National Arboretum in August 2014

I posted about the magnolias right after our visit to the US National Arboretum a few weeks ago…but there was a lot more to see. There are so many areas of arboretum. Even the parking lot near the visitor center hosted large crepe myrtles with their shaggy bark!

There was a lot of construction around the administration building. The koi pond was dry but the garden around the fenced area still included a pine with forming cones standing at attention among its needles.

We headed to the China/Asian Valleys - having learned from previous visits to not try to see the whole Arboretum in one visit. The garden was shady and inviting on an August day. Many of the flowers had faded so the overwhelming color of the garden was green. We picked up a map but decided to simply follow the paths rather than look at it. The walk was easy but generally downhill toward the river (and we knew we would have to come uphill eventually).

I like the moon shape in the lantern among the foliage.

The one pink bloom left on a hydrangea was a welcome relief from the green only scenes.

The steps up to the pagoda were part of the climb back to the upper part of the garden…and the exit.

Just as the crepe myrtle bark in the visitors center parking lot - this flower with the ants on the border of the parking area near the magnolias!

Favorite Memories of Summer 2014

Today - the traditional ‘last day of summer’ - I am savoring the memories of the past 3 months. It has been cooler than usual in my area (Maryland, near Baltimore) so the outdoor activities have been especially pleasant. Here are my top 5 memories from this summer:

The Deck Garden. The plants on the deck are a daily draw to go outdoors. There is always something changing - new flowers blooming, a tiny tomato forming, sweet potato vines spilling over the edge of the pot then the deck…and blooming, and all the associated insects and birds enjoying the plants (sometimes causing some damage) and the water in the birdbath and the pot saucers. I may change some of the plants next year - but using every available pot for something is definitely something to continue from now on.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. The place made my list because it was a new experience. I still enjoyed places I have been many times this summer (Brookside Gardens and the National Arboretum and the Howard County Conservancy Mt. Pleasant Farm) but the lotuses at the aquatic garden with the dragonflies that abounded were a high point of the garden visits this season.

Josey Ranch Lake. What a pleasant surprise it was to walk around the small lake near the library in Carrollton TX! It hosts such a variety of resident birds (although I did wish the nutria were not there).  It became the high point of ‘sights’ for the two weeks I spent in Texas this summer.

CSA Veggies. This was my first participation in a Community Supported Agriculture farm and I’ve enjoyed the enhanced flavor of fresh-from-the-field vegetables. I will do it again next summer!

Classes. I become more aware all the time of just how much I enjoy being a student. Whether the classes are online (Coursera and Creative Live) or ‘live’ at the Howard County Conservancy…classes have the effect of broadening my horizons and tweaking what I do. It may not be healthy to grow larger physically but growing mentally is always a good thing.

Happy end-of-summer 2014!

Centennial Lake in August 2014 (part 2)

I posted about the lake and wildlife in part 1 of this post. The focus today is plants. At the very end there was a wasp on a flower of Queen Anne’s Lace. I found myself more intrigued by the bundle of blossoms before they opened and wondered how many of them would complete the process to seed before frost.

The Joe Pye Weed was past its best looks. In previous years I’ve managed to catch the large flower heads when they were at their most attractive to butterflies - but it hasn’t happened this year. It seems like none of the butterfly species are as plentiful this year.

The water lilies are not plentiful at Centennial Lake and they too are showing the wear of the summer. Some of the lily pads are already beginning deteriorate and there are few flowers.

This thistle may mature before the first frost but what about the bud beside it?

Some plants have already made seeds. The image below is of an amaranth and was captured with the 10x loupe.

All of the plants I photographed were in areas of the park that are not mowed frequently. They are mowed occasionally to keep them as meadows rather than young forests.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 30, 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.

Higher Ed’s New Normal - An infographic comparing higher education in the 1980s and today. More students have a part-time academic schedule…but getting the degree means even more when it comes to earnings (in the 1980s, students with a BA earned 40% more than HS grads…now it is 75% more).

