Green Heron

My topic for today is another bird I saw at Josey Ranch Lake in Carrollton TX: a Green Heron.

The first time I saw a Green Heron was at Brookside Gardens many years ago. I didn’t know what it was. It didn’t look like a heron as it moved along the shore and shallows of the pond.  The same was true in Florida last fall and in Carrollton last week.

Having learned to identify the bird from that long ago experience - I have not been as surprised recently when the bird extends its neck and begins to look much more like the heron that it is!

I’ve always wondered what the bones of the neck look like for this particular bird. Do muscles pull the neck vertebrae further apart when the neck is extended or are there a lot of folding of the vertebrae when the head is held close the body?

Egret in Flight

The great white egret that makes its home at Josey Ranch Lake in Carrollton Texas is very photogenic. I already included a picture of the bird in my post for August 3.  A few days later, the walk around the lake provided ample opportunity for egret photography experiments.

The classic picture of an egret in search of a meal was almost too easy.

The water was not quite still enough to get a perfect reflection….but I tried the shot anyway.

I got a little too close and the bird took off. I managed to take 4 pictures as it flew across the lake. This one is the best focused.  

The clip of another picture shows the flexing of the feathers at the end of the wing; the rest of the photo is unfocused or over exposed.

Tomatoes

The first tomatoes of the summer were from my deck garden. I enjoyed watching them ripen. The heirlooms were a new treat. I already knew that eating a tomato ripened on the vine and eaten within hours of being picked was something to savor. So I watched both the two pots - heirloom and patio with anticipation as the tiny green fruits formed and then grew until they ripened. They ripened so that I spread the eating of that first little crop over a week.

Now I am making progress on the load of tomatoes that came from the CSA during the 2 weeks I was away. I may have to freeze tomato sauce before I pick up the next share!

But I am enjoying the bounty of tomatoes two times a day and hope that I’ll be able to finish off most of them by Wednesday morning. The heirlooms go first…then the cherry tomatoes because they are so easy to cut in half and include in salads.  I’ll make homemade tomato soup tomorrow - that always uses a lot of tomatoes.

There are more tomatoes on my deck plants (a second crop) and I’m sure there will be more coming from the CSA. Tomatoes are summer food to celebrate!

Good to be Home

I enjoy travelling….but I am always glad to come home. It takes me a day or two to recover from being away. This time I got back in the late evening so about all I did before sleeping was drink water to recover from the dehydrating effects of the plane flight and the time it took to get through the traffic jam all around the airport even though it was 10 PM at night! 

Getting back to ‘normal’ at home started the next day. I was pleased that my husband had managed to water the deck garden enough for the zinnias and marigolds to be better than when I left….and there were new peppers and tomatoes growing.  A hummingbird came up to visit the plants while I looked through the kitchen window. What a good ‘welcome home’! After breakfast, a trip to the grocery store was the first priority.

Then I tackled the normal ‘after traveling’ chores of unpacking, laundry, and putting the luggage away. I sorted the laundry and put the bag of birthday presents I had purchased for our cats on the table.  Evidently the smell of catnip from the toys had pervaded the dirty clothes because the cats enjoyed messing up the piles!

Now that I have been home for 2 full days, things are settling back to normal. I am catching up on Coursera videos and have gone through most of the snail mail. There is a pile of reading waiting and plenty of CSA veggies to eat before the next share is picked up on Wednesday. I’ve got some volunteer work scheduled for this week. The situation is just the way I like - at home.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 9, 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.

5 Important Tips for Keeping Your Eyes Healthy - The tips come from the National Institute for Senior Health but are good for all ages. Start early to keep your eyes health for life!

Behold These Incredible Works Of Architecture Made Out Of Living Trees - I am not patient enough for a project like this but I’m glad that some people are!

How to Freeze Garden Vegetables and Fruits - Timely article. I am sure there will be CSA or deck garden bounty that I’ll not be able to eat immediately.

