Gleanings of the Week Ending April 04, 2015

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.

Disturbingly little known about microbeads, plastics in the Great Lakes - Microbeads and small plastic debris may be a bigger environmental problem than anticipated.

Scientists Urge Museums to Cut Koch Ties - Do sponsors of exhibits at places like American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History influence the content of the exhibits they sponsor? An uncomfortable reality of modern America?

Watch Plants Sprout and Grow In Seconds, In These Astonishing Timelapses - There is a lot of sprouting going on in the springtime. I enjoyed this collection of videos showing acorns, mung beans, and chia seeds sprouting.

15 subway-style maps that explain everything but subways - Some of these maps work well…some are a stretch. Just because the style of map works for subways does not meant it is good for everything. It is fun to see the various subjects depicted this way.

What Creatures Can You Identify In This Fossilized Sea Floor? - How good were powers of observation?  Maybe a larger image would help?

Solar Shingles’ Electricity: Interview with Integrated Solar Technology - I’ve always thought solar shingles would be appealing - if this price was right they should be part of the roof on every house!

Lessons of the world’s most unique supercentenarians - More and more people are living into their 90s…and even past 100. Researchers looking at people over 85 are discovering that chronological age may not be a valid form of measuring health at all.

Good luck and the Chinese reverse global forest loss - Over the past 20 years - China has tree planting projects, there is been more rain in Australia, South America in Africa savanna areas, and Russia/former Soviet republics have regrowing forests on abandoned farmland. That has offset the vegetation loss in the Amazon forests and Indonesia.

With 'Single-Stream' Recycling, Convenience Comes at a Cost - This is frustrating. We have ‘single stream’ recycling in our area. It’s easy but it may mean that more that we ‘recycle’ actually goes to the landfill.

Exercise largely absent from US medical school curriculum, study shows - More confirmation that in the US we train doctors to help sick people….not to help people sustain (or regain) health.

Universities on the Brink of a Nervous Breakdown - Really? Isn’t it healthy for organizations to evolve rather than be static?

Flowers on the Maple

The deer can reach about as far up into the maple as I can. It took some stretching to catch a branch to lower it for photography. I have a new camera this year so opted for getting close rather than using the loupe like I did last year.

The flowers are not large…but their deep red color is one of the first signs of spring in our backyard each spring. The birds and squirrels seem to be enjoying the flowers but they don’t strip away the flowers completely. The deer have made quick work of the flowers (maybe the buds didn’t even get a chance to open!) on the lower branches. Hopefully the deer will find other food as the season progresses and the tree can have some leaves on those branches this summer; if not - I’ll have a harder time reaching the maple flowers in spring 2016.

Master Naturalist Field Trip - Part 2

After the hike along Trolley Trail between Banneker Historical Park and Museum and Ellicott City on Saturday (previous post), our group headed to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. The Thomas Viaduct - a railroad bridge that crosses the Patapsco River and Valley just inside the park. It was completed in 1835 and still carries railroad traffic!

In our previous Master Naturalist classes we had learned about the history of the area from colonial times. Where the sign talks about Elkridge Landing as a port looking unimaginable today; the silt and dams have changed the river tremendously since colonial days when Elkridge Landing was a significant port.

The CCC built building in the park and we visited one. It was built of stone and there was an interesting nest (wasps?) near the ceiling of the porch. The inside is evidently riddled with termites - beyond repair.

There is a sewer pipe is exposed along the river. It was uncovered during the flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 - and there is not stable way to cover it again. The river was stocked a few days before our hike; a little boy was fishing with his day and joyously held up a fish they’d caught for us to see as we were walking on the swinging bridge over the Patapsco.

We saw a couple of skunk cabbage just poking up from the leaves.

The main green was moss. This log with green cap was a welcome relieve from the brown leaves.

There was some color in the rocks too if you looked closely…a lot of big crystals in pegmatite.

