Road Trip to North Carolina

We are back from a road trip to North Carolina - focused on the coastal National Wildlife Refuges. I have a series of posts planned for the next few weeks. Today my focus is the getting away.

We had decided to leave a little later to avoid the weekday commuter traffic around the Washington DC beltway so we took our time packing the car. It had been very wet the previous day and there were earthworms that had taken shelter under the garage door - to keep from drowning. Some of them had stayed to long but others were already making their way back over the asphalt to the lawn. There was also a tiny frog on the driveway that was evidently too cold to move.

My husband decided the traffic was light enough for us to leave earlier than he’d planned…and we were ready. We were on the road by 8:30. It was such a gray day that it was not a scenic drive. The non-native pears trees (escaped Bradford pear trees) were in bloom in the brushy areas along the highway. The new leaves of the season provided a hint of green.

We stopped to stretch our legs at the rest stops almost every hour….made very good time. It was still gray and cold as we drove over the bridge near Norfolk and saw larger ships.

And then we arrived in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and discovered that our room had a view of the Wright Brothers National Memorial (on the side of the barrier island facing the mainland) and about a block from the beach in the opposite direction (on the side of the barrier island facing the Atlantic). We hoped for a warmer and sunnier tomorrow!

Blue Tulip Glassware

Spring has sprung - I’ve put the green glass and red glass plates away. The Blue Tulip Depression Glass will be in the kitchen cabinets until the fall. As I make the change, I think about the old friends that collected it….and allowed me to buy all they had of my favorite pattern and color when they were downsizing. Those memories are good ones and extend back to the beginning of my memories. There are not very many items in my house that evoke that kind of history.

It also feels right to change things for the season inside the house just as so much is changing outside. The colors are lighter - the light is brighter - the days are longer. The Blue Tulip pattern matches the flowers that will be blooming soon and the color of the glass reminds me of summer skies.

Now that I have insulated drapes in my office and the Blue Tulip Glassware in the cabinet - the house is making the shift to spring and summer!

Brookside Gardens Walk About

I’ve already posted about the birds and the bulbs I photographed in my walk around Brookside Gardens the first weekend of April. Today I’m showcasing my favorite images that didn’t fit in those previous categories.

On the boardwalk between Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center I noticed a recently cut stump. The rings were interesting because the tree cross section was not round. Tree cookies from this tree would be very different from the ones we typically use for field trips with elementary schools. The rings in this stump would show up wonderfully with a little sanding.

A little further along the boardwalk - and the reason I had gone to the boardwalk to begin with - were the skunk cabbages. They are past the purple and green bloom stage and are all around the bald cypress with its knees. Both tree and cabbage like wet soil.

As I walked back toward the gardens I noticed a dried blossom from last summer catching the light and marveled that it had survived the ravages of winter so well.

There were several early magnolias beginning to bloom. At this stage - the fuzzy coverings are almost as interesting as the flowers!

The pink saucer magnolia buds frequently seem to be damaged by cold weather…but these battered buds have an abstract appeal.

I tried a background experience with the Lenten roses against a rock wall.

The witch hazel is still colorful but past prime.

There were three nests in the stand of river birch - two for birds and one a squirrel. I wondered if they birds’ nests were being built or from last year. Both of them seemed to have colorful (man-made) fibers woven into their structure.

These pine cones were probably blown from the nearby pines with the recent breezes since they don’t appear trampled.

Brookside Gardens in April - a great place for a photographic walk about. 

Brookside Gardens - Early Spring Bulbs

My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend was a great time for early spring bulb photography.  The daffodils dominated with different configurations of yellow and white…big and small. Miniature irises were in bloom too. It seems like there are fewer hyacinths every year; I’m not sure why. The tulips were up but there were no buds showing; they will be worth another trip to Brookside a few weeks from now. Enjoy the early spring bulbs slide show!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 11, 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.

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust - It’s in Inner Mongolia…a place that is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of ‘rare earth’ minerals. So sad that we can’t manage to build our tech in a way that is sustainable for the planet.

A Delicate Stone Bridge Creates a Mystical Passage with Its Reflection - After that last story - I needed to look at something beautiful for a bit...and this was it: a picture of a half-circle bridge reflected in water to complete the illusion of a full circle.

