Part of the joy of spring is watching the plants unfurl from winter. I particularly like the trees and shrubs because the leaves come out in all kinds of ways…in clumps…as single buds...folded…coiled…pleated. I’ve collected a number of pictures of the new leaves over the past few weeks and have put together the slideshow below. Enjoy!
Our road trip back from North Carolina in April took us through Richmond, Virginia and a stop a Maymont. It was a Monday so the mansion and indoor exhibits were not open…but the gardens were worth the stop by themselves.
Some of the grounds are very open - with rolling hills
And interesting bridges over low places.
The mansion is on a ridge overlooking the James River. It is the same vintage as the Newport Mansions and looks similar from the outside to some of them….but it was a place that was lived in for more than a few months of the year and gardens were always part of the place. The Dooleys left the house and surrounding park to the city of Richmond; the furnishings were never dispersed. All very different from Newport.
The porch looks very inviting.
There were gazebos in many places as well.
There are gardens on terraces down to the river level: pools of water with koi,
Water falling over the edge of a terrace and bridges to stand on for a closer view,
Japanese lanterns and colorful foliage.
By the time I climbed the stairs back to the level of the mansion, it was obvious that the day was warming fast and I decided to stick to shade as much as possible for the rest of the afternoon; the back of my neck was unprotected by my hat or sunscreen (and indeed - I did get a little sunburn).
Maymont is a place I want to see again - and next time I will make sure it is a day the indoor exhibits and mansion are open. It would be a good day trip for us next fall!
We walked through a bottomland hardwood forest on The Kuralt Trail in the Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge back in April.
The trail was an old logging road - raised above the water level with dirt taken from barrow pits along the road (most of the pits were filled with water there. There were cypress trees - standing and stumps left from the logging era. Do you see the knees? There is also a waterline evident on some of the trees. The dams upstream release water periodically and flood this area. Without the dams, the high water would rise and fall more rapidly rather than standing so the flood line is an indicator of our management of the river.
It was a cool enough morning that the insects were not abundant. The birds were noisy but too mobile to photograph. The forest was just leafing out so there was dappled light rather than the dense shade of summer.
I took many pictures of shelf fungi - as usual when I walk in a forest.
I couldn’t resist the spring green and clear blue sky photo either!
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 Best Vegan Milk (Non-Dairy) Alternatives - A good reference about how the non-dairy ‘milks’ are made. My current favorite in unsweetened vanilla almond milk.
Babies as young as 6 months using mobile media - Wow! This is scary. A lot has changed in 25 years. Then again - a lot changed in the 25 years before that. How many 3 year olds watched television on a daily basis in the 1950s…almost none. There were cartoons on Saturday morning by the 1960s. Quite a few children were watching shows like Sesame Street (and other shows too) almost daily 25 years later. Has mobile media replaced television or is it in addition to television?
A New 'Livability Index' to Help Americans Age in Place - AARP has a new tool that takes a number of factors into account to assess ‘livability’ (tool is here….enter your zip code in the box in the right side frame of the page.
Every Breath You Take: State of the Air 2015 - Read the post and then go to the State of the Air site and put in your state. Most cities get an ‘F’ which does not bode well for the health of a majority of the US population.
7 things we've learned about Earth since the last Earth Day - This was posted for Earth Day but I saw it a little late. I’m sure it was hard to choose 7 things…the ones picked were pretty significant.
Gut Microbes Influence Circadian Clock and Circadian Clock Controls Sugar Metabolism - Two articles about circadian clock importance to the way our bodies handle food. I’ve noted these articles more since I took a Coursera course on the circadian clock.
The Octopus’ Birthday: Understanding an Intelligent & Elusive Marine Creature - These creatures are so different that they evoke almost the same fascination as dinosaurs with children…and maybe adults too. Did you know that the age of an octopus can be determined by counting the rings in its stylet (rudimentary shell); the number of rings = the number of days the octopus lived.
Why the Tiniest of Fossils Mean Big Things to Scientists - A 6 minute video from the American Museum of Natural History about foraminifera….how beautiful they are and what they tell us about Earth’s past (and maybe the future too).
Living to 100: Lifestyle advice for would-be centenarians - The results from a study of 855 men born in 1913…10 of them lived to 100.
Seven of the Most Beautiful Botanical Mazes on Earth - A collection of videos of mazes.