Want To Improve Your National Park Photography? Catch This Webcast from the Parks - I plan to watch these live classes in late August. I haven’t been to either Olympic or Mount Rainier National Parks so I’ll enjoy the scenery along with some new photography techniques.

Turnips, Kohlrabi, Radishes, and Other Odd Vegetables: Are They Our Key to Survival? - Getting produce from the CSA this summer has sharpened by awareness of these vegetables. Surprisingly the one I knew the least about before the CSA (kohlrabi) is now my favorite - and it even comes in several colors!

More crop per drop: Reducing water footprint of cultivated herbs - Hopefully this type of research is going on in the US too since water is becoming an increasing issue in many parts of the country.

Society bloomed with gentler personalities, more feminine faces: Technology boom 50,000 years ago correlated with less testosterone - Was the change relatively sudden or did it happen over many 1000s of years….and is the trend continuing?

Massive volcanic outbursts on Jupiter's moon Io: More common than thought? - Even as we learn more about exoplanets…there is still a lot to learn about our own solar system.

Get Ready For Monarch Migration - We don’t see many monarchs in the area near our house although they were quite plentiful 15 years ago. I miss them. The milkweed around the field near us is gone too - a victim of the ‘Round Up Ready’ farming done there. I hope there are places in Maryland where the butterflies find a safe haven.

Atlantic warming turbocharges Pacific trade winds - Another example of how the earth’s climate is a system that involves the whole world rather than something that occurs locally.

Veggie Beauty

Over the past month - I have been noticing the beauty in fruits and vegetables while I prepare meals. I’ve collected some of my favorite ‘closer looks.’

The spiral of white veins around a seed in a ‘seedless’ watermelon

The raised ridges in a freshly cut cross section of a leek

A cross section of a banana pepper

And the 10x magnification of the seeds

A cherry tomato cut in half

A cucumber cross section (I have to many of them waiting at home that I should try a couple of slices on my eyes before cutting up the rest for a salad or smoothie)

The red ridges of an onion (10x magnification)

A beet leaf with its bright red veins through its green - it was tender enough to put in a salad rather than a stir fry.

CSA Week 9

I am returning home to Maryland from Texas today - and am looking forward to the 4 kinds of tomatoes in the CSA share this week (that my husband picked up yesterday). I’ll be thinking about how to enjoy them on the long flight….salads…tomato soup...gazpacho...and more!

This share will go quickly - which is a good thing since the share from last week in still in the refrigerator (except for the watermelon which my husband ate while I was away).

Seed Pods

This is the time of year to look for newly formed seed pods.  The hibiscuses growing behind the fence at my parents were covered with pods that were already splitting open to reveal the seeds inside. The flowers were done for the season.

The red yucca had pods in various stages of development with the whole progression of buds to flowers on the same stalk. Are the darker reddish pods more or less mature than the greens ones?

The desert willow has pods that look like beans. The pods look fibrous and sturdy compared to the flowers of the tree (maybe that is true for almost all plants).

Gardens in the Hot and Dry

The plantings that look the best in Texas this August are ones that thrive in the hot and dry.

There were several desert willows planted around Josey Ranch Lake. Their blooms look at lot like delicate orchids. I had not seen them in the Carrollton area previously; they are popular rest stop plants along the route through New Mexico to Tucson.

There are many types of sage that thrive in high heat without a lot of water.

My favorite is the red yucca: the deeper color of the buds, the delicate flowers, the seed pods forming, and the muted green of the leaves….and they grow best under relatively adverse conditions.

The image below is a 10x magnification of the flowers.

This trend of transitioning gardens to plants that tolerate heat with less water is a positive one given the water challenges Texas is experiencing.

Texas Sunflowers

A grandchild brought a sunflower home from elementary school year ago and the subsequent generations of that plant come up every spring behind the stockade fence of my parent’s yard in Carrollton TX. The plants have reverted to a very tall wild type.

My mother cuts some stalks periodically and makes a bouget that lasts a few days….bringing the cheer of outdoors into the house.

The plants that are outdoors continue get new buds so the flowers just keep coming throughout the summer.