And what’s not to like about water tumbling over rocks…and down to the river. It was a good last ‘uphill’ for the day. We’d been out and about since 8:30 and it was 4:30. The Master Naturalist field trip was history.

Backyard View - March 2015

Our backyard was snowy for more than half the month of March this year. At times the maple branches would begin to look red - but this it would get very cold again and the tree would turn back to the very wintery looking gray/brown.

This first picture is from March 4th. The forest floor was full of fog that morning because the air was warming and the snow was melting during the days but freezing again each night.

On the 20th we got more snow and it coated everything. The snow was surprisingly light but there was no breeze to knock it off the branches. It was a good day to be indoors.

The last picture is from March 30th. The maple does have red flowers on its branches. I’ll have to go out on the next sunny day to see if any of the flowers are low enough to photograph. The deer browse the tree heavily (so the low branches are devoid of flowers). The holly back in the forest and the long needled pines are about the only things that do not have a ‘deer pruned’ look this time of year.

Master Naturalist Field Trip - Part 1

Last Saturday was the day-long field trip for our Master Naturalist class. It was very cold but everyone bundled up and headed out from the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum. We saw a replica of the type of cabin that would have been on the property when Banneker lived there and marveled that the property was purchased with 7,000 pounds of tobacco. Dried tobacco is very light so we assumed it must have still been green…but that is still a lot of tobacco.

One of the first stops was the Banneky House built in the mid-1800s - long after Benjamin Banneker’s time. Our focus was the rocks on its exterior! This wall showcases Ellicott City Granite with the small, very dark pieces being amphibole.

We started to walk down the pathway of the park to the Trolley Trail that would take us into Ellicott City. The trolley stopped in 1959 and the rail to trail occurred in the 1990s. The forest was not an old forest and there were some houses (some very new ones in the mix) built fairly close to the water. The weather has been too cold for wildflowers to be blooming but there were other things of interest. I always stop for shelf fungi and these with gray/white/rust rings were nestled into some green lichen….the color and texture was eye catching.

There was water trickling everywhere…and the most seemed very green against the backdrop of rocks and brown leaves left over from last season.

The bed of moss has fruiting bodies! Note that the height of the whole plant is only about 2-3 inches.

We saw frogs eggs - but the frogs were silent in the cold (and probably burrowed somewhere to keep warm).

There were swirls in some of the rocks beside the trail. Thinking about the metamorphosis of rock under pressure requires a conscious effort to understand a timescale that is beyond our normal comprehension.

We get down to Ellicott City in time for lunch. The decision to eat at a restaurant (and warm up) rather than picnic was welcomed by all.

I noticed the cairns in the little park across from the restaurant. At least two types of rocks were easy to spot!

The post that marks the water level above the normal river height during various floods is at the river end of Main Street in Ellicott City. The one in 1868 is at the very top of the bridge railing. That would have flooded two floors of the buildings! At that time the area would have been heavily farmed - most of the forests would have been fields so the water would have run off quickly from a storm. The 1972 mark is from Hurricane Agnes. Some forest had grown back but there was beginning to be a lot of housing development. More has been built since then. What would happen if a storm like Hurricane Agnes happened again today? A lot of impervious pavement has been added to the watershed. Are there enough forested buffers and rain gardens to slow down the flow of stormwater during a big storm?

After lunch, our group carpooled to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. I’ll post about that part of the field trip later this week.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 6

Last Wednesday was the 6th of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. We managed to go out for a short history walk at Belmont before the rain started. I noticed a lower branch of the English Elm on the slope in front of the house and got this close up of the buds.

Back inside we talked about native and invasive species in Maryland. I’m motivated to think about planting some ‘natives’ at the edge of the forest behind our house. The area has a lot of deer traffic so I may have to protect whatever I plant.  We have big trees but not many samplings because of the heavy browsing. I am starting with two items in a two small areas: ferns in the dampest area of the yard and a spicebush or service berry or winterberry to provide a shrub or understory level plant in the area where it has gotten too shady for grass to grow well. I still love the crocus, snowdrops and daffodils in the spring - even though they are non-native. Our neighbor has an expanding clump of daffodils at the edge of the woods and I enjoy them every spring. Maybe I’ll plant some bulbs next fall around my young understory tree.

