browns of leaves

-- Green, red and black of seed pods

-- Fuzzy tan of the bud coverings, creamy white of the full flowers, and brown of the older flowers

I couldn’t resist some 10x magnified images of the pods

Or a flower near the ground that was attracting bees.

Zooming - April 2014

There were so many pictures taken in the last month to look at….to crop for this month’s ‘zooming’ post. I finally chose some favorites: a degraded shell spiral, water droplets on leaves, uncurling leaves, crocus, hyacinths, violets, tulips, daffodils, hibiscus, deciduous magnolia, the profile of a sculpture. Enjoy the views!

Star Magnolia at Brookside Gardens

The Star Magnolia at Brookside Gardens was just in bloom this past weekend on the southeast side of the Fragrance Garden (map of Brookside Gardens). It is one of the earliest blooming deciduous magnolias. The slide show below shows the whole buds and flowers.

Using the 8x loupe, I took some more detailed images of the blooms at various stages: the flowers just beginning to emerge from the bud,

The petals opening a little but still curved inward,

The expanding petals opening outward,

Opening more,

And, finally, the center of the flower.

Buds at Brookside Gardens

I took another series of bud pictures when I was at Brookside Gardens last weekend. The photographs were all hand held - no cutting of twigs to make the photography easier! I intentionally looked for trees that I don’t have in the area around my house. I used the 8x loupe; the 22x loupe is too much magnification for ‘hand held’ work.

There was the flower bud of on a red twigged dogwood. They always look like very small Hershey’s Kisses to me.

The gingko bud has a buildup of scales where it is attached to the tree. It will be interesting to watch how the leaf emerges from the bud.

The magnolia leaves were battered by winter but still green. And the leaf bud looked more ready to begin growing rapidly.

The pine is another bud I want to watch expand as spring begins.

Book Quote of the Month (about trees) - February 2014

Like the Chinese, who divide the solar calendar into twenty-four rather than 4 seasons (among them, fortnights called “excited insects,” “grains fill,” “cold dew,” and “frost descends”), a practiced tree watcher knows there are dozens of seasons and that one of them could be called “acorns pumping out.” - Nancy Hugo Ross inSeeing Trees

It isn’t often that a coffee table book (large format with beautiful pictures) prompts action or behavior change. This one is the exception for me and I suspect it is for others as well. I attended a lecture by the author at the Howard Country Conservancy on February 8th and promptly started planning my forays around the yard and nearby gardens for this spring…and naming the ‘seasons’ that I am seeing. The first blog post prompted by the lecture was on February 13th (I’ll call that season ‘fuzzy buds’. The book arrived in the mail that afternoon and I am savoring reading it and the pictures now….adding more details to the plans.

I’ve always enjoyed botanical photography but have tended toward flowers rather than trees. And I haven’t done the magnified looking at trees all that often. My husband had an old loupe he used during the days his photography was slide based that has now been repurposed and he ordered a new one that has higher magnification for be to experiment with as well.

To celebrate the prospect of learning a lot more about trees over the next year or so - I’ve created the slide show below of the best tree pictures I’ve taken over the past 12 months. Enjoy!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 25, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

All of these outbreaks could have been prevented with vaccines - The US has taken a backward step when it comes to outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough. It’s very sad that the downturn has been so abrupt in the past 4-5 years….and that we know why; when will the toll of these diseases reach a tipping point toward increasing mandates for vaccination. All my vaccinations are up to date (and I may ask for a whooping cough booster at my next annual physical since some if my volunteer work is with children).

Wellcome Images - Digital images from the many historical sources made available under Creative Commons licensing by the Wellcome Library, London. All low resolution images are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use. The image at the right is a Mark Catesby illustration of a magnolia blossom and pod.

Top 20 Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.A., 1790-2010 - A very busy chart…but worth look at for a bit. Expand it and take a look. Some cities peaked early (like Baltimore); some didn’t get started until much later (like Dallas and Houston). New York has stayed at the top since it surpassed Philadelphia in the early 1800s.

An earthquake threat is building up in the central U.S. - Lots more people living in the area than there were in the early 1800s (when the last big earthquake occurred there.

Designing Your School of Choice: mySchool - An essay by Adam Renfro about his vision for ‘school.’ There are so many options for future schools….the big challenge will be to choose those options wisely. The balance between needs of the student and society will become more nuanced. It is interesting to observe the uniformity implied by core curriculum, testing, and building structures with the explosion of easily available learning environments that are anything but uniform.

How a Versatile Gut Bacterium Helps Us Get Our Daily Dietary Fiber - Another bit of evidence that our bodies are complex ecosystems with many organisms interacting…..organisms that we need to be healthy!

What's the best place to see or visit in your area? - This is a post where the comments are the main content.  I know in my area I have favorites - and the ones I recommend depend on the interests of the person asking!

To MOOC or Not To MOOC - Infographic. I learned a new acronym: SPOCs is (Small Private Online Courses)

NASA Finds 2013 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend - The Earth’s temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F since 1880. The average temperature in 2013 was 1.1 degrees F since the mid-20th century. There is a video showing the temperature changes over the past 6 decades.

Roasted Chickpeas - A recipe I’m going to try this week.

Between the Gaylord and the Potomac

This is my third post about my walk around the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center week before last (the previous posts were about atrium plants and ice crystals). It was a cold but sunny day when I was there. Aside from the ice crystals - there were some other sights between the glass wall of the atrium and the Potomac River. The white and purple kale had grown lacy like the plants often do mid-way through the winter.

The topiary twists and globes appeared to be weathering the cold as did the neatly trimmed Gaylord logo.

The peeling bark of the birch, the oval shapes of magnolia leaves and the needles of pines added other textures.

Looking out to the river, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge with its drawbridge was in the distance. Ice extended out from the shore.

But the startling event was a gull swopping over the pier to drop a shell (which cracked open)…and then he gull alighting to enjoy breakfast!

Zooming - January 2014

The ‘zooming’ post for January includes botanicals from outside (curly bark, magnolia leaves, leaves and twigs of a bush under ice and snow, a deteriorating shelf fungus) and inside (hydrangea, Christmas cactus, Norfolk pine, lilies, amaryllis) plus a pitted shell in the rock garden and the fringe of a holiday tunic.