Robins!

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.

First Sycamore Leaf of 2014

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.

Crocus - Harbingers of Springtime

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.

Blooming Variegated Croton

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!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 22, 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.

Education boosts brain function long after school, study shows - The benefits of education extend way beyond career preparation/enablement. This study did not look at the impact of continuing education. Will a study 20 years from now document the cognitive impact of the increased availability of low cost (or free) online courses such as Coursera?

Mongol Empire rode wave of mild climate, but warming now may be tipping region into unparalleled drought - Tree ring research from the steppes has been used to characterize climate of the region back to 650 BC!

Land cover change over five years across North America revealed - Changes from 2005 to 2010 are depicted with satellite images. The article describes the North American Environmental Atlas which is online here.

“Passive House Revolution” Shows the Rise of Extremely Efficient Houses - Hopefully more new houses and renovations will use these ideas!

To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In - In many school districts the high schools start the earliest and then the buses are reused for middle school and elementary. Is it better for elementary school students to start earlier and let the high school students sleep in?

Distorted Landscapes Create Surreal Perspectives of the World - Randy Scott Slavin’s spherical panoramas

Water-rich gem points to vast 'oceans' beneath Earth's surface, study suggests - Ringwoodite sample found in Brazil…inside brown diamond. It’s quite a story of almost accidental discovery and international collaboration.

Three Adorable, Endangered Tiger Cubs Born at the London Zoo - 2.5 minutes of clips from the Cubcam

The Many Origins of the English Language - A graphic that updates for period selected (showing either the period or cumulative from Pre-1150 to present. Even from 1950-present, Latin was the biggest contributor with French coming next.

Why Do Flamingos Eat Upside Down? Your Weird Animal Questions Answered - From National Geographic’s Weird & Wild

3 Free eBooks - March 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 March 2014: birds, insects and flowers. I am anticipating spring!

Gould, John. The Birds of Europe. London: R. and J.E. Taylor. 1837. Five volumes are available on the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, and volume 5. A few years ago I saw an exhibit of John Gould’s bird prints (large books) in a museum in Tennessee….and made a note to check the Internet Archive for any scanned versions of his work since the exhibit only displayed a small portion of the volumes. It was such a pleasure to finally browsing through these books online.

Fabre, Jean-Henri; Stawell, Rodolph, Mrs; Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander; Detmold, Edward Julius. Fabre's Book of Insects. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1926. Available on the Internet Archive here. The illustrations by Detmold are the draw for this book.

Galeotti, Henri); Funck, Nicolas; Morren, Edouard. L'Horticulteur practicien; revue de l'horticulture franaise et trangre. Paris: A. Goin. 1858. Two volumes are available on the Internet Archive: 1857 and 1858. The illustrations of rich with color and detail of flowers….it’s like touring a conservatory online. I picked the forsythia illustration because it reminded me of how disappointed I that our neighbor’s forsythia is likely to have a hard time this year since the deer have eaten all the tender parts. It might not manage any blooms at all!

A Pine in March

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.

Easy Quinoa Salad

Quinoa is probably my favorite grain - both for taste, texture and nutritional profile. I have almost completely replaced rice in my meals because I like the nuttier flavor of quinoa. It cooks faster than unrefined rice too. It’s an added bonus that it is one of the few grains that is a good source of protein - containing all the essential amino acids. On really cold days, I enjoy quinoa in soups or freshly cooked under stir fry. Now that we have some warmer days, I’ll start making quinoa salad more frequently. Here is my simple process (I don’t call it a recipe because I make it a little different each time!):

• Cook quinoa. I usually add onion flakes to the liquid. Often I used tea (herbal or black) instead of water. Allow to cool.
• Chop colorful vegetables into small pieces. My favorites are bell peppers and carrots although just about any firm vegetable from the crisper will do.
• Combine ingredients in large container with salad dressing. My favorite is balsamic vinaigrette although raspberry vinaigrette is good too.

The salad is best when it has a few hours in the refrigerator for the flavors to mingle. It is excellent leftover too either as a salad or heated and used under a stir fry.

Another March 2014 Snow

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.

Book Quote of the Month (about Grandmotherhood) - March 2014

It’s our mothers who teach us how to live in the world. And we think forward through our daughters, if we are mothers, and beyond them to their daughters. - Roxana Robinson in her essay for Barbara Graham’s Eye of my Heart

I enjoyed every essay in this book written by grandmothers about their view of themselves in the role. Each was a learning experience having not been thrust into that role yet in my own life. All of the essays had some positives --- but every single thing was not rosy. Relationships are complex.