Are you as old as what you eat? Researchers learn how to rejuvenate aging immune cells - It was a little frustrating to read a lot about drug development to enhance immunity during aging….but the article was redeemed by the last sentence: “Another possibility is that dietary instead of drug intervention could be used to enhance immunity since metabolism and senescence are two sides of the same coin.” Hopefully there will be research along the dietary line. It seems reasonable that our nutritional needs may shift as we get older….and that adjusting our eating habits would help prolong our health.

Photography in the National Parks: Same Park, Same Scene, Different Seasons, Different Times - I paused when I saw the first pictures in this article of the La Sal Mountains - remembering my vacation to the area last fall (and my favorite picture from the drive through the mountains). Then I started thinking about what area I wanted to photograph at different seasons and decided on a project to photograph the forest behind my house once a week throughout the rest of the year.  If it goes well, I’ll continue into the spring.

An inconvenient truth: Does responsible consumption benefit corporations more than society? - I’m paying more attention to this type of research after the Globalization course I’ve just finished on Coursera. It is very difficult to be a responsible consumer when products are not available to be a responsible consumer (for example - is anyone in the developed world able to recycle 100% of their food packaging? I would like to and I doubt I am the only consumer with that desire…but it isn’t possible in my area of the US.). There are probably a lot of examples where markets are not self-correcting based on consumer desires.

The Chemical Compositions of Insect Venoms - Bees, wasps, hornets and ants….an infographic and some text that explains.

Image of the Day: Colossal Cacti - Prickly pear cacti grow very differently in the Galapagos….to get their pads out of the reach of giant tortoises.

Anesthesia professionals not sufficiently aware of risks of postoperative cognitive side effects - The postoperative cognitive side effects more frequently happen in elderly and fragile patients. Since there are more and more elderly patients, hopefully the issue will become better understood and avoided.

Unequal demands on women for university service harm careers - There are still so few women in tenured positions that the ones that are asked to serve on 50% more committees than men faculty…and all those committees take time.

A Virtual Tour of Lassen Volcanic National Park - A 3.5 minute video to get a feel for the place.

Hidden Obstacles for Google’s Self-Driving Cars - I still hope the self-driving cars become available by 2020 or shortly thereafter so I can turn the driving over the car by the time I am 70!

Centennial Lake in August 2014 (part 1)

The path around Centennial Lake (in Centennial Park in Howard County, MD) is a little over 2 miles. It has a mixture of lake views - from shady areas, through trees, and wide open meadow down to the water.

Even at 9 AM there are lots of different activities on the trail:  walkers (solitary, couples, and gaggles of chattering groups), joggers and runners (mostly solitary but a few pairs), an occasional biker. Some people were fishing from the shore or the lake; the ones on the lake must have had their open boat because the concession wasn’t open yet.

The morning had progressed enough that the birds were into their morning feeding rather than morning songs.

It was warm enough for insects to be investigating August flowers.

Somehow the people and wildlife was not making any jarring noise; the place sustains a natural serenity even with quite a lot of activity.

I will plan some early morning walks when there are autumn leaves.

CSA Week 12

It’s hard for me to fathom that we managed to eat the entire week 11 share from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA except the potatoes and garlic - which will easily keep. I even cleaned out some things I had frozen from the weeks I was not in town earlier in the month: the squash, cucumbers, and fruit beety.  I was surprised at the amount of tomatoes we consumed. The large yellow ones looked beautiful and tasted excellent atop chili.

Now we have another week - another large crop of tomatoes (there were no yellow ones in the bin by time I got there….but the large red ones will be just as good). I traded the 2 poblano peppers for 2 banana peppers. I did get 2 jalapeno peppers and plan to make homemade salsa.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - August 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 August 2014.

The weekly pickup at the CSA. Somehow the pickup every Wednesday afternoon become something to look forward to….a celebration of the food bounty near at hand.

Weight. I decided to take off about 8 pounds and am thrilled that my diet/exercise plan I used a year ago to take off a pound a week...still works. I am celebrating the loss of over 4 pounds so far!

Tomatoes of any varieties are abundant in the CSA shares now. I find myself drawn to the tomatoes that are a change of pace from the traditional red one. Somehow the large yellow or purplish heirloom tomatoes seem extra special….worthy of continued celebration.