Bombing Range Is National Example for Wildlife Conservation - Elgin Air Force Base had 300 year old trees and is home to the last remaining old-growth longleaf pines in Florida…there is a natural resources visitor center and has 250,000 acres open for public recreation/wildlife habitat.

Erupting Volcanic Lightning! - A volcano on Mexico’s west coast.

A complex landscape has both vulnerabilities and resilience to climate change - Changes in the length of growing season and timing of rainfall will change the forests in Central Appalachia over the next century….and probably in the area of Maryland where I live too.

Can You Identify 20 Of The Most Common Birds in North America? - The quiz is here. Identify the bird pictured from the list - you’ll know if you got it right immediately. How many can you identify? I got 15 out of 20!

Theoretical study suggests huge lava tubes could exist on moon - So - how long will it take to have a mission to the moon to discover if the lava tubes exist?

Essential Spring Guide '15: On the Road to Castles of Stone and Wood Turned To Rock - This story brought back memories of the vacation to northeastern Arizona last January! My picture of Montezuma Castle is below!

Yellowstone by Moonlight - A 3 minute film that includes a series of time-lapse views of moonlit scenes in Yellowstone - including geysers and stars. I don’t have the patience for this kind of photography but I enjoy seeing the work of others.

MIT Climate CoLab Asks All For Impactful Climate Plans - Contests seeking high impact ideas on how to tackle climate change…submission due 5/16/2015. The Climate CoLab site is here.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 7

Last Wednesday was the 7th of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. It was a very rainy day and we didn’t get out of the building for a hike. I took a few pictures under the covered part of the Carriage House patio - of the very wet forest with a hint of green from small leaves just unfurled

And the high contrast of lawn grass with the meadow (I also like the white and black of the birch.

The morning topic was Reptiles and Amphibians….not a topic I know very much about although I do remember some of the frog calls from participating in FrogWatch years ago. I enjoy photographing frogs and tadpoles when I can find them!  Many of the non-native and invasive species are in the state due to the pet trade or hitchhiking of vehicles. Some - like the Burmese python - won’t survive the Maryland winters. Others - like some of the turtles - can survive and thrive in Maryland; some of them can hybridize with native Maryland species. The part of the lecture on salamanders was new to me. There are a lot more salamanders in Maryland than I realized; I’ll add a hike with the instructor to my list of things to do as follow-up to the Master Natural class....since we didn’t get out during the lecture due to weather.

The afternoon was very different from the other classes because the topic was Interpretation….which is really part of all the other topics. There is a National Association of Interpretation! By the end of the lecture I realized that a lot of what I’ve learned in the training for leading field trip nature walks is about interpretation. And I still have a lot to learn. This area may be more challenging that the factual aspects of being a Master Naturalist.

Later in the day, it was still very gray - but I like the wavy branches of the pine

And the lichen on the sycamore. Sometimes a gray day provides a different perspective of familiar vistas.

I also noticed - and appreciated - a new feature at Belmont: marked parking spaces.

Brookside Gardens Birds

My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend offered more than the usual opportunities to photograph birds. The day was chilly and a little breezy….but full of sun and an improvement over prior days. The birds were active.

The robins were the easiest to photograph because of their numbers and their interest in searching through leaves and grass for edibles. It was possible to get close enough for the camera zoom to do the rest. This bird had just stopped his searching temporarily to survey the surroundings…eyeing me with suspicion.

The cardinal was singing a spring song in the tulip poplar. I appreciated my monopod for this shot - and that the breeze paused momentarily.

This mourning dove was walking around the bed of sprouting bulbs looking for nesting material. In the instant after this picture was taken, the bird flew away with the piece of straw in its beak.

There were lots of these black birds (in the trees, in the bushes, on the grass) but I haven’t quite identified them. The tail seems short for a common grackle. They eye is yellow so that rules out a cowbird or starling…and there is not red shoulder patch for it to be a red winged blackbird. Hmmm.

