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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 24, 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.

Ten Fabulous Facts about Butterflies: A Wildlife Garden’s Best Friend - Now that the weather in our area is getting warmer…..we’ll be seeing more butterflies. They’re one of my signposts of summer!

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014 - The list is from the editors of MIT’s Technology Review (and they include a pointer to past lists too).

Diatoms on Display - Fan shaped - they reminded me of stylized papyrus images.

Why Do Americans Hate Lives of Leisure? - The article went a different direction than I anticipated. It really was not about ‘lives of leisure’ but about why we tend to feel we have too little or none at all.

Blocking pain receptors extends lifespan, boosts metabolism in mice - It is appealing to find that something done to improve the quality of life (like blocking pain) might also extend lifespan. Of course - it may not work the same in humans as it does in mice.

Super-power Chia Bread - My routine breakfast is a tablespoon of chia seeds in almond milk - but I have been noticing more recipes that include chia recently and this is one I plan to try. It would be a lot easier to eat ‘on the go.’

London’s Greatest Scientific Experiments - An interactive tour.

On the shoulder of a giant: Precursor volcano to the island of O'ahu discovered - My daughter is in Hawaii on a geology field trip right now so this article captured my attention.

A Map of National Landmarks That Are Most Vulnerable to Climate Change - Time to plan a vacation to see some of these? We were at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and Canaveral National Seashore last fall.

Visualizing the Ocular Microbiome - The surface of our eyes is yet another complex ecosystem and it has some unique properties. Modern molecular diagnostic tools are increasing our understanding of what it takes to sustain ‘health.’

Filigree Floral Sculpture Produced with Innovative 3D Printing - This one is added to my list for the week because of beauty and the use of technology.

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.

On Work

What does it ‘work’ mean in our culture? Looking in the Thesaurus - there is quite a range of synonyms: from the fairly benign “effort, endeavor, task, attempt” to significantly negative “grind, servitude, slogging, toil.”

It seems that over the past few decades ‘work’ in the popular media has become rather narrowly focused on activity associated with earning money. There is a lot of discussion of ‘work-life balance’ as if work and life are two distinct things.  Does that phrase imply that work is the same as servitude or non-discretionary activity?  Our work time belongs to someone else (our employer) rather than ourselves?  Perhaps we have some discretion when we choose a job or career…but that does not mean that we like every aspect of the ‘work’ even though some career counseling seems to imply that young people should strive to steer themselves into occupations that they can enjoy 100% of the time.

Then again - years ago my daughter’s Montessori pre-school called the activities in their school ‘work’ which associates the word with effort or endeavor or attempt.  This is a more appealing way to think about ‘work’ and one that could apply to anyone. It does not conceptualize ‘work’ as separate from the rest of what the individual is about.

I like to integrate all aspects of my life rather than try to balance particular categorizations of what I do.  I still like to have variety in my days, weeks, and months but it is not about work-life balance; it is more about having an enjoyable mix of things I am doing. I’ve come to realize that if I take earning money out of the equation, I am hard pressed to identify what activities I would categorize as ‘work.’ 

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.

On Time

One of the changes between the rhythm of career and post-career life is the perception of time. Even before I entered the post-career phase of my life, I was aware that I was using the clock to control too much of the way I was living; on the weekend I would intentionally not wear a watch - seeking to loosen the rigor of waking to an alarm, eating when it was the right time rather than when I was hungry, and using the time to decide I was taking too much doing what I was doing.

Now - I go to sleep when I am tired and wake up 7-8 hours later - usually to bird song; it is refreshing to wake up in sync with the day beginning for the world outdoors and at the point of lightest sleep; what a joy to slid gently from sleep to wakefulness. It happens about the same time every day; the little bit of variation is very comfortable. It is so much better without a jarring sound that happened too frequently at the wrong part of my sleep cycle.

These days when I have an appointment at a certain time, I often set a timer rather than rely on my keeping track of what time it is. That is quite a change from the attention to time I had during my career when there were so many elements that were linked to a time synchronized with actions of other people. I wore a watch and often had a clock in my office too. Reminders came up on the computer. I even had a clock in my home office; I didn’t hang it again after we had the house painted.

There are times that I have to check the date and time because I lose track. A lot of what I enjoy doing now has more of a daily or weekly rhythm rather than being pegged to a more exact time. For example - I do grocery shopping once a week and a blog post daily. Now that I have my garden started, there are some daily garden chores as well.

Historically, life 300 years ago was a lot like this for everyone. There were church bells that caused some synchronization of activity….but otherwise the rhythm of days (rather than hours) was dominant. It was important to predict the seasonal changes so that crops could be planted at the right time. The implication is that the attention to time in modern culture has increased the frequency that we think in short time (hourly) frames. We start training early in our lives with bells and topic changes happening quite frequently throughout our school years.

By creating habits that are not so focused on the exact time, I am now teaching myself the older rhythm….savoring the rhythms of the planet.

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.

Robins’ Nests

Almost every year a robin nests on the cross beam that supports our deck. Our two cats look down through the deck boards from the half of the deck that is covered - with keen interest but unable to disturb the nest at all.

This year we have 5 nests! Maybe the second and fourth one look a little scruffy - might be left over from last year. But that still leaves 3 that look freshly constructed. The fifth one is the one is on the corner of the deck nearest the garden…so the robin frequently leaves in a hurry and noisy complaint whenever I am gardening.