The book reminds me of my relationship to my grandmothers and my relationship to my mother as she became a grandmother to my daughter. I remember the good times and have to think hard to remember ones that were not positive in the end. I am surprised to realize that my grandmothers were about 20 years younger than I am now when they became grandmothers and that my mother was a grandmother by the time she was my age (although only a few years younger). My generation waited until relatively later to have children.  I have known 5 generations of my family (2 great-grandmothers, 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 3 siblings, 1 child) already; because we are living longer, many people know 7 generations in their lifetime.

Another realization - the role of grandmother is something we are granted rather than choose - a role to savor if it happens. This book provides look into the many ways ‘savoring’ is done.

Macro Feathers

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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 15, 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.

10,000 years on the Bering Land Bridge: Ancestors of Native Americans paused en route from Asia - I’d always assumed that the ‘land bridge’ was narrower - just across the narrowest part of the Bering Strait.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #63 - I haven’t included one of these in my gleanings recently….doesn’t mean that I don’t continue to enjoy them. My favorite in this batch is the kingfisher with the little crab in its bill.

Is Daylight Savings Energy Efficient? No, Says Expert - Every spring and fall I hate the time change. Does anyone like it? Sometimes I think governments like the idea simply because it confirms that they have the influence to cause the population to do something in synchrony!

Nutrition Facts Label: Proposed Changes Aim to Better Inform Food Choices - The new labels are in a 90 day comment period from the FDA. What do you think? I like them. The revised labels include new info (added sugars, Vitamin D, and potassium) that I have missed in the past. I like the larger calorie count and the attempt to make the serving size the size of a real serving.

The Weight of Mountains - A short film (11.5 minutes) about how mountains are made….live…and die.

Mothers leave work because they don't want to behave like working men, study suggests - ‘Presenteeism’ (the notion that being at your desk until late is required, even if there is nothing to do) should not be a requirement for men or women….but it has the effect of driving women out of the workforce more often than men. What a waste of skills and education! Will the workplace change over time?

Deer proliferation disrupts a forest's natural growth - This study was done in Ithaca NY but Maryland has very similar problems. The deer are so prolific that they are eating all their preferred foods down to the ground.

NASA's Breathtaking Images of Space - The view from space….always awesome.

Women's jobs are poorer paid, less flexible, more stressful - My career was in a male-dominated field and was well paid. About 20 years in, I realized that while I did work longer hours overall than women in many other fields, the stress was generally positive and not brutal in duration….and the flexibility increased over the course of my career too! So - this research result meshes quite well with my experience from the mid-70s onward.

Honeybees reveal that evolution is stranger than you ever realized - Just how do sterile bees contribute to the fitness of their species? Kin selection. That’s why honey bees in Yemen have adapted to be excellent at air conditioning their hives in the hot desert air and Japanese have adapted to combat deadly wasps in a unique way.

Zooming - March 2014

Let’s look at some cropped images taken over the past month. As usual, there is a botanical theme. Can you find:

• Hibiscus buds and flower center
• Bird of paradise petals
• Fiddlehead sculpture
• Cactus thorns
• Paper flower

 

Garden Dreaming - March 2014

Spring is getting a late start this year….more time for garden dreaming.

• The racks of seed packets are hard to pass by. I bought colorful beans and carrots…and decided to start chives and cilantro indoors immediately.
• I’m always on the lookout for items that can be turned into ‘pots’ for the deck. The big plastic containers from cat litter are my latest target. We buy the big jugs of cat litter so I’ll have to cut off the top but that means I can make the ‘pot’ the depth I want. The maximum depth would be enough to grow sweet potatoes or carrots on the deck!
• It seems like freebie seed packets are coming from all directions. So far I’ve collected sunflowers and marigolds….cucumbers and tomatoes!
• It is pretty obvious that garden success will require some control of the deer browsing in my garden area (fortunately the deck is not accessible already). I’m going to try a ‘liquid fence’ repellent for my garden (and right away from my ornamental shrubs and bulbs coming up….the deer are starving….eating everything right now).
• I had to cut the sweet potato back in the pot I have growing indoors….and it is rooting in a glass of water. Now that it is putting out fresh leaves I probably will need to plant it soon but I need a pot of it (may be the first thing planted in an empty cat litter jug will be the sweet potato)!
• I’m thinking about what will go in the garden plot. It gets a reasonable amount of sun on one side although a young sycamore is shading part of it late in the day. The veggies have priority and I’ll try to start some indoors to give them a head start. The sunflower may be too large for my garden so I’m contemplating planting them along the sunny side of the house - which is not even a flower bed right now.
•  I enjoyed the cardinal flowers and zinnias in the pots on the deck last summer. This year I am getting more organized and thinking about combinations in the larger pots; the thriller - filler - spiller idea appeals to me. The first and last on the ‘dreaming’ list below is already started - assuming the cardinal flower survived the winter in its pot and the pot I have growing inside now makes the transition to outdoors after the last frost.