Too Cold at Centennial Park

When I went out to photograph the sunrise (posted here), it seemed like the clouds were clearing and the temperature was pleasant enough - in the 50s - to walk around Centennial Park. A few hours later I got out of the car and realized that my bulky sweater and photo-vest were not going to be warm enough because the breeze was making it feel a lot colder than the mid-50s temperature. We had not walked too far when my husband commented that his coat was adequate but his legs were cold. So we didn’t walk very far! I took a few images as we hurried back to the car.

The canoes looked worn from previous years.

The paddle boats look colorful at the dock; they looked sparkling and new - or maybe we were just far enough not to notice the wear.

The trees were still very bare and the grass brown.

The geese were honking at each other the whole time we were making our brisk walk. And finally one pair was chased away…and a brief quiet reigned before other geese resumed their territorial defense.

Back in the car - I was glad to be out of the wind and warmed by the exertion of the walk.

Updating my Home Office

I’ve finally replaced the window treatment in my home office. It is a project I had put off for way too long. The action now was prompted by the knowledge that warmer days were coming and the west facing windowwould - as always - cause the room to be hot in the afternoon.

The 25 year old mini-blinds had started to fall apart last summer - and never provided very good insulation. The pocket sheers (sheer fabric with pockets for keepsakes) were probably my favorite sheers but they were 20 years old and beginning to tear; I put off taking them down as long as possible.

My first thought was to take down the mini-blinds, replace the pocket sheers and buy insulated drapery to go over the. I immediately had to revise the plan because the pocket sheers are not available. Pooh! What will I do with all the mismatched earrings, unusual buttons, name tags from my daughter’s high school activities, and other small items I’m not quite ready to discard? Right now they are in a box. I’ll keep them for a little longer but they won’t be in sight.

I opted to implement the rest of the plan. Ordering the drapery was easy and I was able to use the same rod as I already had for the pocket sheers. They look very light weight but have an insulated backing that will make them more effective in the summer than the mini-blinds every were. I’m ready for the first warm day!

There are still ‘clean up’ parts of the project: filling in the holes from the mini-blind brackets, donating the pocket sheers, and deciding what do to with the broken mini-blinds. I’d like to find a way to recycle them but they are not something that can go into the normal weekly recycle bin pickup.Pocket Sheers folded/ready to donate

I’m pleased to have completed the first ‘Spring 2015’ home improvement project!

April Sunrise at Home

Being on Daylight Savings Time makes it easy enough to catch a sunrise this time of year. I noticed as I came downstairs last weekend that the time, light and clouds were aligned to photograph the sunrise from my front porch (with our two cats meowing behind the door keeping them inside).

Pretty soon the trees will be full of leaves and the horizon from the front of our will be too high for sunrise pictures. Why don’t I get up a little early and find another nearby vantage point with a clearer horizon? For some reason, I only do that when I am traveling!

Zentangle® - March 2015

March was my second month of ‘a Zentangle a day’ - and I’m planning to continue for the foreseeable future and limit myself to one blog post about them each month. Sometimes I create more than one tile in a day…just because I feel the urge or because I need the Zen the activity brings.

After the first week of March - I decided to use the letters of the alphabet as the ‘string’ and quickly discovered how easily the string can disappear. Do you notice the A - B - C in the three tiles at the bottom of this group?

What about the D - E - F and G - H - I?

And the J - K - L and M - N - O? The K and the O are pretty clear.

P - Q - R  and S - T - U. I noticed after the fact how much the Q ended up looking like a dream catcher.

V - W and X - Y -Z. The Y looks so delicate.

I discovered the plastic that comes with Health Choice Café Steamer frozen entrees makes a great stencil. The first time I used it was for the O string tile.

The one on the upper left was another attempt to use it.

And a more complex tile using more of the strainer ‘holes’ is in the lower row - middle.

As you can see I occasionally am using red pens and cleaning out various colors of card stock from the office supplies that have accumulated from years of school projects and - I’m not sure what else.

By the end of March - I had quite a pile of 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles and I begin experimenting with displays for groups of them. I taped a bunch together and suspended them from a strip of balsa wood using binder clips as a first attempt. I’m sure I’ll come up with some other types of displays over the course of April.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

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.

Coursera - April 2015

My Coursera workload in March was light because of the Master Naturalist course workload during the month. It will pick up a little in April.