We are quite a few robins in our neighborhood. The trees in the yards are now 20+ years old and the trees in the forest that extended down to the river behind the neighborhood has trees that are older still. The robins seem to increase in number every year but this is the first time I’ve seen the increase so tangibly: more nests means more robins in the next generation!

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!).

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 10, 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.

Dynamic Paintings of Birds Capture the Essence of Flight - Appealing work.  I usually like photographs of birds in flight better than paintings….but these are an exception.

The Coming Antibiotic Crisis, Revealed in Maps - Will we eventually revert to infections that kill like in pre-antibiotic days?

Inside Turkey’s Top Archaeological Sites - From the Dialogue of Civilizations: Gobekli Tepe (oldest human-constructed ceremonial site in the world) and Zeugma (mosaics). Links are included to photos, galleries and virtual tours of the sites. There is also a link at the bottom of the article to other posts about the Dialogue of Civilizations.

10 Spring Cleaning to Dos for Your Digital Abode: Part II - I posted the Part I of this list a few weeks ago I my cleanings list.

Basic science finds corporate refuge - With funding from the US government declining, corporations are picking up some of the funding shortfall.

A History of Garbage in Space - In just over half a century, we’ve created 17000 objects in earth orbit. The majority of them are ‘fragmentation debris.’

What's Your Major? 4 Decades of College Degrees, In 1 Graph - This is a graphic to looks at - move the cursor over it to get numbers that correspond to the colors. Click on the one and a graph with just that major will appear. Physics is almost non-existent in the graph (higher in 1970 than now).

Watch Stunning First Simulation of Universe’s 13-Billion-Year Evolution - In a little over 4 minutes, a simulation of the universe from the beginning to now.

Ocean acidity is dissolving shells of tiny snails off U.S. West Coast - Scientists has previously thought it would be decades before this result of ocean acidification would be observed. It appears that this is one consequence of climate change that is happening faster than anticipated.

Neuroaesthetics - A relatively new field that studies the way humans process beauty and art.

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.

Goslings at Brookside

We had just parked at Brookside Nature Center when my daughter commented that there were goslings in the woods near the stream. Sure enough, by the time we got to the boardwalk and bridge to walk toward Brookside Gardens, the Canadian goose and the goslings were in the stream!

They went under the bridge and kept going. Well - the mom kept going. The goslings were challenged by a riffle in the stream. In the slide show below you can see the mom coming back to give them some encouragement (image 6). They responded with much flapping of stubby wings and managed to get over the barrier!

They swam up stream for a short distance before the mom led them to a small beach.

The goslings paused in the shallow water - probably a bit tired from their adventure.

And then they followed the goose back into the forest. There is one gosling that appears to be a bit more adventuresome…not exactly following the mom.

Clothes for Warmer Days

It’s the time of year to put away heavy sweaters and pants. It isn’t quite warm enough for summer clothes yet but the winter clothes are always too warm by the afternoon. So - it is time to go with lighter layers for warmer days: T- shirts, lightweight slacks, long sleeved cottons, lightweight cardigans. I have an extra closet for the out of season clothes and yesterday was my ‘stage 1’ change for warmer days. I’ll have a ‘stage 2’ when the days get really hot (summer) and I put away slacks altogether.

As I move clothes around - the items I haven’t worn at all during the past season are put in a bag to donate. The clothes that are for the upcoming season are evaluated. Since I have become more rigorous during the end of season move, the clothes I am getting out are usually all worth keeping. But is there a hole in the wardrobe that I need to fill via shopping or repurposing? I don’t think so at this point. If anything, I have too many clothes!

About 10 years ago, I decided that black (rather than black or brown or navy blue) would be my ‘neutral’ color. It turned out to be a great strategy. Almost all my pants are black and they go with all my tops.  Most of the tops are pastel or bright colors although I have a few black tops because I like bright jackets too (in every season except summer). I will need to make a trip to the dry cleaners for a few winter jackets as soon as I am sure I will not be wearing them again this year.

My fashion season leans classical which means that I buy clothes that will be part of my wardroom until they wear out completely rather than for a single year.  I do enjoy the occasional splurge toward the trendy even though I wear them long after the season they were ‘in’ - sparkles on a top, lattice at the neckline, palazzo pants.

At one time I decided that I would get rid of my scarves but now I am glad I didn’t. They are a warming addition to a winter outfit (that I enjoyed a lot this past season) and I like them during other seasons as belts, to add color to a straw hat, or tied around an otherwise dull purse.

Over the years - I’ve come to the conclusion that in the spectrum between extreme comfort and extreme fashion, I always be on the comfort end of the spectrum. The only area I am still challenged is shoes. I know that the longer one wears shoes with pointy toes and high heels, the more deformed (and painful) the foot becomes. The problem is to find shoes that are comfortable and look good with certain types of clothes, particularly dresses. I’ll have to deal with the shoe issue more during the summer when dresses are by far the coolest choice for the hot days; stay tuned for my upcoming post on summer clothes!

Tulips at Longwood Gardens - May 2014

The timing of our visit to Longwood Gardens on May 2 was near perfect for the tulips just as it had been for the cherry blossoms in Washington DC back in April.  The day was near perfect for enjoying the gardens too: mostly sunny and near perfect temperature. 

We arrive about 10 minutes before the gardens opened. The beds of tulips in front of the entrance building gave us a hint of the colors that were to come.

It was quite a challenge to pick the images to include in the slide show below. Tulips come in so many colors…and there is a surprising variety in the shapes as well. Hopefully you enjoyed tulips growing in your area too!  They are a sure sign of spring.