In the afternoon the topic was fish. After a short lecture we did several classification exercises with various fishes on newspaper. I appreciate that gloves were provided…and that my pen worked just find to spread the fins and open the mouth! We headed out to the pond; it was cold and we did not get a single fish in the net although we did recognize scat (from our week 3 lecture on mammals). This one had a lot of hair - so a predator - and too big for fox - so probably a coyote. They seemed to frequent the area around the pond.

I also got some images of the bald cypress from the other side of the pond. See the people to the right of the tree…for scale.

Also near the pond are some trees that were planted in protective tubes that seem to be thriving. One had a delicate birds nest from last summer. The ornithology segment of the course is part of the last class.

I did some follow-up work at home from the week 4 lecture on microbes. I made a spore print with a baby bella mushroom I had from the grocery store. It is an easy process: 1) remove any remaining veil covering the gills on the underside of the mushroom and the stem 2) turn it gills down on a piece of paper 3) cover it with an upside down bowl to keep it from disturbed 4) come back in 12+ hours, carefully remove the bowl and mushroom…the spore print will be on the paper. I was surprised at how much moisture the mushroom leaked onto the paper…next time I’ll not used paper that has printing on the other side!

Another follow-up was from week 5. When we went to the stream - we scraped the rocks with a toothbrush and kept the sample of watery debris in the refrigerator for a week. There was no compound microscope in the building for week 6 as originally planned so I took the sample home to look at with my microscope. And there were living diatoms in the sample! I same two different kinds right away….and will look again sometime this weekend.

Brookside Gardens Early Spring - March 2015

Last weekend was a pretty cold to be walking around Brookside Gardens but I did notice some harbingers of spring.

The witch hazel is the first tree to show colors in the spring. Brookside has yellow and red specimens. The color comes in the form of festive streamers around the red center of the flower.

There were a few skunk cabbage blooms. The area was thick with the plants last spring so I knew where to look off the boardwalk between Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center. Next time I go - early next week probably - I’ll probably see a lot more of these plants. This is the first year I’ve thought to look for them early enough to see them emerge from the ground.

Of course there are buds and new cones everywhere…the two below were so large I didn’t need the loupe!

Ten Little Celebrations - March 2015

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. Here are my top 10 for March 2015.

Snow Day. It was pretty…and I enjoyed it - but I was ready for it to be the last one of this season.

A Muddy Hike. Who knew it would feel go to be outdoors on a cold cloudy day - squishing through the mud to find animal tracks. It felt good to get out of the classroom.

A March Day. It seemed like there have not been very many of the sunny, breezy, warmer days yet this year but there was one - and I celebrated it between the recurring waves of cold weather.

Fungi of Belmont. The snow had just melted and the jelly fungi were making fruiting bodies - a first bit a spring color to celebrate.

Magnolia puzzle. It is sometimes challenging to identify something with just dead leaves from last season and buds….I am planning some hikes to watch the trees flower this spring to make the final ID.

Brookside on the edge of spring. There was not a lot blooming last weekend ---- but there was a hint of the season. It will be worth a weekly trek to celebrate new flowers.

New hiking boots. So comfy! They felt great as soon as I put them on. I have worn them on one hike already - just to confirm that they are ready for a day long hike. The old ones still have some life in them - but I’ll wear the new ones for the longer hikes.

Last class of the week. March has been a busy month for classes…sometimes 3 days a week. I generally like class - but I’m saturated and celebrating when the last one ends for the week.

A day at home. I celebrated that I had no reason to leave home on one of the icy days early in the month. It seemed like I had a commitment to be somewhere else every other day that week!