I finished up the video/reading portion of Australian Literature: a rough guide (University of Western Australia) in March. I appreciated the approach of selecting readings to demonstrate contradictory perceptions: coast and center, home and away, justice and injustice…all with the backdrop of Australian landscape and history. I was surprised at how deep the historical context turned out to be in a short course but perhaps any course about a literature fitted into a national boundary has to bring that nation’s history to the fore.

I started one course during March: Maps and the Geospatial Revolution (The Pennsylvania State University) and it will continue though most of April. It has a linkage to the project I am doing for my Master Naturalist certification - involving a map, of course.

Water in the Western United States (University of Colorado Boulder) is the next course to start (today!). In Maryland, our challenge is more often water quality rather than quantity…in the Western US, the challenge is both.

Now that I have successfully ramped down my Coursera activities so that I could focus on the Master Naturalist class - I’m thinking about the way I want to enjoy Coursera offerings going forward. An annual cycle of activity is beginning to emerge for my volunteer and vacation activities - with peaks in the spring and fall. Should I try to make the peaks for Coursera workload in winter and summer? Is it even possible? It is so hard to not sign up for a course that interests me whenever it is offered!

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.

March Birds

March has been a colder than usual this year. Some of the bird activity seems to be happening with about the usual timing in spite of the cold. The robins have become more numerous - on the lawn, scratching around the leaf litter in the garden and at the edge of the forest, gobbling worms in the street and driveway when it rains.

We have pairs of doves and cardinals that we see from our windows frequently; they must be nesting nearby.

One day at Belmont there seemed to be swallows everywhere - staking out the blue bird boxes (hopefully there will be blue birds that get some of them but it seems that the swallows arrived first).

Most people have kept their feeders full to help out the birds arriving in the cold. At Mt. Pleasant Farm there were lots of gold finches and a pileated woodpecker (which I was not fast enough to photograph).

The juncos that leave us for the summer are still around; I haven’t watched them closely enough in years past to remember when they leave….are we keeping them here by feeding them?

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 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.

A Visual Guide to Chemistry Glassware - A vocabulary lesson in glassware!  Probably everyone knows the difference between a test tube and a beaker…but what about a conical flask and volumetric flask?

From soda bans to bike lanes: Which 'natural experiments' really reduce obesity? - Which changes have made an impact? Studies that included longer follow-up periods after a change showed stronger results. Two examples of changes with strong impact were trans-fat bans and active transportation infrastructure improvement.

50% Driving Ban for Paris Due To Air Pollution - Weather conditions in Paris cause spikes in air pollution this time of year. We normally thin of the larger cities in India and China having the worst air pollution problems. The World Health Organization estimated that air pollution contributed to the deaths of 7 million people in 2012…so it is not an insignificant issue for the world.

Science Photographer Reveals Beauty of the Microscopic World - Manipulation of light through the microscope: transmission, differential interference contrast, optical staining, or dark field contrast.

Adapting to climate change will bring new environmental problems - Can we adapt in a sustainable way…or will our adaptation be short-sighted - and bad for the planet in the long term?

Archaeologists discover Maya 'melting pot' - Evidently mobile groups of hunter gatherers came together with settled groups for construction projects and public ceremonies --- they interacted much more than previous thought. They eventually became more uniformly sedentary.

Genome Study Predicts DNA of the Whole of Iceland - The DeCode project has collected enough full DNA sequences from Icelanders to extrapolate to the whole population (because the people are related). From this analysis, they know that 2,000 people in Iceland have the BRCA2 gene….but cannot tell them. The ethics associated with new technology is complex. In this particular case there is a “right ‘not to know’ of genetic hazards.” With more and more genome data being collected - other nations will soon have the same issue Iceland is facing now.

The Last 200 Years Of U.S. Immigration In One Chart - Click in the upper left corner to enlarge the plot. The overall trend is as interesting as where people came from. World War II had quite an impact while World War I did not.

SolarCity to build its own power grids - The market for solar technology seems to be developing very quickly. There are so many more options now than there were 5 years ago. When will the tipping point come…when more people will have solar - or some form of renewable energy where they live and work.

Compulsive Behavior Sells - Habit-forming technology….a little scary. How quickly will people train themselves to realize that it is happening?

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.