Fruit beety. This was on my celebration list last month too. I had frozen a batch I couldn’t eat right away - and I enjoyed eating it this month!

 Watermelon. I discovered that watermelon, mint, and frozen cucumber smoothies are one of my favorite summer afternoon treats…and it is even better because it fits on my weight-loss diet.

Home again. Being away from home for two weeks in late July/early August caused me to appreciate returning….a homecoming celebration.

Photography class. I celebrated the online photography class from several perspectives: the learning experience, a new source of courses, and as an activity I shared with my husband.

Symmetry and tiles. The Symmetry class I am taking on Coursera has led to other activities and I am still getting more ideas!  I am enjoying the course plus the historical books about tiles I found on the Internet Archive plus I’m going to take a local class on tiling to enable some creative projects! I’m celebrating the serendipity of it all.

Centennial Lake. My husband walks around the lake on mornings when the weather is good. I went with him last weekend and celebrated the place: the natural beauty, the wide diversity of people enjoying the path and fishing….and the prospect of seeing the leaves turn over the next few months.

Robin. The robin that has become territorial about my deck may be misguided….but I appreciate the bird’s presence. She has become part of the place. 

The Deck Garden - August 2014

The deck garden is probably at its peak this month in terms of foliage. The mint is overflowing the pots that also contain butterfly weed, a few carrots, and a tomato plant.

The cucumber plant is gone but the beans that were in the same pot are blooming again.

The marigolds and zinnias add color. Occasionally the morning glories have a flower although they have not done particularly well on the deck this year.

The sweet potato is still growing rapidly and the soil in the pot is beginning to heave - a sign that the potatoes underneath the plant are growing too. I have some peppers that came up from the ‘not quite decomposed’ compost; hopefully they’ll get big enough to be worth picking. I am starting to get the second crop of tomatoes from the deck plants.

I’m beginning to think more about what I want to grow next year on the deck. Right now I am leaning more toward plants with color (flowers and leaves) rather than vegetables. The CSA is supplying plenty veggies!  The sweet potato vine has been better that previous years in terms of growth and color (the new leaves are a deep red) so I may try to propagate cuttings from the vine after I harvest the sweet potatoes this fall.

Photography Classes

The free class on Summer Photography from Creative Live last week was good enough to draw me to another of their online classes this week on Photographing American’s National Parks. I discovered that I am more interested in composition than I am in technique or retouching. But there is a lot to learn about how to get the best shot you can in the moment and then using cropping to improve (or salvage) an image.

The recent picture of the Complaining Robin (last Thursday’s post) was taken just before the course and I used it as a practice for some of the ideas I learned from the course immediately afterward. 

This is the original. I was reasonably pleased with it: the bird's eye was in focus and I liked the way the colored feathers fanned out over the brown wing on the left side of the bird's image.

This is the first clip.

And this is the clip that I ended up using in the post.  I chose this one because I got rid of the fuzzy green blob on the right of the original, kept the triangular leaf in the foreground, and an unfocused green frame at the top of the image.

The class this week will include locations in Olympic and Mt. Rainier National Parks.  It is a three day course….lots of opportunity to learn about photography and the locations!

Chaos Garden - August 2014

The Chaos Garden gets relatively little attention from me. I pull plants that I recognize as not wanting at all: grape vine, stickers, honeysuckle, blackberry canes.  Everything else I simply leave alone.

The hydrangea is recovering from the late (and hard) frost last spring that killed all its buds. It has no blooms this year but is coming up from the roots and should be almost back to normal for next spring/summer. I'll trim away more of the dead stems in my next weeding pass through the chaos garden.

There is lemon balm but it is not as overwhelming as in previous years. I cleared a lot of it away last summer. I like it in salads and to add to mint ‘tea’.

The chives and onions come back every year. I need to remind myself to harvest them more frequently.  The chives bloom in the spring and the onions are blooming now.

There are some flowers that are remnants of the butterfly garden phase of this plot: cone flowers and black eyed Susans. There don’t seem to be as many butterflies these days but they do attract the bees.

