Bees

There seems to be a bumblebee that enjoys hovering outside the window I prefer to settle into for reading. There are not any flowers more than a story off the ground so the hovering does not last long but I’m surprised at the number of times there is a bee there.

Today I am celebrating bees photographed this spring: on snapdragons at Longwood gardens,

On wisteria at Brookside Gardens, and

On honey suckle at Watkins Glen State Park.

While I was looking for bee pictures in my recent photographs I found a picture of a small wasp on maple flowers from back in April  (this was photographed with the 8x loupe…on a cold day when the wasp was not very active). It doesn’t belong in a ‘bee’ post but I couldn’t resist including it. I enjoy the serendipity of photographing something like this….and the red color of the maple flowers is one of my favorite signs of spring.

Building a Garden Border

Rather than carrying all the self-pruned branches from our oak back to the woods, I decided to use the longer ones to form a border for my Chaos Garden. I used some gold garden stakes to make brackets about every 3 feet and then wove the sticks through them. I got more enthusiastic and retrieved some sticks from the branch pile I’d made in the woods from previous years’ trimming.

I was thrilled when one grew shelf fungus within weeks of becoming part of the garden border.

The border grew dramatically with the plum and oak trimmings of the past week. I left the branches on the limbs but bent them down into the other branches - increasing the connectedness of the branches so that the brackets were not the only elements holding the whole together. Some parts are not high enough that I will have to wait before I add anything more. Of course - this is a garden border that will naturally decay. Will it simply settle slowly so that I can refresh it from the top? I’ll enjoy the month/years of observing the garden border.

More about the Chaos Garden in another post…..

Tree Trimming

A recent rain weighed down the plum tree branches enough to convince me it was time to trim the tree. I got out a step stool, the saw, and the long handled pruners. I cut off low branches and ones that were growing more horizontal that vertical. Afterwards I took a closer look at the layers within the branches - the delicate color changes from the bark to the sapwood (cambium, xylem), and then the heartwood.

Next up on my ‘to trim’ list was the oak. Oaks do a lot of self-pruning so the main work I do on the treat the edge of our yard near the street is focused on the lower branches when they grow low enough to brush the tops of vehicles in the street or our car as we pull into the driveway. It was harder work than the plum tree; the branches were larger and a bit higher too. There were many tiny acorns on the branches.

I also found an oak marble - almost a ‘glow in the dark’ green.

I cut open the shell and found the insect larvae suspended inside the sphere.

The branches were quite lot and I wove them into the brush ‘fence’ around my chaos garden….more about that in another post.

Letchworth State Park (New York)

Letchworth State Park is probably a crowded place on weekends in the spring…and all the time during the summer. We were there on a week day that was a bit cool last week - when the people in the park maintenance crew were more numerous that the visitors!  There was plenty of water for the 3 major falls in the park to be spectacular. I’ve included my favorite views of the park below.

We entered at the Mt. Morris (east) end of the park. The drive is along the top of the gorge. There are overlooks of the river.

And then there is a view of the middle and upper falls from one of the overlooks!

We stopped to take the path for a closer look. Part of the path was closed but we got close enough to see a portion of the lower falls.

I took a zoomed view of the rocks of the gorge carved by the water.

The upper falls and middle falls are within easy walking distance of each other. We parked and hiked first to the upper falls. The shape of the falls is a horseshoe.

The sheer volume of water plummeting over the edge throws mist up

And keeps the cliff very damp. The vegetation looks very green but the scars of rock slides on the edges of the gorge near the falls are obvious.

There was a large patch of May apples flowering near the path to the upper falls. I took front and back pictures of them.

And there was a huge dandelion!

We walked back to the middle falls. The path was close enough to the falls that the mist kept it damp (too wet to open up the camera too). It was very much like the mists at Niagara Falls. I waiting to take this picture from further up the gorge.

I also liked the little streams that were trickling over the sides of the gorge to get to the river. The rocks in this one were thick with bright green algae.

The picnic tables built by the CCC of stone (pedestals and tops) were numerous in the park and we rewarded ourselves with a picnic lunch after are hikes to the falls.

