I always look for ferns sending up their fiddleheads through the leaf mulch in the spring. They have not appeared outside in my part of Maryland…but there were some fiddleheads among the ferns in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.
The plant in the conservatory was a tree fern I have been checking every time I got to the conservatory. There were coils with coils….tight spirals that would uncurl into the fronds.
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.
Narcissus and spring ---- they go together. The flowers in this post were in my parents’ garden in Dallas but the flowers are frequent sights in Maryland this time of year as well. As I write this (back home in Maryland) I see a patch of daffodils that a neighbor planted at the edge of the forest; they started out in a smaller area 20 years ago and have multiplied - and seem to be in sync with the red blooms of the maples.
I used my 8x loupe to capture images of the central flowers from different perspectives.
And there was a tiny spider that was very still on his flower while I captured his portrait.
Last month I happened to walk by a pond where the Wood Frogs were having their annual orgy. It was one of the first sunny days of spring…still chilly but the sun was warming the water. The hoarse clacking sound drew my attention first; it reverberated through the vegetation around the shallow pool. As I got closer I saw that there were a lot of frogs - in the water, on the rocks.
Then I noticed the masses of frogs surrounding a female. The frogs were celebrating the warmth of the day with in a frenzy to start the next generation.
There was a couple near the orgy that seemed oblivious to the ruckus!
Last week I was in Dallas and rejoiced in the unfurling leaves; they are a few weeks ahead of the trees in Maryland. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were tinges of red that were standing out before the green chlorophyll becomes the overwhelming color in the leaves.
Pecan buds opening into pleated leaves that will unfurl quickly now that it is getting warmer.
Peonies coming up from the roots with shiny new leaves edged with red.
Photinia bushes that were burnt by too many freeze thaw this past winter but are still managing to put on some fresh new leaves.
And rose bushes with tiny red leave that got greener as they grew larger.
The rhododendron buds were huge when we walked around Brookside Gardens recently. These were taken without benefit of any extra magnification (i.e. the loupe was not needed for these buds). I am already looking forward to seeing them open into their cluster of blooms as spring progresses. I already have a ‘note to self’ to photography them every time I visit the gardens over the next few months.
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.
The Garbage Man - Thinking beyond the recycle bin…closed loop recycling.
25+ Digital Wildlife and Nature Maps - Lots of perspectives. I particularly like the Journey North (under Migration and Tracker Maps) because of the time of year….check out robins and monarchs migration.
The 7 Rules of the New Food Revolution - Common sense from Prevention magazine….with links to more information about each one.
Things you should be able to do in your local library - Many communities have library infrastructure originally developed for print media. As more moves toward digital formats - there is opportunity for the library to evolve into something quite different to make the most of the location, building, and engagement capacity. Some of the things on Richard Watson’s list are already part of my library....and others may become the next wave of enhancements.
Google cameras take rafting trip at Grand Canyon - If you can’t make the raft trip through the Grand Canyon physically, take a virtual trip! The Google Colorado River Site is here (there is an ‘Explore the Colorado River’ video toward the bottom of the page that is a short intro to what is available on the site).
What are anonymous companies? An infographic - From TED. “My wish is for us to know who owns and controls companies, so that they can no longer be used anonymously against the public good.” - Charmian Gooch, 2014 TED Prize Winner
Married and working together to solve inequality - Except from an interview with Bill and Melinda Gates
How the Container Store Uses Wearable Tech to Think Outside the Box - Replacing walkie-talkie technology with smaller wearable devices with more functionality.
The $1 Origami Microscope - What a great idea! One of the STEM Fair participants from a few weeks ago lamented that she did not have a microscope easily available for her project. I hope this kind of minimalist design (and low cost) can make microscopes very common around the world - for students (and that virtually everyone is a ‘student’ in some aspect of their life).
Gorgeous Papercut Light Boxes - From two Denver based artists.
Over a year ago I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and 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 March 2014.
STEM Fair - These spring events used to be called ‘Science Fair’ but the fair has enlarged to include Science - Technology - Engineering - and Math so they have changed the name. I have volunteered as a judge for our county fair for the past 10 years or so. It seems like every year is an improvement over previous years and this year there was a bigger improvement than usual! This year the middle school students were much more articulate about the statistics they were using (standard deviation in particular).