The rosemary I bought last spring has grown quite a lot and I am hopeful that it will overwinter. Last winter, all the rosemary plant in my area dyed form the repeated blasts of very cold temperatures.

The sycamore is shading the chaos garden more all the time. The hydrangea won’t mine - they thrive just fine in shade - but many of the other plants will not do as well. The old patch of day lilies never blooms any more but its progeny bulbs are doing quite well in the front flowerbed where I moved them last summer.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 23, 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.

In Old Blood - Looking at the changing that happen as we age…starting with the blood of a 115 year old woman from the Netherlands that donated her body to science.

Food Preservation - As this post comes out, I am hearing the author talk about the topic! I am always looking for new ideas on processing the surplus of food during the summer to enjoy in the winter.

Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Compare - This is an interface to visual epidemiological trends and levels worldwide from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (an independent global health research center at the University of Washington. There are lots of ways to look at the data. In the snapshot below I set the Bottom Chart to ‘Map’ and then clicked on ‘Migraine’ in the Top Chart.

Would you live in a shipping container? - A collection of websites curated by Marcelle Sussman Fischler on this top on Learnist. Some still look like shipping containers….others are transformed.

Most of What You Need To Know About Planet Earth, in Seven Minutes - A short animation from Kurzgesagt.

Profiles in Xeriscaping: The Chocolate Flower - Something to think about for next summer’s garden.

10 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget - Good ideas! I would add: 1) keep in mind that there are other sources of protein than meat (and almost all of them are less expensive for the nutritional content) and 2) be mindful of lower cost veggies that are high in nutritional value (sweet potatoes are an example).

Why Did Plants Evolve These Weird and Horrific Flowers? - I can’t resist the botanicals.

Providing futile treatment prevents other patients from receiving the critical care they need - Futile treatment (i.e. unbeneficial medical care) in ICUs is not good for the patient….and this study shows that it is hurting others. Perhaps a tangential take away from this article is that patients and their families need to be in a position to decline unbeneficial medical care.

Exploring the Waterworks Deep inside the Inner Gorge of Grand Canyon National Park - A video about the springs in the Grand Canyon. 10 of the 12 spring types are found within the Grand Canyon (see the 10 here).

Complaining Robin

There is a robin that flies to the sycamore beside my deck and complains with the same style vocalizations every time I walk out onto the deck. I think its nest is underneath the deck. Why is it so alarmed? On the positive side - it is easy to get pictures of the bird while it vocally defends its turf!

Now that I’ve viewed the pictures on my larger monitor - it is easy to see that it is a female. She is quite insistent about keeping me away from her nest. I supposed she feels like there is an earthquake when I walk on the deck since her nest is on one of the support beams. But why is it that the nest is so important in August? Surely it is past the time for a new clutch of eggs and young.

And the bird seems to recognize me. It makes eye contact. If I stay out long enough it flies to the maple and continues to stare even if the vocalization stops after a few minutes.  And then I go back inside and the robin - apparently - has what it wants.

CSA Week 11

It takes a lot of focus to not have tomatoes left from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA share each week. This I made tomato sauce with all the tomatoes that were left (the roma tomatoes). I am perfecting my technique; the steps this week were:

• Cut the tops off
• Put in a food processor
• Puree - skins and all
• Cook until about the right consistency for sauce adding seasonings if designed (basil and garlic were my choice)

 Everything else I had left will last without refrigeration: potatoes and garlic.

This week there are a lot of tomatoes again. The new type of tomato in this week’s share was yellow (I got 4 of them along with 1 red one in the 3 pounds in this week’s share). The yellow tomato I ate with yogurt on top last night was pretty and tasty. I’ll eat the heirloom tomato for my next ‘tomato as a side dish.’

The beautiful peppers are in a range of colors. What a way to add flavor and color to a meal!

The spaghetti squash will work very well under chili that my husband is going to make (using up some of the tomato sauce I am accumulating).

This upcoming week is going to be a ‘good eating’ week!