Watkins Glen State Park in the Spring

Watkins Glen State Park is a gorge with many waterfalls. The main entrance is at the bottom of the gorge but there is another at the top. Either way the gorge trail has stairs and wet stones/pavement. The last time we were there was in fall 2012 - when there was a lot of color from leaves. In the spring - there is a lot of green to contrast with the stone and quite a bit more water.

The gorge trail is a ledge. In one place it goes behind a waterfall.  There are frequently water droplets from overhanging rock. I was glad I had remembered to wear a hat. Waterproof shoes are good too if the day is cool (and wet feet would be uncomfortable). I made a slide show from my favorite gorge images from last week.

While my husband focused on his own photography projects - I managed to photograph a crow

A busy bumble bee

And a tiny fern unfurling its fiddleheads.

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!

On Milkweed

Do you recognize milkweed? This is the most common type in our area of Maryland and it seems to be coming up all over right now. I even have one coming up in a front flower bed - which I may decide to nurture and hope the butterflies find it. Years ago we had milkweed plants at the edge of our forest but it either got to shady for them or some other environment change caused them to stop growing there. The corn field near our community used to have milkweed plants along its margins but those are gone as well.

I’m thrilled to see more plants coming up this year since the Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the plants and the caterpillars feast on their leaves.

There are even orange and black milkweed bugs that feed on the plants and are often seen in clusters of large and small insects (a picture from last fall).

 Many other butterflies and bees like the nectar of their flowers. Even humans can smell the sweetness of the milkweed flowers!

These are things to look forward to in the coming months!

Seasonal Foods - May

I am celebrating having the first things from my Chaos Garden to add to salads: chives and lemon balm. These two are so well established that they come up and grow abundantly every year. They are best early in the year when they are at their most tender. I like the added color of the purple chives flowers in salads.

I photographed the first blooming of dandelion flowers but didn’t cut any for salads for some reason; I’ll make an effort for the second blooms since the yellow petals are also nice additions. I’ve never built up any enthusiasm for the leaves (too bitter for me) but maybe that is because I don’t catch them earlier enough.

A nearby farm advertised pick-your-own strawberries this weekend but I missed the action; there were a huge number of cars parked along the roadside near the farm when I went out for other errands. Everybody likes strawberries and this is their season in Maryland!

Blueberries are becoming plentiful too. I buy them at the Farmer’s Market or the grocery store. I like them with yogurt on top. If it’s a hot day, I freeze the blueberries and make a smoothie (so far we haven’t had a really hot day, but I’m sure we will before the season is done.

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.

Gambrill &Cunningham Falls State Park and Catoctin Mountain Park

We made a day trip to two state parks and an area managed by the National Park Service last weekend. They were all located in Maryland not far off I-70 in central Maryland.

The first stop was Gambrill State Park. We had seen mountain laurel in bloom there about this time in May 2012 (blog post here) ….but we were too early this year. The bushes have lots of buds but none of them were open; it will be at least another week and maybe longer before the blossoms appear. The dogwood branches against the blue sky were some consolation.

Our Catoctin Mountain Park visit was a short hike back to an old still near the visitor’s center. Along the way we saw squawroot (which I was able to identify from the park’s photo gallery). It’s a non-photosynthesizing parasitic plant that draws nutrients from the roots of oak and beech trees.

There were Jack-in-the-pulpits too.

But my favorite part of the short hike was the sound of the water. The swirl of the water over the rocks - from shade to sun - was a mirror for the spring day.

I kept looking for mushrooms along the trail because there had been so many the last time I had hiked the trail. When I got back home, I checked…and discovered I posted about that hike in August 2012…so I’ll give the fungus a few months more to develop this year before I plan to hike there again.

Cunningham Falls State Park was a longer hike to a falls overlook. A new platform had been built since we were there last but it was not a perfect vantage point for falls viewing. There was a lot of water since there had been heavy rain in the days prior to our visit.

Free eBooks - May 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 May 2014. This month I’ve selected 3 books that are multiple volumes - totaling 35 ‘books’ in all.