Mailing books. I celebrated mailing off books to family far away. It harkened back to when I was mailing off books frequently via paperbackswap and I enjoyed the trek to the post office with my packages.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory - March 2015

It was cold yesterday but the sun was out and we decided to walk around Brookside Gardens anyway. I’ll post about the few outdoors items of interest we found later this week. Today - I’m focused on the lush vegetation of the Conservatories. We were surrounded by color in the green house and it was pleasantly warm.

Now that I have noticed the cycads at the entrance - I check on them at the beginning of my walking around. The cocoa tree has been moved where it is easier to see from the walkway too.

I was using my monopod for my camera and it helped me get the best picture I’ve ever taken of one of the red pompom flowers.

The star fruit on the tree near one corner was the largest I’ve even seen - and the yellow rimmed with green was appealing. It is an improbable looking fruit.

Enjoy the color from the Brookside conservatory to start the work week!

3 Free eBooks - March 2015

So many good reads this month….I chose subject diversity to make my selection: biology, poetry, and design.

Maryland Biodiversity Project. 2015. A website started in June 2012 by Bill Hubick and Jim Brighton to document the biodiversity in Maryland. The pictures are the result of contributions of more than 400 naturalists and photographers. I enjoyed looking at the fungi particularly (here for the basidiomycota as shown in the image below) with more images for each one behind the thumbnail). I like that the images are categorized by county within the state too so I can see if anyone else has provided am image from my area of the state.

Stevenson, John (editor). The Herons Nest. 2015. This online journal publishes Haiku quarterly. It started in 1999 and the archives are all online. I am savoring the issues. Haiku and Zentangles® are the best ways I’ve found to get the ‘Zen’ fix for the day!

Tanaka, Kikua; Takazieva, Kiyoshi. Iroha-biki Moncho. Book of crests and designs. 1800. Three volumes available from the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3. Wow - these books are full of designs that are easily incorporated into Zentangles.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 21, 2015

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.

Nine superfruits and super seeds to add to your diet - I eat 3 of the 9 frequently (chai, flaxseeds, and blueberries)!  There is only one that I haven’t added to my diet (yet): Acai berries.

There May Be More Water on Jupiter's Largest Moon than on Earth - Subterranean oceans - on Ganymede. It wasn’t so long ago that we assumed that the Earth’s oceans were unique…and now we are thinking that maybe they aren’t.

World's most iconic ecosystems: World heritage sites risk collapse without stronger local management - These sites have importance to world…the researchers argue for stronger local management. That is needed but these ecosystems are connected to other ecosystems are not iconic but may be critical to sustaining these designated iconic areas. We have to start thinking about how we sustain the Earth - worldwide - more often than we’ve ever done before.

Cherry Tree that needs pruningPrune Trees like a Pro - This post has good diagrams. I noticed it this week just as I was thinking about what I need to do first in my yard and decided pruning was high on the list; our cherry and plum both need it.

Archaeologists Uncover Ancient Egyptian Tombs with Stunning Murals - They were found near Luxor. Isn’t it amazing that there are still things like to be found in places that have been intensely searched for over a century? Hopefully they will be preserved in a way that the colors remain as vivid as they are now.

Towels top kitchen contamination hazards list - Ugh! I think I’ll start putting out a fresh towel every day.

The World’s Largest Solar Energy Projects - Some projects from India and California…these are huge installations.

Oncologists reveal reasons for high cost of cancer drugs in U.S. - There is a list of some potential solutions at the end of the article. One that sticks out is to allow the FDA or physician panels to recommend target prices based on the drug’s magnitude of benefit (i.e. value based pricing). Why has our system allowed something other than value based pricing to be the norm? Hurray for the doctors that are standing up for their patients!

10 National Monuments you’ve never heard of - Vacation ideas. I always like to keep these in mind to add to the itinerary of a trip to the area. I’ve been to El Malpais several times. Maybe next time I visit Tucson - Chiricahua will be a day trip.

Chitin, a structural molecule associated with allergy response, is identified in vertebrates - A few weeks ago, I learned that chitin (the material of insects’ exoskeletons) is in the cell walls of mushrooms…and then this article about chitin in fishes and amphibians! And chitin has been shown to be an excellent material for biodegradable plastics!