3 Free eBooks - August 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 August 2014.

Shelley, George Ernest; Keulemans, John Gerrard (lithographer/llustrator). A monograph of the Nectariniidae, or, Family of sun-birds. London: Published by the author. 1876. Available from the Internet Archive here. The illustrations are the best of this book and there are other books that have the same lithographer also available on the Internet Archive that are worth a look too (although I think the sun-birds book is the best).

Dam, Jan Daniël van; Tichelaar, Pieter Jan; Schaap, Ella; Lins, P. Andrew. Dutch Tiles in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.1984. Available from the Internet Archive here. I started looking for books that had tile patterns after the Coursera course I am taking on Symmetry used them as part of the introduction to the vocabulary used to discuss symmetry. What do you think of the grapes and pomegranates tiles? Notice that the tiles are rotated to create the pattern (the stems always point to the center).

an hui sheng chu si hai zong zhi hui bu. xiao mie wen ying de ye sheng zhi wu. 1958. Available from the Internet here. This is a Chinese botany book. I always enjoy botanical prints and these were no exception. It was also good to realize that books from around the world are making their way into the archive.

Enjoy these and many other books that are freely available on the internet.

Still in the Trash

My last post on the topic of trash was back in January.  I decided to do another inventory.

What is changed from January?

Composting fruit/veggie parings and eggshells. The old joint compound buckets we have left from our basement finishing are great for loading up about half full then moving on to fill the next one. I have enough to hold the compost until it is ‘done’ and ready to go on into the chaos garden. I think my strategy will work even during the colder months!

Small pieces of paper and clean foil. I’ve become expert at collecting small pieces of paper in small boxes and putting the whole thing in the recycle when it is full. When I get pieces of foil that are clean (like on dark chocolate), I collect it into a ball of foil until it is large enough to go into the recycle.

Package avoidance. We have made an effort to stop buying food in packaging that is not recyclable. Microwave popcorn is probably our biggest change. We used to eat a lot of microwave popcorn but buy the plain popcorn now and use a Nordic Ware popcorn bowl to hold it in the microwave (this is healthier too). The CSA has also help reduce packaging - clamshells and plastic that sometimes is too messy to recycle.

So - what is still in our trash?

Packaging from food. Messy plastic or clamshells from meat purchases are the most significant food trash right now; we aren’t buying as much meat but the packaging is always plastic/foil shrink wrap or clamshells that are messy with meat juices. There are small items that are made of recyclable materials but are not allowed because of their size or sharp edges; these include the flip tops from canned goods (the most numerous in our household is from cat food) and straws. I am using up the straws I have on hand then won’t buy more.

Kleenex and paper towels. I am going to try using less Kleenex when I am around the house; I’ve dug out handkerchiefs I’ve had for years to put in strategic places and then into the weekly laundry every week whether they are used or not. I’ve already dramatically reduced the paper napkins we used by keeping a stack of cloth napkins on our table. We don’t use a lot of paper towels; mostly they get used for spills on the floor in the kitchen.  I’ve made the old towels more accessible so maybe we’ll forego the paper towels more often.

Used cat litter. This will always have to go in the trash. It probably already makes up a sizable portion of our trash.

Magnolias at the National Arboretum

We walked around the US National Arboretum’s Holly and Magnolia Collection. I never pass up an opportunity to photograph magnolia. The last time I got such an opportunity was a little over a year ago at Mount Vernon. The arboretum has quite a collection of large southern magnolias with blooms low enough for easy photography. This late in the season there are a lot of different stages of blooms and seed pods.

The southern magnolias I was photographing were full of color:

-- Glossy greens and felt browns of leaves

-- Green, red and black of seed pods

-- Fuzzy tan of the bud coverings, creamy white of the full flowers, and brown of the older flowers

I couldn’t resist some 10x magnified images of the pods

Or a flower near the ground that was attracting bees.

A Juvenile Swan

There was a bird at the Josey Ranch Lake (Carrollton TX) that was between an ‘ugly duckling’ and a beautiful swan. On shore the bird looked as large as the adult swans.

Both parents kept watch as the juvenile took to the water with the ducks.

On a longer swim on the lake, one of the parents kept close while the other stayed further away on watch. 