Commission des sciences et arts d’Egyte. Description of Egypt. Second Edition. Paris: C.L.F Panckoucke. 1820. There are 5 volumes of plates about Antiquities, an atlas, 2 volumes of plates about the Modern State, and3volumes about Natural History. Available from the World Digital Library here. These are the volumes produced from Napoleon’s team in Egypt. I found them based on a reference in the Roman Architecture course I took on Coursera; they supplemented another course I finished recently on Cairo Architecture and the course I am taking right now on The Art and Architecture of Ancient Nubia. The drawings were very detailed.

Roberts, David. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, & Nubia. 6 volumes available from the Internet Archive here. London: Day & Son. 1855. I found this series when I did a search for ‘Nubia’ in the Internet Archive. I haven’t tried to pair the drawings of the same ruin from 1820 (Napoleonic team) and 1855 but it probably would be possible. Some of the monuments were still partially covered with sand (and thus protected from erosion more than they are now) and the dams on the Nile had not been built to inundate the ones south of Aswan.

Wild Flowers of America. New York: G.H. Buek & Co. 1894. There are 18 issues available from the Internet Archive here.  Many of these flowers are recognizable. I’ve seen the columbine in many local gardens this year!

Loupe Photography at Longwood

The trip to Longwood Gardens earlier this month was the first time I had been there since beginning my experiment with loupe photography. I didn’t use it all that often this time but I did enjoy the result. As usual I was pleasantly surprised at how much the 8x magnification increases the detail of objects - in this case parts of flowers. I picked my favorites to include below.

 

 

Here are the 25 other blog posts I’ve done with photographs from Longwood Gardens over the past few years.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 17, 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.

Two museums doing 3D scanning of artifacts (one of the technologies introduced in the archaeology course I took on Coursera recently:

Paleontologists unveil online showcase of 3-D fossil remains - An introduction to the University of Michigan’s Online Repository of Fossils.

Look at These Ancient Egyptian Artifacts from Every Amazing Angle This article points to a project at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to make objects available on the web in a format that allows complete rotation of the object. The project’s beta site also allows zooming in to get a closer look at the objects.

Categorizing Invasive Plants - I’ve recently done some volunteering to help control invasive plants in my community. This was a nice summary of approaches used by land managers.

Newsmap - A visual display of news (based on the Google news aggregator). There is color coding for broad categories of news and it is possible to select a ‘country’ from a list at the top of the display; looking at the news perspective for a country different than your own is always a broadening experience. The visualization has been around for a few years; I only found it recently and am trying it for a few weeks to decide if it is better than looking at the same info in a Newsfeed format.

Bee biodiversity boosts crop yields - Good to know. Hopefully we have not already reduced the diversity of bees on the planet.

8 CIO moms share tales and tips from the IT trenches - These tips make sense for more than just CIO/IT moms!

40 maps that explain the Middle East - I just finished a Coursera course about the modern Middle East….so this series of maps was particularly well timed!

The Most Common Language in Each US State—Besides English and Spanish - Language as a window into differences across the US.

Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities - Tripling the number of known archaeology sites via technology…another story that linked well with the archeology course from Coursera. 

Never Say Die - Recent research results re longevity.

Magnificent 19th-Century Library Shelves 350,000 Books - Architecture of the late 1800s and books….in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It looks like a magical place.

Brookside Boardwalk

There is a boardwalk between Brookside Gardens and the Brookside Nature Center. It crosses over a wet area and a small stream. Earlier this month I photographed goslings on an early-life swim in the stream. Last weekend I focused on the lush vegetation on both sides of the walkway.

It is a transition from the formal gardens to a natural area. Clearly the area has some tending to encourage the variety and density of the plants….and some of the plants are identified with small signs. It is a place to walk slowly and enjoy the delicate looking plants….the smells….the sounds of water moving through a forest. It is easy to forget that it is surrounded by dense suburbs.

The trees keep the area shady most of the day. The leaves from years past make thick mulch that the plants (jack-in-the-pulpit, cinnamon fern, and may apple to name a few) need to thrive. This year they seem particularly lush; the late winter has not harmed these low growing plants of the forest floor as much as it did the understory trees like the dogwoods.