Master Naturalist Training - Week 5

Last Wednesday was the fifth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. The snow that held on for the first 4 weeks was totally melted but the wind was still bitterly cold. I took some pictures of the turtle in the nature center next to our class room rather than walking around outside for my ‘before class’ photography session.

The topics for this week were taxonomy and ecology. One of the exercises in the taxonomy session was to create a dichotomous key for 5 things we collected outside. Our team decided quickly to do evergreens. One person found a branch from a white pine tree on the ground. I picked some leaves from a boxwood and a small spruce branch…we briskly walked over to pick some holly leaves and a blue spruce. And then we were back inside making the key. It was easy to create the binary questions for the key: needles or leaves, smooth leaf margins or spines on margins, long needles or short, bluish needles or green needles. Before we put the pine branch back outside (it was sticky with sap), I took some pictures of the immature cones.

One thing I realized as we were working with dichotomous keys is how computers have changed identification of organisms. We tend to do a search for whatever characteristic seems most distinctive and easily observed….and then use pictures to hone the identification quickly.

The ecology section was focused on stream ecology and we walked down to the nearest stream and did some collecting and water testing. The immediate area where we worked is state park and conservation easements.

This is the time of year to find insect larvae in the water (hatched from eggs laid last summer). We pulled apart leaf packs that had been decomposing in the water and use D nets to catch organisms stirred up by turning over a rock and then stomping the stream bottom. And there was a lot to see. The dobsonfly larva was about 4 inches long!

A water strider was already moving around on the surface of the water.

My contribution - after I borrowed some waterproof boots to wade into the water with a D net - was a small fish! It was a little smaller than the dobsonfly.

As we started back, I took two pictures that were reminders of previous topics: bark of a persimmon (botany from week 3)

and a deep red shelf fungus (fungus from week 4).

Further along the road, I took a picture of Belmont Manor in the late afternoon sun….a good ‘last picture’ for the day.

Short Walks at Belmont - March 2015

Yesterday when I was at Belmont Manor and Historic Park the snow was gone and I made short walks during and after the short class I attended. One focus was to get pictures of the trees before the leafed out for a project I am working on to produce materials of a Belmont Tree Tour. But it was a nice day and I was easily side tracked. From a photographic perspective I am more interested in the close ups - like the English elm branch with buds, lichen and moss.

The bald cypress by the pond is interesting because it is a surprise. It is a survivor north of the usual range for the tree. It is easy to identify even in winter because of the knees and fallen needles.

The swallows seemed to be taking over the blue bird boxes. This pair seems to be very proprietary about this particular box already. They both would fly away and return to the same box again and again.

There we shelf fungi growing on a tree that was upright but appeared dead - or near dead.

Some of the interior was hollow and exposed - cracking along ring lines and other trunk structures.

As I walked along nearer the manor house there were periodic patches of crocus. At my house the bulbs have not started blooming quite yet.

The wind had blown some sycamore seeds down. The ones on the tree were too high to get good pictures so it was a bonus to get the pictures. This is one tree I can identify from the bark!

Southern Magnolias are easy to identify too. They keep their leaves and already have buds.

There was also an empty seed pod from last season on the ground - probably blown off by the wind just as the sycamore seeds were blown.

Some trees have places where large branches were cut that are fractured much like the dead tree…but are very much alive. This was from an English Elm that appears to be surviving well enough.

Last but not least - I hiked into the forest to take a look at another magnolia. I’d been told it was a cucumber magnolia but none of the trees is large - they are all in the understory. I’ll have to watch it as it blooms.  It may be an umbrella magnolia instead.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 4

Last Wednesday was the fourth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. Snow was not in the forecast….but there was still some on the ground. As I walked from the parking lot to the building, the fog was hanging in the low places and into the forest; daylight savings time made a difference in the lighting as well.