Both of the courses from April are finishing up and I’m determined to not load myself up with new courses in May because I have so many outdoor activities planned for the month.
I did enjoy both of the April courses. Maps and the Geospatial Revolution course is immediately applicable to a Tree Tour I am doing as a project for my Master Naturalist certification. It will include a map, of course.
The Water in the Western US course was good on a number of levels. There was a segment on how they are adding sediment back to the water flowing into the Grand Canyon to rebuild the sandbars there (and it seems to be working)….brining back memories of the place from earlier this year. One memorable and scary factoid from the course: The Central Valley of California has subsided significantly since the 50s and 60s and is now below sea level; levees are all that separate it from San Francisco Bay….all the fresh water in that area (water supply for San Francisco) could become saline within days if an earthquake caused those levees to fail!
Our backyard made up for the cold of March. At the beginning of the month - the maple was red with its tiny flowers and then developing samaras.
By the 19th the tulip poplar was turning green and red part of the maple was mostly gone.
The samaras were developing nicely.
The violets were blooming in the lawn
As were a few dandelions!
Yesterday I was late getting out for my photo and the sun was already in the top of the maple but the green shows through the crowd of yellowing samaras in the lower part of the tree; the samaras will mature and begin to fly away from the tree soon.
The cherry and plum trees (in the front yard) were so beautiful this year that I couldn't resist including them in this post too!
Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is a large refuge in several segments. It has only been a refuge since the 1990s so much of the area is still recovering from being drained/farmed. There was an area planted in colorful grass - different enough from what we had been seeing to stop for some photography.
A butterfly was so involved with a dandelion flower that we had plenty of time to take pictures from multiple angles.
Wild turkeys were enjoying the leavings in the cornfield.
Later in the day we drove to Columbia NC where the visitor center for the refuge is located. The center was already closed but there is a boardwalk along the edge of the Scuppernong River. You can see the time level via the rings of the pine pollen at the base of this cypress stump.
The boardwalk meanders over the marshy areas back into the forest where there were several shelf fungi.
The cypress stand in the soggy areas - sometimes surrounded by water.
A lone pied-billed grebe was looking for dinner.
A turtle was catching the last of the day’s sun - ignoring the green debris on his back.
Last but not least, as we walked back toward our car - there was a snake on a branch hanging of the water. Is that a bulge toward the middle? He may have already had his dinner.
It seemed harder than usual to pick my favorite 3 eBooks to highlight this month. The visuals in all of these are spectacular.
Tuck, Steven L. A History of Roman Art. Wiley Blackwell. 2015. Available on the Internet Archive here. I enjoyed this book - many of the pictures taken by the author - as a follow on to the Coursera course on Roman Architecture last year.
American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York. 1987. I remembered a type to the Catskills several years ago….and several of the places depicted by these artists. I realize now that I learned a lot about composition of landscape photographs from the Hudson River School artists.
Godman, Frederick Ducane; Salvin, Osbert. Insecta. 1901. I enjoyed the electronic version of the Biologia Centrali-Americana made available in the Smithsonian. The digitization project it not complete but I looked particularly at the Lepidoptera (butterflies) volumes (Rhopalocera and Heterocera) and enjoyed the color and variety of butterflies as of 1901. How many of them still exist. There has been a lot of habitat change in the past 114 years.
We headed out to Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge first thing one morning. The birds that winter there had already left. We tried to walk silently on the decking to get close enough to take good photographs of terns and gulls that are always around.
I watched an osprey dive successfully for a fish but the bird was too far away to get a really good picture.
Our next stop was Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge had many groups of coots.
There were egrets fishing in the shallow water. I managed to get a fuzzy picture of one becoming airborne….different enough from the stalking poses I usually capture.
The turtles line up on anything in the sun. This morning was chilly.
I liked this grouping of cormorants. There were some noisy Canadian geese nearby so they did not hold this pose for very long.
The male and female pintail ducks swimming single file was my best sighting at this refuge. I captured these pictures by leaning out of the open car window!
Most of our destinations in North Carolina were wildlife refuges; The Elizabethan Gardens was an exception. It has been open since 1960 - a project of the Garden Club of North Carolina. It is located on the outer banks of North Carolina with one side bounded by water.
When we were there earlier this month the camellias were still blooming profusely (although there were a lot on the ground too), bulbs were in their first waves, pines pollen coated everything, redbuds were blooming, and everything was either green or greening.