A large tree that toppled has been left in place. Some pieces that were cut from it as part of the repair after it fell have been around long enough to have shelf fungus growing on them.

Zooming - May 2014

Spring is full of blooms.  The zoomed images from the past month include plum blossoms, dandelion flowers, a very wet tulip, and some hydrangea to add some blue…..

Maple samaras in the grass (detached before their time by browsing deer), cowslips, and jagged edge tulip….

A mushroom, a jack-in-the-pulpit, and a foraging chipmunk….

A foraging bumble bee, spores on the back of a fern frond, and the cone of a cycad….

Fiddleheads and a Venus fly trap….

The center of a dogwood flower, a peppermint color azalea, and new growth of pines.

I find that photographing makes me more observant while I am out and about….and then again when I am looking at the pictures on a larger screen once I get home. I often don’t realize the whole of what I am capturing in the field. Every zooming blog post I compile is a celebration of the technology available in modern cameras!

Curvy Calla Lilies

I made the mistake of not buying a pot of calla lilies before Mother’s Day when I first saw them at the nursery last week. When I went back a few days later they had all be sold! So - I have reverted back to enjoying the next best thing - the images I took at the Longwood Gardens Conservatory at the beginning of the month. I liked the yellow variety the best.

The funnel shapes from the side - often tinged with green at the base and an upward flare at the top - has a backdrop of very different color and shape of hydrangeas.

My favorite angle on the flowers is from the top - the gentle spiral and the uncurling of the edges as the flower opens fully.

My Deck Garden - May 2014

I am enlarging my deck garden this year and done some planting in small pots indoors to be ready.  It was finally warm enough here late last week for them to all go outdoors. I’ve planted combinations of plants in larger pots - one that will spill out over the side and one that will grow upward….or one that makes a large root and one that grows tall. I’m not sure it will work or not, but at least the deck will look interesting this summer and I’ll do a monthly post about the deck garden until the fall. I supplied the plants I had started from seed with potted plants bought at Home Depot once they were sale priced. The mint that wintered on the deck has already sprouted so I simply added something else to those pots. I have pots or troughs of:

Sweet potato and bell pepper

Watermelon and tomato

Zucchini and cilantro

Tomato and spaghetti squash

Cucumber and cilantro

Tomato and cucumber

Spaghetti squash and mint (in the old ‘turtle’ sandbox)

Tomato and carrots (in a repurposed bin that cat litter came in)

Cantaloupe and cilantro

I just realized that I probably should plant some basil somewhere.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits

The Jack-in-the-Pulpits seem to be everywhere during the first weeks of May in our area of Maryland this year. They’ve been every place where there is thick leaf litter and not too much other forest undergrowth. I seem to notice more of the plants in recent years….either I am happening on where they grow more frequently, I am more observant, or (maybe) they are more numerous in recent years in this area.

I saw them at Brookside Gardens on 5/3 (the gardeners seem to plant them in clumps),

The Brighton Dam Azalea Garden on 5/4,

The forest behind my house on 5/6 (where I also noticed some garlic mustard plants which I immediately pulled since often those invasive plants make it impossible for the native forest undergrowth to flourish), and

The Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant on 5/9 (unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me on that hike!).

Fiddleheads of Spring

Back in April I posted about fiddleheads seen in the Brookside Gardens Conservatory.  Now the ferns are coming up outdoors in our area. When I was at Longwood Gardens last week there were some nicely labeled fiddleheads and I’ve added more examples of Cinnamon ferns from Brookside Gardens (they were a little further along in Maryland than at Longwood in Pennsylvania). The Cinnamon Ferns have two types of fronds: Sterile and spore-bearing. In the picture to the left the taller green fiddleheads are the sterile fronds; the spore bearing fronds are the light brown, short fiddleheads.

As they unfurl they look even more different

The Christmas Ferns were uncurling too but did not seem as interesting this time.

The Ostrich Ferns do look a lot like feathers as they begin to uncurl. I think they are my favorites of this group.