The flowers turn to face the sun.

The bees load up with nectar and pollen from the flowers that are open. The bees take on the color the flowers once they are laden with pollen!

Walking at Josey Ranch Lake

Generally walking in Texas is a morning activity - before the hottest part of the day. The lake near the library in Carrollton TX is a popular and easy hike. The birds are accustomed to the walkers so it is a great place for photography. There were a few pigeons; it seems like almost all city parks has pigeons.

There was a Little Blue Heron that I saw both days I walked the loop. It appears to be a bird that likes to fish in isolation.

The great white egret likes to company of the ducks. Both days the bird was surveying the lake from about the same place and with the same company.

There was a pair of swans in the same group.

A juvenile swan was also nearby. Another walker commented that there had been 4 ‘ugly ducklings’ but this was the only one from this year’s nest to survive (the turtles in the lake are the probably predator for the very young swans). The one that is left is clearly large enough now to be in no danger from turtles. The juvenile will stay with the parents until the feathers are all white later in the summer.

In another pond we had seen two swans the first day. On the second day we saw only one and there were a lot of feathers on the duck-weed coated pond. We were relieved when we saw the second swan - obviously a little ruffled from a round with some predator (maybe a dog?).

There were several nutrias around the lake - an invasive rodent that most states are trying to eradicate. We saw three but another walker said there were probably 8 or 9 round the lake. They seemed to be as acclimated to people being around as the birds. I wondered why they had not been trapped and taken away.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 2, 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.

The Atmospheres of the Solar System - An infographic rom Andy Brunnig

Are Crows Smarter Than Children? - The study showcases crows - ‘the Einsteins of the bird world.’

Pesticide linked to three generations of disease: Methoxychlor causes epigenetic changes - This study shows that some of the effects of man-made environmental changes go far beyond the time horizon we normally study in ‘safety’ trials.

Nearly 750,000 U.S. Weapons Are Unaccounted For In Afghanistan - Bad news. Will we seek to ‘clean up’ better in future conflicts?

The Lunar Surface as you’ve Never Seen It Before - For some reason, my first impression was that it looked like layers of thick finger paint.

Opossums and Gardening: A Few Things to Know - It turns out that they are mostly helpful!

A Post-Antibiotic Future? - A scary prospect. There was also another study about long term heal trends that was also unsettling: Life expectancy gains threatened as more older Americans suffer from multiple medical conditions.

Simple Meal-Planning Strategies for the Plant-Based Kitchen - These strategies make sense in every kind of kitchen! The CSA had changed my shopping pattern somewhat this summer but I have always tried to only make one trip to the grocery store per week.

Landmark Buildings That Were Never Supposed to Last This Long - Tidbits of history through buildings.

Drought Is Parching the United States from Underground, Too - Looks like water is going to become more precious - both on the surface and in the aquifers.

Coursera Experience - August 2014

Quite a few courses ended in July:

• Diversity of Exoplanets (University of Geneva)
• Preventing Chronic Pain (University of Minnesota)
• Paradoxes of War (Princeton University)
• An Introduction to Global Health (University of Copenhagen)

I enjoyed all of them but there were times I thought I had started more than  I could possible finish. It is incredibly difficult to forego a course on a interesting topic; I need to develop more will power!

As I start August, only two courses are in session and I am enjoying the reduction. It is challenging to keep up with the classes while I am traveling….but I have succeeded in listening to the lectures. I’ll have to catch up with the discussion forums and assignments later. The two courses are:

Globalization and You (University of Washington). I just finished the module on Money last week. The history of monetary policy and outcomes was very well done. It may be the best module of the course!

Social Psychology (Wesleyan University). Every week there is something that surprises me....and quite a lot that is very applicable to everyday life. The forums are lively in this one ---- worth the time to peruse and participate.

I have one course that will be starting up in August after I am back home!