The gardens have a nice balance of formal gardens and more rustic beds. It was easy to image several areas as wedding venues - a lawn surrounded by planting low enough that the water was visible beyond, a thatch roofed gazebo with plenty of space around it. I liked the smiling dwarf statues in one of the rustic areas.
We had visited the gardens years ago. The statue of Elizabeth I had been added since our last visit.
Enjoy the slideshow of this special place!
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.
Greenland continuing to darken - In the Water in the Western US course I am taking via Coursera they mentioned snow darkening as it melted because layers of dust that has originally been blown on a fresh surface of snow accumulated as the layer of snow melted and left the snow behind….and then I saw this article about Greenland on the same day!
Video Diary: One Tiny Hummingbird Family - If you have never had an opportunity to watch a hummingbird nest, this is an opportunity.
Milkweed and Monarch Concerns – 2015 - Plant Milkweed for Monarchs - The key message in this post is to plant milkweed that is native to the area where you live. That’s
Welcome to Oklahoma, the State of Denial - The graphics caught my eye in this article. There were a lot of earthquakes in Oklahoma in 2014….and evidently since this article was written the state government has started to acknowledge that they are likely manmade.
The Growing Outdoor Recreation Economy - National Parks contributed $26 billion to the economy in 2014 and the outdoor recreation economy is estimated at $646 billion and included 6.1 million jobs. Along a similar trend, another article….The Science of Valuing Nature Becoming Business as Usual.
Nest Cam of the Month: Barred & Barn Owls - I take look at the nest cams. Owls are popular right now.
Putting Technology in Its Place - Technology is not always the answer…or the total answer. Often it falls short of our expectations - particularly in places that need help the most.
Ten Favorite Trees for Wildlife - A very good list. Pick ones that are native to your area.
Excessive use of dietary supplements linked to increase cancer risk - It appears that dietary supplements are too much of a good thing. The bottom line coming out of more and more studies appears to be that its best to meet nutritional needs via food rather than supplements.
Noticing something worth celebration each dayis 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 April 2015.
Countdown to a little vacation - Even though lots of my days feel like ‘vacation’ I have adjusted my definition for vacation to equal ‘away from home’….so I savored the anticipation of the North Caroline road trip in the days prior to leaving.
Otters - There were so many plants and animals I could have celebrated from the North Carolina trip but I am singling out the otters because it was the first time I has seen the animals in the wild.
A barbeque dinner - Sometimes a high calorie splurge is truly worth it. The restaurant advertised ‘Texas Barbeque’ and they delivered.
The Elizabethan Gardens - A lovely place in Manteo, North Carolina. A garden is a great place to celebrate spring.
Maymont - This was a spur of the moment stop in Richmond VA on the way home ---- a gold age mansion and grounds that was donated to the city after the owners died in the 1920s. It is now a park. We were there on a Monday when the mansion and visitor center is closed….but the park is well work the stop. I have post planned for it in a week or so (it’s taking me some time to get all the posts done from the North Carolina trip.
Home Again - I always celebrate coming home after being away….no matter how great the ‘vacation’ was.
Cherry Blossoms - We didn’t get down to Washington DC this year for the cherry blossoms but the tree in our yard had its best year ever….timed perfectly to welcome us home.
Last Master Naturalist Class - I celebrated getting through the 8 class days - not missing a single one! And now I am waiting for my final exam to be graded!
GreenFest - I celebrated finding the native plants I wanted for my yard at the county celebration - along with some additional reusable bags and information on dealing with deer in the neighborhood.
Figuring out a technical problem - I figured out how to use the GPS info from a series of picture to overlay a map. It was easy than I thought it would be….something to celebrate.
After we left the barrier islands - our plan was to visit some of the inland wildlife refuges so our first stop was the multi-refuge Visitor Center in Manteo. We picked up the maps and brochures for all the refuges we wanted to visit. I couldn’t resist photographing the colorful tile band in the visitor center restroom!
Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was the first refuge we visited. As we turned onto the wild life loop road (gravel), we were thrilled to see otters frolicking in the canal. I benefited from my husband walking ahead of me and getting most of their attention. They were huffing at him to go away when I took this picture.
There were a few wildflowers. This one had a spider!
The maples were further along their seed production than our tree in Maryland.
I only saw one mushroom but this was lovely nestled in this moss and pine needles.