The two topics for the day were

• Microbes, Mosses and Mushrooms and
• Humans and the Landscape

I did the pre-reading for both modules and the factoid that popped out was that the cell walls of mushrooms are made of chitin (the same molecule that makes insects’ exoskeletons!). How had I missed learning that in the mycology class I took back in the 70s?

Another key learning from the beginning topic of the day was the logistics of the lecture. The instructor had her one year old son with her! I thought it was would be distracting (and eventually he was taken off to another room by a helper) but the lecture was interesting and he provided some of the lighter moments of the morning. It is not something that could be done for every class but I am thinking more often about ways we can blur the divide between work and the other things we do in our lives. The industrial age forced us to make work totally separate - but humans didn’t evolve in that kind of environment. Our interests were multi-faceted with only short bursts of total focus. Concentrating on one thing for a long period of time (the way many jobs are formulated) can be stressful simply because the human brain and body did not develop in that environment.

Later in the day we hiked into the woods and found lots of fungi. Slims and jellies

Shelf fungus

With pores (rather than gills) underneath

Lichen

In the afternoon we had two lectures. The first gave a history of the human development of the land along the Patapsco River (near our classroom). The story included John Smith (noticing red clay), a harbor just below the falls of the river was the second busiest harbor in Maryland after Annapolis until is silted up, the deforestation to feed the iron forges and heat houses, the mills (flour and textile), the floods, and trains - the first cars pulled by horses before steam engines were developed. Much of the around the river is deforested and is a heavily used state park. Floods are still a problem. The one caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 took many years of recovery.

Switching gears - the next lecture was from a wildlife perspective. The impact of plants and animals brought to the New World was discussed. Some introductions were accidently but had a huge effect: earthworms changed the forest floor from deep mulch with lots of moisture to drier places….and changed the understory; chestnut blight took away the biggest tree in the forest. There is more forest in the area now than there was 100 years ago but the deer population is so large that plants in the understory are increasingly thorny invasive plants. We’ll have another lecture on invasive plants in week 6.

At the end of the day, I thought about my expectation that the lectures couldn’t all be as interesting as the first few - but the ones this week were still the same high quality in terms of material and presentation. And the weather is enabling more outside treks….makes it even better! 

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 7, 2015

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.

'Bionic' eye allows man to see wife for first time in a decade - The system is not yet advanced enough to provide high resolution vision - but it is enough to improve quality of life….and sets the stage for more development of similar devices. Certain types of blindness (caused by retina problems, not the optic nerve) are candidates for this type of ‘bionic’ eye.

Global Pesticide Map Shows Large Areas of High Water Pollution Risk - Enlarge the map in this article; what is the risk in the area where you live? In mine is high/very high…..that’s not good.

Economic models provide insights into global sustainability challenges - Making decisions based on simplifying assumptions - which is what we normally do - may not be wise. The advent to models that can help us integrate what we know about global economics, geography, ecology and environmental sciences may provide some surprising insights and lead to better decisions.

Twelve Milkweeds for Monarchs - Wow! There are a lot more different kinds of milkweed than I anticipated.

Food Additives Linked to Inflammation - Yet another reason to reduce the amount of processed food you consume.

Special Tours Offered At Mesa Verde National Park - Something to remember about Mesa Verde. My husband I enjoyed our visit almost 40 years ago and have been talking about visiting again.

Lab-on-paper developed for rapid, inexpensive medical diagnostics - Point-of-care testing is projected to expand over the next few years. Imagine not having to wait for several days to get lab results for your annual physical!

Nine steps to survive 'most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history' - Bottom line: The builders of infrastructure need to consider the full context of their projects….not just who will benefit.

The Chemistry of Colored Glass - Glass is one of my favorite materials. This post includes a graphic that talks about what is added to the basic soda-lime glass to create different colors of glass.

Seven strategies to advance women in science - Good points. We’ve been trying some of these things for at least the past 40 years…..maybe it is doing ALL of them that will make the difference.