Beauty, Form, and Function: An Exploration of Symmetry (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). I am looking forward to this course for several reasons: it is a very different topic area from other courses I’ve taken, it is offered by a different university that other courses, and I anticipate that this topic will benefit from the cultural diversity what will be part of the MOOC students.

CSA Week 8

The pickup and initial handling of our eighth week share from the Gorman Produce Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was totally up to my husband yesterday! He is not a big veggie eater so he grumbled a bit when first presented with The Plan. The Plan was for him to simply put everything in the crisper until I returned from my travels.

I turns out that there was something he can truly enjoy in the share before I return: a yellow flesh watermelon! When I was a child the yellow watermelons were always special; most of the time they came from a grandparents’ garden rather than a grocery store.

Naked Lady Lilies

The Naked Lady Lilies are about at the end of their blooming where I am in Carrollton TX. These flowers are an amaryllis that blooms after the foliage dies back. The beds are clouds of pink petals atop single green stalks. They seem to survive the heat of the Texas summer as long as they get some shade and adequate water. Enjoy the slide show of the Naked Lady Lilies below!

Third Mint Harvest of the Summer (2014)

The mint is even more prolific than usual this year because our hot weather in Maryland has been occasional days rather than long slogs…..and I have watered consistently.

I was surprised to find some dense patches where I had stuck some mint stems after stripping off the leaves after one of last year’s harvest. Mint is providing the ground cover around the iris in the front flower beds.  Some of the patch was cut for this third harvest of this summer.

The pots on the deck had grown back from the previous harvest. The post with mint and butterfly weed looked a bit overgrown so I trimmed the mint severely.

I was going to trim the mint in the turtle sandbox but decided to only cut about a quarter of the mint since I already had so much to process.

There were multiple baskets of mint leaves to rinse and then feed into the food processor.

I decided to use the leaves and tender stems (and then stick the tougher stems that remained around the gardens and other pots. Usually I stop at one processor bowl full of processed mint but there was so much this time that I forged ahead had two.

The drying process started on platters in the kitchen then in a muslin bag hanging in various rooms of the house….what a joy to have a mint scented house.

I may have one more batch in the fall….and then savor hot mint tea all winter!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - July 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 July 2014. I’ve categorized them into 4 groups: CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Howard County Conservancy, travel and outdoors.

CSA

Kohlrabi is a new food for me this summer. It has been included in my CSA share twice and I’ve enjoyed it nutty flavor in stir fries. I may even buy it from the grocery store produce section after the CSA ends in the fall.

Fruit beety has become one of my favorite treats this summer - it is a healthy splurge to celebrate summer…..and a beautiful color to savor too.

Turnips are foods that I liked as snacks growing up but had eaten very infrequently for 30 years. I’m celebrating the re-discovery of how good a crunchy turnip can be.

Howard County Conservancy

Fairy Houses - The Howard Country Conservancy had an event for families to build fairy houses in the woods. I volunteered to help out with the crowd….and it was a lot of fun. The children were very creative with the natural materials of available!

Views in the Forest Shade - I celebrated the natural jewels in the shade on a summer day.

Bugs - Insects and spiders - oh my!

Travel

Travel purse - I found the perfect purse for travel at a thrift store: a pocket on the outside for my Kindle and boarding pass, good closure so nothing can fall out accidently. I am celebrating the bargain!

TSA Pre - I celebrate every time I get a boarding pass with TSA Pre; it is so much easier to go through security with shoes on and the laptop in the backpack.

Outdoors

Heron on the Lotus Pond - The second trip we may to the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Garden in Washington DC - there was a Great Blue Heron that was so intent on fishing that there was plenty of time for pictures. The scene of bird and lotus were the celebration of the day.

Blooming sweet potato - Previous sweet potato plants have grown lots of foliage and potatoes….but this year the plant has blooms too!

Lazy in the Summer

The heat of summer brings out a particular kind of laziness in me.