Fiddleheads were everywhere. The forest was wet…lots of places for ferns to grow.
The pines were releasing a lot of pollen. Our car was covered with the yellow dust when we returned from our hike.
We used our car as a blind to photograph 2 vultures on the other side of the canal from the wildlife drive. The black vulture (on the left) was feeding on a raccoon carcass as we drove up. The turkey vulture (on the right) was waiting patiently at first - but then seemed to become more assertive and the black vulture flew away and the turkey vulture settled in for a meal.
There were also turtles. They were very sensitive to any noise and would plop in the water very quickly. I was glad to catch these two…complete with reflections.
And last but not least, as we reached the highway out of the refuge we spotted an alligator in the canal by the road. He seemed to be dozing in the sun at first. As I used the full zoom on my camera - he opened his eye. What an ending to a visit to the refuge!
I’ve posted about the light houses and Jockey Ridge State Park in the past few days which are both part of the barrier island scene. Today I’m picking up the best of the rest from a couple of days on the Barrier Islands of North Carolina.
There was the beach of course.
Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate to provide a good sunrise. I contented myself with the morning light on the pines
And yucca pods.
There were a lot more beach houses right along the shore than when we were there years ago and many had their own private boardwalk over the dunes and roofed decks with stairs down to the beach.
We didn’t see as many birds as we had anticipated. I watched an egret long enough to get a picture after a successful catch!
There were a lot of birds overhead in nice Vs.
There was a kite surfing class in the shallows of the sound.
In one place we saw three different turtles. There was a large snapping turtle.
But I’m not sure what these other two are.
The sunset from our hotel room balcony was not bad. The pedestal in the distance is on a sand dune…The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kitty Hawk.
Jockey Ridge State Park was very close to our hotel in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. It’s a dune field on the sound side of the barrier island. They sponsor a school from hang gliding at the park which is just a little south of Kitty Hawk where the Wright Brothers took flight. We also stopped by the park before we headed inland to other wildlife refuges. All the pictures were from that morning in the park.
Walking to the end of the boardwalk from the visitor center that crosses over dunes stabilized with trees -
Some with curly lichen -
There is a wooden platform that looks out to a low place in the dunes where water had collected from the overnight rain.
I took the stairs down to the sand for a closer look at the ripples left in the sand
And a few bird tracks made since the rain had smoothed the sand.
My own footprints were the only human footprints.
I walked down to the edge of the water and heard plops in the water. I never managed to see the frogs but they were probably taking advantage of the water.
At the edge of the forest the shifting of the sand was obvious. Some trees were being buried
And some were clinging to the edge with their roots showing.
I was motivated by the lecture on native plants in the Master Naturalist class to augment the plantings around my house with some new additions. This past weekend was the perfect time to do it: there were native plants on sale and for free at the Howard County GreenFest on Saturday and the weather was good for planting on Sunday.
I replaced two bushes that had died in the front of our house with Ninebark. Hopefully they will fill in the space between the irises I planted last year to partially cover the void the old bushes had left.
Under the deck where there is too much shade for the grass to grow well, I planted two Christmas ferns. Both of the plants have old green fronds that made it through the winter and fiddleheads that are emerging now. It seems like they unfurled a bit over Saturday night while they were waiting in their pots on our deck to be planted in the ground. If these ferns do well, maybe they will propagate or maybe I’ll just plant a few more every year until I get some greenery under the deck again.
In the back of our yard where the grass is not growing well at the edge of the forest, I planted 4 understory trees: 2 spicebush, a sassafras, and a witch hazel. I will probably have to put a small fence around the area to keep the deer away from them for a few years. They are very small. The picture is of one of the spicebush plants; do you see the little green leaves?
Over the next few years, I’ll continue to extend the forest into our yard by a few feet every year. It is very easy to rake all the fall leaves to the part of the yard I want to ‘give back’ to the forest and then plant a small tree or bush in the area the next spring. I am still trying to decide if I want to plant winterberry somewhere in the yard this season or wait until next spring to plant it in the area reclaimed by the forest next fall.
On our first full day in North Carolina, we saw three lighthouses! The first was the Bodie Island Lighthouse. It was early enough in the day that the fog had not burned off and we were the only people around. The lighthouse and cottage were in excellent condition judging from the outside and I read later that the latest restoration had been completed in 2013.