Great snowflake pictures - Some years we get snow in March and sometimes we don’t. This year not only did we get a good snow, the situation was ideal of snowflake photography. Of course, I celebrated with snow ice cream!
Raisins soaked in apricot brandy - I plumped some dried out raisins with apricot brandy for an apple - raisin - celery salad. Yummy! I may do this every time I make the salad from now on. Little culinary successes are always worth celebrating.
Volunteer naturalist classes - Last fall had did most of my prep for becoming a volunteer naturalist by shadowing people that had done it before; this spring I am taking the classes and enjoying them tremendously. I even won the drawing for the book give away - Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy. Wahoo!
Philadelphia buildings - I had a hard time choosing between the Philadelphia Flower Show itself and discovering the interesting buildings of downtown Philadelphia which will probably be the focus for my next foray into the city. Either way - the March day trip to Philadelphia was a daylong celebration.
The last two volcano lectures - I worked my way through a series of online lectures on material science related to volcanoes that stretched my memory of chemistry (from classes about 40 years ago) and was thrilled to get to the last two lectures that focused on how lab work is done with silicate glass and how all the research and field work gets translated onto geologic maps.
A clean car - With all the snow, my car became thoroughly encrusted with salt. Its shiny clean look coming out of the car wash was worth celebrating.
Lots of feathers - It was a little disconcerting to find a pile of feathers beside our house but then I realized that the presence of a predator was an indicator of a working ecosystem in our neighborhood….and I enjoyed having the feathers for a photography project.
Pot luck lunch - I have always liked pot luck events. Sometimes there is a skew to desserts but this one had great variety. If anything, it was skewed toward fancy salads.
Work experiences to pass along - One day I was able to pass along two potential solutions to my daughter from my career: 1) Hotel too expensive for a conference? Room with someone. 2) Logo shirt required for an outreach event way too big to tuck into slacks? Wear it tucked into a skirt or belted like a short dress over leggings or skinny slacks. It’s worth celebrating any time lessons learned long ago are still relevant!
I enjoyed seeing the colorful witch hazels in bloom at Brookside Gardens recently. I knew that witch hazel was native to North America and was used to make the witch hazel liquid that is so soothing to skin. Since reading Douglas Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, I have decided to landscape with native plants from now on.
So - it was frustrating to discover that the spring blooming trees are hybrids from Japan and China. The native to North America (Hamamelis virginiana) has wonderful foliage in the fall and then blooms in late fall/early winter! The flowers look the same….it’s just the timing of the flowers that is different.
It still might be the smallish tree that I’ll plant next in my backyard, knowing that it will support other natives to make a comeback in my yard.
Robins on the lawn or in the garden are another sign of spring. The ones I’ve seen recently appear to be tolerating the last blast of winter quite well. Even without their feathers fluffed they look well fed! The robins pictured in this post seemed almos tame....alowing me to walk relatively close (and then use the camera's zooom) to get their pictures.
We always seem to have the most robins in the spring. They seem to move around in small flocks and then we see them one at a time or in pairs later in the season. Perhaps some of them head further north and a few stick around to nest in our area. Almost every summer we have a nest under our deck. 
Back in mid-February, I cut some twigs from the trees around our house and posted some photographs of the buds. The sycamore twig was not very interesting so I didn’t include a photograph of its bud but I kept the twig in my collection and kept water in the cups. A few days I took a look at the basket and noticed that the sycamore twig had a tiny leaf!
And there is another bud that looks about ready to burst open too!
We’ve had such cold weather recently that the sycamore buds outside are still in their winter forms so this little green leaf indoors is way ahead of the tree.
The first bulbs that bloom in our area of Maryland are daffodils, hyacinths, snowdrops and crocus. The daffodils and hyacinths in my flower beds are up with buds just beginning to form. I don’t have any snowdrops in my yard. So the crocuses are the harbinger this year. The bulbs were planted years ago. They have dwindled over the years; perhaps the squirrels find them occasionally or I disturb them when I am doing other things in the flower bed. I celebrated the few that came up.