Early in my life there were times when air conditioning was not available and the overarching strategy during the hottest part of the day was lassitude:

• Taking a nap (either outdoors in the breeziest place to be found or in front of a fan)
• Getting wet and then continuing some low energy activity
• Eating cold foods like popsicles or watermelon

Air conditioning changes things somewhat - mainly to plan the day to stay in air conditioned places during the hottest part of the day rather than being outside for anything. Gardening, shopping, walking…all those activities get relegated to as early in the morning as possible. That was the plan of the day yesterday. The walk was at 8:20 AM and the temperature was already in the 80s. The cool shower when I returned (reverting to the old strategy of ‘getting wet’) felt good; the rest of the day was spent indoors. I suppose I wasn’t exactly lazy - I caught up on Coursera videos, hemmed some pants, read a book, and started a drapery making project.

All those things are motivated by not being outside in the hottest part of the day. I’m not quite lazy…but not out and about either.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 26, 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.

More Phones, Fewer Doctors - An interview with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla about trends in health care. His contention is that 80 percent of what doctors do can be replaced by machines. This article was part of a series done by MIT Technology Review about our health care system. Another one talks about Big Data Mining (about medical analytics).

DIY, Zero-energy Pool Warmers Could Save You Thousands - Made with hula hoops and polyethylene film!

Study reveals 'unhappiest' cities in the U.S. - The authors of the study emphasize that it is obvious that people care about other things that ‘happiness’ when making decisions about where they will live! I’m always a little suspicious of ratings that focus on only one aspect (like happiness/unhappiness) because most of our decision making is much more complex than that. Still - it is worth staring at the map for a few minutes. Does your perception of where you live match with the color coding?

STEM Graduates Branch Out - Many of college graduates with STEM degrees are not working in jobs that are science or technology related fields according to a report from the Census Bureau.

Fluoride & Water Fluoridation – An Undeserved Reputation? - Infographic from Andy Brunning - a chemistry teacher in the UK

Cursed Warship Revealed With Treasure Onboard - A ship sunk off the Swedish coast in 1564…complete with silver and gold coins and canons.

To Measure Summer Smog, Plant an Ozone Garden - The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder CA has designed a garden that is sensitive to ozone that includes plants that grow easily in many parts of the US: milkweed, snap bean, potato, and cutleaf coneflower.

Pangolins Walk Just Like T. Rex - Scaly anteaters wall on 2 legs! Watch the video of this odd animal and think about T. Rex depictions. The head of the T. Rex was much larger but the using tail as a balance to the upper body to allow ‘walking’ on the hind legs like the pangolin is a possibility.

The bend in the Appalachian mountain chain is finally explained - The Appalachians slant along the east coast - make a bend in Pennsylvania and New York.

What vacation? Expect to work while you're away - The down side of mobile work environments.

The Deck Garden - July 2014

The deck garden is growing vigorously. My favorite plant this season is the sweet potato vine. It was started last winter when a sweet potato sprouted before I got around to eating it. I cut the sprouted end off and planted it in a pot. It did not grow very fast until it to outdoors in this summer. The soil in the pot is already being pushed upward by the tubers underneath - and the plant has two other appealing characteristics: the foliage is purple and it has occasional blooms. I’m going to root some clippings from this plant to take through the winter indoors in pots so that I’ll more the plants next summer for the deck.

Several of the other veggies have been an interesting experience but I probably go back to growing flowers on the deck next year. I get plenty of veggies from the CSA each week. The tomatoes are good picked fresh and eaten immediately. They might be worth it.

I have a spaghetti squash that is starting to grow. Watching it mature will be a learning experience. I also have a pot full of pepper plants that came up when I stirred some kitchen parings (including the waste from bell peppers) into one of the pots before I planted a squash plant in it. The squash has not done so well but I have several small peppers.

The cucumber plants are the ones that scream ‘water’ the fastest. I planted them in a pot that is too small. They need water every day - and more than that on very hot days.

And that leads me to the big lesson learned from the past 4 weeks: my shoulders hurt after only a few days of carrying big jugs of water out to deck to keep the plants hydrated. I’ve maneuvered a hose from the faucet below the deck to water the plants from now on!