Further south along the barrier islands was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. This lighthouse was in the news a lot in the late 1990s. It was moved over the dunes and further inland at that time because the shore had eroded to within a few feet of its base. It appears to have survived the move quite well. Both the Bodie Island Lighthouse and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse are open seasonally - but we were there a few weeks before that so did not climb either one.
The third lighthouse was near the other end of the barrier island - the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. This one is different than the other too in that it is located in a more settled area and has many trees around its base…and it is also unpainted. Evidently it was never painted. Architecturally it is similar with brick façade and iron structure at the top to hold the ‘light’ source and lens. My husband climbed the steps to the outdoor gallery and discovered that it was very windy at the top! I discovered when I was preparing this blog post that Google Maps has a view from the top of this lighthouse! 
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.
10 Geological Forms we’ve studied for Years and Still Don’t Understand - Some of the forms we thought we understood….only to discover additional mechanisms played a role (in canyon formation, for example).
Why the FDA Has Never Looked At Some of the Additives in Our Food - In the past 5 decades, the number of food additives has skyrocketed from about 800 to 10,000….and many of them have come to market under the ‘generally recognized as safe’ provision in the FDA safety-review process. Some of them have caused severe allergic reactions or long term health effects. This is a scary aspect to our food system. The article prompted to look more closely at the processed foods I buy and try to skew my food purchases to whole foods that I prepare myself.
Hawksbill Turtles: A Rare Good News Story for a Species on the Brink - Hurray!
This Elevation Map of Mars Makes the Red Planet Much More Colorful - From the German space agency
This 19th Century Art Is Made Entirely Out Of Butterfly Wings - I’d much rather see live butterflies!
A Chart Showing You How Much Water It Takes To Grow All the Food You Eat - Were there any surprises on this chart? Each circle represents the gallons of water per ounce of a food. I found myself wanting more; I wanted to compare whether soymilk (on the graphic) took more or less water than almond milk (not on the chart).
Exceptionally preserved fossil gives voice to ancient terror bird - The fossil is from South America of a bird flightless that was 4 feet tall and is the most complete ‘terror bird’ discovered with 90% of the skeleton preserved.
Top 5 Interesting Nests in North America - It’s the time of year for birds to be building their nests in our area….and there are some interesting ones in this post.
These Knotted Cords Are a Sophisticated Ancient Counting Tool - The Inca’s knotted counting system…that we still don’t completely understand.
Greatest mass extinction driven by acidic oceans, study finds - A key in the past to understand the impact of ocean acidification.
This past Wednesday was the last Master Naturalist - Hurray! I’m just getting started on the take home ‘final’ that we have 2 weeks to complete….not an enjoyable aspect of the course but required. The day was cloudy but relatively warm and dry; it was best weather for a class day.
The topics for the day were weather and climate for the morning and ornithology for the afternoon. We took weather related measurements as our outdoor activity in the morning…and I was too busy to take pictures. In the afternoon we took a bird hike. We saw vultures (black and turkey) in the sky….tree swallows…red wing black bird…blue birds…mockingbirds ---- maybe more. The only relatively good picture I got was of the swallows; this pair was starting a nest in the box.
Following up on the amphibians and reptiles lecture (when it rained so hard we did not outdoors for a hike) - we found a snake on this last hike!
And of course lots of the trees had popping buds: spice bush
River birch
Tulip poplar
Having an hour outdoors at the end of the class was a good finale!
There were so many zoomed images to choose from this month…and it is only the 16th! I couldn’t resist a clip from one of the Zentangles to include with the brilliant spring color of maple flowers (my back yard) and skunk cabbage (Brookside Gardens) early in the month.
Brookside Gardens is full of photography opportunities in April. Some is old growth like evergreen ferns and dried flowers from last summer. Other things are the harbingers of spring - bulbs and witch hazel blooming. There are more birds around too.
The rest of the images are from our loop trip from Maryland down to North Carolina to visit wild life refuges. I’ll be posting more images in the next few weeks. The images below are from the barrier islands - lots of beaches…pines...shore birds…turtles.
And then we crossed the sound to the wetlands. The colorful tile (rightmost clip below) is from the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge visitor’s center. We saw otters, spiders, mushrooms, fiddleheads, maple samaras, vultures (turkey and black), and an alligator! There was a formal gardens too (camellias, daffodils, statuary)!
Celebrating the whole of life....
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