The big excitement of the outing we witnessed was the juvenile chasing a duck - almost running over the other bird. Afterwards, the duck bobbed about looking stunned while the young swan made a lazy loop around the fountain in the center of the lake as if nothing had happened.

Then the young swan followed the parent at a sedate pace and distance to the far end of the lake for a snack of lake greens. It was easier to see that the young bird was somewhat smaller than the adult…but not much.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 16, 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 items about women mathematicians this week: A Woman Has Won the Fields Medal, Math's Highest Prize, for the First Time about Maryam Nurzakhani and When Snails Lose Their Way from Vi Hart (she’s a web math geek!).

Two items about Tucson (where my daughter is): Place-based development and streetcar transforming downtown Tucson (something to ride from the University to downtown next time I visit) and Fire and Water Exact Tolls on Saguaro National Park (hope the part is not too damaged this season)

Photo Tampering throughout History - This was a web site referenced in a Coursera course (The Camera Never Lies). This page shows examples of ‘doctored’ images starting with an 1860 picture of Lincoln to the present.

How Sleep Changes as You Age, and Why You'll Need Even More of It - When my daughter was a baby it seemed like she was in REM sleep almost all the time and then it wasn’t quite as often. The table in this article starts with age 20 but shows that the decline continuing throughout life. Check the references at the end of the article of tips to improve sleep at any age.

Excavation of ancient well yields insight into Etruscan, Roman and medieval times - Lots of finds from one small place - bronze vessels, carved wood, gape seeds. Evidently in Etruscan religion, throwing items into a well filled with water was an act of religious sacrifice.

13 Things You Probably Don’t Know About the U.S. Water System (But Should) - I assume there will be a lot more ‘water education’ for the general public going on in the next few years. At some point we’ll need to do more than education.  It is disappointing to find out that leaky water pipes are so common.

Just How Bad Is California's Drought? - Looking at the state from 2011 to now graphically. The whole state is now in severe to exceptional drought status.

Natural light in office boosts health - I know that I rejoiced when I had a window office during my career…too bad there are a lot of office buildings that have a lot of interior offices with artificial lighting. Employees in ‘big box’ stores or warehouses have the same problem. Now that my only office is at home, I choose a room with lots of natural light (and good scenery).

5 Easy Ways to Use Tomatoes - I have lots of tomatoes….and am always on the lookout for new ideas. So far - I’m keeping up with the CSA bounty of tomatoes via salads, soups, topper to a stir fry, salsa….and tomato sauce to freeze as a last resort.

The Earth Looks like A Living Creature in This Amazing NASA Video - The film is just a little over a minute and depicts 7 days in 2005 of the earth and its clouds.

Zooming - August 2014

I was in Texas for a couple of weeks so the zoom collages are for pictures I took while traveling rather than close to home.  The themes of the collages this month are: insects/reptiles,

plants, and

birds.

CSA Week 10

I started out Wednesday morning making tomato sauce with all the tomatoes left in the crisper since I knew there would be more in this week’s CSA share. I ended up cooking all the red round tomatoes and about half the cherry tomatoes with onions (also from the CSA) and garlic and dried parsley (dried from the CSA share early in the season).  I even added some orange peel I’d dried from organic oranges from last spring!  My husband commented that the concoction smelled good.

I did pretty well clearing out everything else. The only items left from last week were a few potatoes.

As I expected there were a lot of tomatoes in the week 10 share. The heirloom tomatoes have become such a favorite that I swapped the jalapeno pepper for two more! They are delicious sliced and lightly salted. I got the black cherry tomatoes rather than the sun golds I had selected in previous weeks. And the poblano peppers were swapped for another eggplant.  Half of one of those eggplants was grilled with orange ginger sauce last night.

The potatoes were purple skinned/white flesh and small enough to be great for roasting.

The watermelon was big enough to require a second trip to the car! My daughter has been getting watermelon from her CSA in Tucson for weeks and the newsletter for them this week had some advice for using watermelon rind - either marinating it or using it in stir fry. I’ll post about my experiments in a week or so.

Lots of good eating in this week 10 CSA share!