F. Kaid Benfield: How to Create Healthy Environments for People - There seem to be quite a few articles this week with lists. Here is the last one! All these ideas seem to make sense….so why are they not already part of the way development takes place?

Master Naturalist Training - Week 3

River Birch

White Birch

This week was the third of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. The forecast was for rain all day but it held off long enough for us to take two short hikes - one for each of the topics for the day: Botany and Mammals. We tromped through snow to look at buds, bark and dry plants. I managed to get some good close ups of bark. How many of these would you recognize: river birch (peeling bark), white birch (white with dark striations), dogwood (blocky bark…but the buds are easier for me to use for identification), and tulip poplar (complete with lichen growing beneath the furrows? Can you guess what the hairy vine is growing up this tulip poplar trunk?

Dogwood

Tulip poplar (lichen)

Tulip poplar (poison ivy)

The second hike was for mammals which was harder for several reasons: mammals are very good at hiding, it was wet (snow melt and sprinkles), the freeze thaw cycle had distorted the tracks even though we were able to recognize some deer tracks, and the one non-deer scat we found was dissolving in a puddle of melt water (although it did include hair so was from a carnivore). I managed to get snow over the top of my boots a couple of times; I took the boots off to let them dry out along with my socks while we finished up the class.

Now that I’ve had those two short hikes I am looking forward to the great thaw and run off….and a good round of picture taking of winter trees for shape and bark….may some buds before they pop open (or right after). I’m keen to create a tree tour of the Belmont location (where our class is held) as my project associated with the master naturalist training.

Like the previous sessions - the Wednesday class day dodged the hazardous weather. Yesterday was very snowy in Maryland!

Previous posts: Week 1, Week 2

Sustainability - Planting Trees

I am thinking about spring even though it is still a bit too cold to be out planting things just yet. Today I thought about trees rather than the chaos garden or the deck garden. Trees are a lot bigger and long lived too. Trees make a home more sustainable by

• Providing shade in the summer (cooling) and bright sunlight in the winter (warming)
• Soaking up rain - slowing down the runoff into nearby stream or gutters
• Providing nesting places for birds and squirrels…food for pollinators and their larvae…and sometimes food for humans too

The oak tree to the east of our house has grown tremendously in the 20 years we’ve lived here and now shades the front of the house almost completely in the summer. In the winter, the leaves are gone and we get the sun warming the front rooms during winter. We like it - and our cats seem to migrate to the patches of sunlight on winter mornings.

On the southwest side of the house a sycamore has gotten tall enough to shade the dining room and one side of master bedroom in the summer ---- and let the sunlight reach the house through its bare branches in the winter. Ideal placement!

So - in keeping with thinking about gardens and plantings - do I want another tree in the yard? I am concerned that the deer population in our area is so overwhelming that they are eating everything. How would a young tree survive? I’ve convinced myself that we’ll not add any trees in the near term. I’m grateful that the lowest branches of the trees we have are out of deer reach!  I would like to plant some fruit trees....and beging the process of dramatically reducing the grassy part of the lawn...but that is for some future year.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 28, 2015

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.

Pollinator Partnership Planting Guides - Planning a garden? How about giving the pollinators in your area a boost too? This site has a planting guide for ‘ecoregions’ in the US - accessed by entering your zipcode!

A Wet and Wild look Inside the 'Mushroom Houses' Of a Fungi Farm - Ever wonder how mushrooms you buy in the grocery store are grown? This post includes a short video. If we had household gardener robots - would you grow mushrooms as well as vegetables?

The Surprising, Depressing Reason Why City-Dwelling Robins Sing at Night - When I saw the picture at the front of this post, my first thought was “that’s not a robin.” But it is - a European robin. I was thinking of the North American variety. It is disturbing that our lights are messing up circadian rhythms - our own and other organisms.

What is the oldest city in the world? - It is surprisingly controversial. How many of the possibilities in the article have your heard about before?