Philadelphia Flower Show 2014 - Part 3

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!

Philadelphia Flower Show 2014 - Part 2

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!

Winter’s Grip Waning? - March 2014

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.

Philadelphia Flower Show 2014 - Part 1

We went to the Philadelphia Flower Show last Friday. It was my first time for the event; Philadelphia is about 2 hours up I-95 from where we live so we made it a day trip. My husband bought the tickets and printed a parking coupon via the show’s web site. It opened at 10 and we arrived before 10:30. There were already quite a few people and it got more crowded. Next time I will do the exhibits first and shopping second (just opposite of what I did this first year) although I did enjoy the variety of vendors. I found some great gardening gloves to replace the ones that I threw away at the end of last season.

The flower show was in the Philadelphia Convention Center so it did not matter that it was cold outside. The indoors was full of color that won’t appear outdoors for months! It was a good break from the dull colors of winter.

I’m going to do several posts with photographs from the day trip. This first one is dedicated to flowers. I always like the ikebana arrangements. And the clever use of plants to create insect forms among daffodils was a lot of fun. There were big white paper flowers (with intricate folds and cuts) in one of the Convention Center hallways. Spring bulbs were blooming everywhere! Enjoy the slide show below of flowers from the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 8, 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.

Over 80s often over-treated for stroke prevention - Sometimes the risks of medications overcome their value as people get older. Are we savvy enough to comprehend the complexity and then make the best decision?

Beautiful Bird Drawings by Brazilian Street Artist L7m - My favorite is the heron (5th one from the top).

Five Native Plants to Add to Your Garden - Spring is close enough to be thinking about gardening so the timing of this article is good if you are still contemplating new plants for this year. I had cardinal flowers last year that bloomed profusely and attracted hummingbirds/butterflies. Hope they come up again this year.

Why dark chocolate is good for your heart - Hurray! I celebrate that the research on dark chocolate is confirming its benefits. It’s one of my favorite little splurges.

Which National Park Drives Are On Your 2014 Calendar? - So many great choices…..

This is what the Internet actually looks like: The undersea cables wiring the Earth - An aspect of infrastructure that we often take for granted because they are so reliable. The vast majority of international traffic is carried by the undersea cables (only a few percent go via satellite).

Incredible Up-Close Textured Details of Frozen Flowers - What a beautiful idea of a macro photography project….but I’m going to wait until summer when I have some flowers from my garden as subjects!

Canary in the Cornfield: Why the Fuss about Monarchs? - I know there are a lot fewer monarch butterflies in my community in recent summers….and less milkweed too. This article explains some background on why that happened.

Sea-level rise threatens UNESCO World Heritage sites - The Statue of Liberty is one. The detailed paper is available here.

Eat Plants and Prosper: For Longevity, Go Easy On the Meat, Study Says - I skewed toward more fruits and veggies - ate less processed grains and meat….and got down to a healthy weight!  

Discovering Brussels Sprouts

I have rediscovered Brussels sprouts recently - having not eaten them for over 40 years (and my mother forced the issue). They were boiled and I thought they were bland and slimy. But now I’ve discovered they are great cooked just about any other way! They are generally milder than cabbage but have many of the nutrients and their size is definitely a plus. It is so easy to rinse a handful of them, cut off the dried up end and take off the wilted outer leaves…..and then they are ready for all kinds of recipes.

These miniature cabbages can be cut in long wedges and roasted (coated with olive oil and non-salt seasoning).

They can be cut in wedges or chopped to add to soups.

They are excellent raw. I like them diced with apples, raisins soaked in apricot brandy, and pecans. Orange marmalade and olive oil makes an excellent dressing.

I bought a small bag of them at the grocery store and discovering how easy it is to add them to meals. I’ll probably avoid large cabbages from now on.