I managed to catch three in various stages of blooming last week. At first I simply took pictures of them with the camera….then I started some more creative work with the 8x magnification loupe. I love the contrast of colors - blue/purple and bright yellow. The magnified images below gave me a whole new appreciation for these first flowers of spring.
A few weeks ago when we walked around the Brookside Gardens conservatory, the variegated crotons had the beginnings for flowers. The collage beginning this post shows the buds on the long stalk. They are closely spaced when they first form and then the stalk elongates beginning at the base to give the buds room to grow larger.
Last week the variegated crotons were in bloom as shown in the two images below. The buds closest to the plant open first.
I took several of images with the 8x magnification loupe. The plant is so colorful that the flowers don’t have to be!
The winds have been blowing this month and the pine cone litter the ground. Sometimes they seem completely dried out, drab and fragile….sometimes they still have the color from earlier in their development and bits of sap.
Some of the cones are manage to stay on the tree - like ornaments on a tree decorated for Christmas.
Some of the cones are manage to stay on the tree - like ornaments on a tree decorated for Christmas.
And then there are the buds at the tips of the branches (taken with the 8X loupe magnfying) that will become the next generation of pine cones.
We got 7inches of snow yesterday and I took another round of pictures….and made snow ice cream (green for St. Patrick’s Day). The Kokopelli garden stake was almost covered with the snow,
The tulip poplar seed pods turned into cups for snow,
And the bushes look like they had been generously topped with whipped cream!
The streets near our neighborhood were cleared by mid-day and we took a short drive to enjoy the snow covered scenes.
I also took snowflake pictures with my 22x loupe. The snowflakes this time were dense crystals; they reminded me of spun glass or baroque jewelry.
The pile of feathers beside the house last week prompted a little photography project with the 8x and 22x loupes. I found myself concentrating on the ends of the feathers….and how different the wing feathers were from the fluffy down.
Let’s look at some cropped images taken over the past month. As usual, there is a botanical theme. Can you find:
This third post of photos from our day trip to the Philadelphia Flower Show is dedicated to the sites along the walk between the parking garage and the Convention Center. The Roman Architecture course I am taking via Coursera has sensitized me….I’m noticing more architectural features of buildings. Maybe the theme for my next trip to downtown Philadelphia will be architecture. There are a lot of old and new buildings to see.
One disappointment is how hard it is to see the grandeur of buildings when they are crowded together. It is hard to get a perspective when the whole building cannot be seen without a lot of other clutter. The church on the corner across from the Convention Center is a case in point. The PARK sign looms large in the picture above with the complete steeple!
Then again - the parking garage beside the church allowed me a vantage point to capture some pictures of the church from 7 plus stories up. It’s easy to see some of the weathering of the façade!
This second post with photos from the Philadelphia Flower Show is dedicated to cactus. I like to photograph cactus; there is a starkness about the plants that matches their environment. The various thorn configurations draw my attention too. Now that I have made several trips to Arizona in the past few years and become more familiar with cactus, I discover myself noticing more about them.
The cactus display at the Philadelphia Flower Show was easier to photograph than many of the flower displays. (Now that I think about it - maybe the crowd was not as thick around the cactus exhibit…flowers were a bigger draw). Enjoy the cactus slide show below. I particular like the plant shown at position 8 below --- it looks like a plant that could be right at home in a science fiction novel!
We have had some bitterly cold weather this March. It snowed last week and the temperatures were in the teens. The deer are reduced to eating the old leaves from the pile we made at the edge of the forest. This is a hungry time for the deer.
There was a hawk yesterday at the edge of the forest. I noticed it when it moved and then flew to the branches of a nearby tree. I didn’t actually see it catch anything but later that same day when I ventured out I found a substantial clump of feathers beside our house.
The ground is spongy from the recent thaw and the hyacinth bulbs are just beginning to show. They are at least a week or two behind where they were last year at this time.
As I walked around the house, the tulip poplar still looked very much as it has all winter
But the maple had noticeably enlarged buds. I’ll have to watch carefully to get a series of macro shots as the maple blooms and the leaves unfurl.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
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