Deconstructing mental illness through ultradian rhythms - A study that suggests that regular meals and early bedtimes may lead to a better life and prevent the onset of mental illness. The study discovered a new dopamine-based rhythm generator. The full paper is available here.

Retracing the roots of fungal symbioses - Mycorrhizal fungi live on the roots of host plants where they exchange sugars that plants produce for mineral nutrients that fungi absorb from the soil. It is hard to visualize - and often not well understood. Now genomics is being applied. Climate change will put whole new stresses on symbiotic relationships. I hope the knowledge gained from this type of research will help us maintain or increase food production as the environment changes.

Liquid Biopsy - Fast DNA-sequencing machines are leading to simple blood tests for cancer - There are some technologies that are so appealing…that you wish they were already available. But it is not easy. So far - the work is for specific types of cancers. The ability to do faster DNA sequencing is improving the prospects.

Ocean circulation change: Sea level spiked for two years along Northeastern North America - Climate change and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)…most of the models predict a weakening of the AMOC over the 21st century and it appears that there was changed in the 2009-2010 time frame.

Computational Anthropology Reveals How the Most Important People in History Vary by Culture - This study looked at articles about significant people in the English, German, Chinese and Japanese language versions of Wikipedia as a data source.

These Brilliantly Colored Bolivian Buildings Look Like Alien Spaceships - Wow! Almost too much color…but certainly different than the majority of buidlings.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 2

This week was the second of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. Like last week, the day was sandwiched between snow days; the roads were clear but snow was still piled up and salt was being sprinkled on walkways. We keep saying that hikes are part of the training days but it hasn’t been possible so far. I took a few pictures in the morning as I walked into the classroom building at Belmont. The cypress stands at the edge of the ice covered pond (above); we noticed the knees on a hike down to the pond last spring. A pine provides some contrast to the bare trees and white ground looking over the hill toward the forest. Since the class, another 3 inches of snow has fallen. The forecast does appear to be warming - but will it all be melted by next Wednesday?

My preparation for the second class included reading the Science of Science section of the notebooks - which was provided to us during the first class….and I did the web based pre-reading as I had done before. The area I spent the most time looking at was web-based: Criticalthinking.org - I read the complementary articles.

When I got to class - the topic for the morning was focused on local activism toward sustainability using Bethesda Green as an example. The presentation then small group collaboration on specifics for our county was invigorating. Now I’m dangerous and thinking about what to do next to further sustainability. I am already consciously making changes in the way I live but it is clear that there are challenges that cannot be addressed by individuals acting alone. Even some well-intentioned actions at an institutional level can go awry; we heard examples of a university cafeteria providing compostable to go cartons….and then not providing a bin for compostables (so they were treated as trash); a corporation having recycle bins in offices but the maintenance people emptying everything into the trash as they cleaned the offices at night.

In the afternoon - we looked more closely at rocks in our area. At mid-afternoon we were looking at bins of rocks and trying to identify them. We have a field trip in late March which will take us through areas where we should see many of the rocks along the trail! I bought the Maryland’s Geology by Martin F. Schmidt, Jr. (our instructor) to refresh my memory before the hike.

The second class was an intense and the first. I am very glad that the class days are a week apart. This is the type material that could not be absorbed in back to back days!

Backyard View - February 2015

Our backyard has been snowy for most of the month. It wasn’t that we got a tremendous amount of snow - just that it lingered for a long time because temperatures never got warm enough to melt it completely. A few times the grass began to show a little.

There were tracks through the snow too - mostly deer. They have a route between the houses and through our backyard to the forest. Sometimes they linger in the yard - look around. There is not enough for them to eat anywhere right now. The squirrels are active on sunny days. They are enjoying their store of acorns. So far they have not dumped any of the bird seed we have on the deck. The birds make their rounds to our water (heated bird bath) and seed several times a day: cardinals, titmice, chickadees, blue jays and doves. The crows are around too but not on the deck.

I’ll start weekly pictures of the backyard in March since I anticipate quite a lot of changes during the month!