Beautiful Food – December 2015

Beautiful food often comes in whole plates like this one: Brussel sprouts with orange marmalade glaze, potato skins (there butter melting inside…my husband only like the inside of the potato and I have always favored the skins; we’re a good match), roast, and a cranberry sweet potato bread.

Sometimes even when it is cold, I get hungry for a salad. This one had no lettuce at all! It was hearty meal of celery (complete with leaves), cucumbers, carrots, cranberries, and peanuts! I like the bright colors and the melding of flavors. This time of year I like cranberries in lots of dishes.

The last stir fry with CSA veggies included watermelon radish, turnips, sweet potatoes and a few Brussel sprouts. The green beans were some I’d put in the freezer; they thawed quickly when added to the stir fry. The different shapes appeal to me almost as much as the colors.

A more recent stir fry is just as colorful but everything is from the produce section of the grocery store. I like different colors of bell pepper and carrot chips roughly cut…and I am enjoying Brussel sprouts although I’m going to wait a bit before buying more.

Food that is brightly colored and tastes good….beautiful!

Nature Photography through a Window – December 2015

My office window is my favorite place for ‘through the window photography’. Here are some recent images.

The nuthatch is the only bird to use the feeder this way! The bird is a little bigger than the chickadees and has a more aggressive personality. There is a titmouse waiting patiently on the deck railing for the nuthatch to finish.

Squirrels are very active this time of year.  The light caught this one with something to eat under the pines.

The dove was looking down at the seed bowl but ultimately decided that the bird bath was a better ‘next stop.’ Note that there are a lot of tulip poplar seeds in the gutter. We’ve has a bumper crop of seeds this year and they are still coming down with each brisk breeze.

We have robins in the neighborhood too. There are some that winter here but I haven’t seen them in the winter very often. There seem to be more that stayed in the neighborhood this year.

I’m not sure what this flicker was so interested in but it was in the area long enough to get a picture.

I’ll share another batch of ‘through the window’ images in January.

Centennial Park in the Cold

Centennial Park on a cold gray day in winter looks deserted initially. There are no fishermen on the shore or in small boats…not women pushing strollers along the path around the lake…no groups of power walkers.

I didn’t stay very long – only enough to notice a young oak with leaves still clinging while all the other trees around were bare. There was a breeze that cause riffles in the lake so the reflections were only good where the jetty acted to smooth the water. This time of year the red railing is a welcome bit of color.

In the few minutes I was there, I did see 4 other people walking. One had a dog. They were all bundled up I their coats, gloves, hats and scarves. They were tougher than me in the cold damp of an early winter day.

Sunrise

It’s easier and easier to catch the sunrise these days. The trees have lost all their leaves and the time is later with the days still shortening. The two images in this post are from two recent days.

The color changes very rapidly – no time to wait around. I scurry to find my camera and step out the front door. The neighborhood is quiet. I wonder if there is anyone else nearby savoring the moments of color that start the day….and feel privileged that I do have the time. Somehow the rest of the day is always better having started this way.

I’ve read that ancient cultures sometimes had special rituals at sunrise and it is easy to imagine how the coming of the sun would be welcomed after a cold December night. They lived in closer contact with the elements of our planet than we do today. I feel the kinship with those ancestors while I watch the sunrise; knowing more about our planet, the season and the reason the sunrises with such color does not make it less special. Perhaps we should appreciate it even more.

Enjoy a sunrise where you live!

Lady Bug

We have lady bugs in the house! This often happens after some cold days in the fall...and at other times of the year too. Never constant or consistent. There are never a large number and the only aggravation they cause is if they get into one of the halogen lamps and roast themselves. I photographed one on the mirror in the bathroom.

The ladybugs are different than the ones I remember from my childhood. They are orange rather than red. And we never had ladybugs inside either. These bugs may be ones released to help control insect pests on the farms nearby. They probably starve to death in our house.

But I like to watch them wander around the walls….the ceilings…the mirrors. They are a part of the outdoors that I can welcome….not at all like stink bugs!

Some Winter Trees

Sometimes trees get a lot harder to identify in the winter but there are some easy ones to notice on winter hikes or drives. Here are my favorites from the area of Maryland where I live.

Holly. There is a holly growing as an understory tree in the forest behind our house. Whether they are in a forest or used as landscaping around houses – their red berries and bright green leaves are a spot of color in the winter landscape. The branches are used in greenery arrangements and garland at Christmas….but watch out for the prickles on the leaf edges.

Sycamore. After the leaves fall, the white inner bark of the sycamores is very striking. They grow quite large along the rivers and streams in our area.

River Birch. Most of the ones I’ve seen have been used as part of a landscape. Their peely bark is full of color in the winter landscape.

White or Paper Birch. The high contrast (black and white) of the bark makes these trees easy to spot.

Bald Cypress. This one not common in our area. We are little too far north. But is survives as a landscape tree. The knees give it away!

Southern Magnolia. The leaves on these trees say green all during the winter: waxy green on top and velvety brown underneath. You made find seed pods on the ground.

Sweet Gum. Sometimes it is easy to identify a tree by what is on the ground. Most Sweet Gum trees are so prolific that there are lots of gum balls around the tree all winter long.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 5, 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.

Indestructible Water Bears Have a Genome That Is Seriously Weird – Over 17% of their genome comes from other organisms! 9% of rotifer genome is from other organisms. Now that we are sequencing genomes nothing is as absolute as we’d once assumed.

Discover Jordan’s past and present in Google Maps – Take a look at Petra and other sites in Jordan.

5 Root Vegetables to Put on Your Radar – Parsnips, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, jicama, and daikon radish…have you tried any/all of these? There are 3 that I have not so maybe they will be part of a food adventure this winter.

Farming Sped Eurasian Evolution – And it was a migration of people not a diffusion of ideas that spread farming into Europe.

London Was Diverse Even Its Early Roman Days – In 50 AD…London was already a cross roads with people from other parts of Europe and as far away as North Africa living alongside people that had been in Britain for longer.

Loss of mastodons aided domestication of pumpkins, squash – Mastadons ate pumpkins! The wild pumpkins of that time was bitter and maybe even toxic to humans. Initially the plant may have been used as containers or fishnet floats. Gradually (and in multiple locations) the cucurbitas were domesticated and we have the squashes we eat today.

1,400-Year-Old Gingko Tree Sheds a Spectacular Ocean of Golden Leaves – Even the smaller gingko trees can be spectacular. The shape of the leaves is unique too.

New treatment potential for heart attack sufferers – I was intrigued by the title but even more in statement that was buried more than halfway through the article: “Currently, 5-10% of the population is believed to have mildly elevated levels of bilirubin in their blood – a condition with no negative side effects….People with this syndrome have a 30-60% reduced chance of having cardiovascular disease…” I’m one of those 5-10%!

The grim and gory reality of surgery in space – It has some similarities to any remote exploration…with the added challenge of weightlessness.

Inside Each Flu Shot, Months of Virus Tracking and Predictions – I’ve been getting flu vaccines regularly for the past 10 years or so…and haven’t gotten the flu a single time. And now it is easier than ever – no visit to the doctor required now that pharmacies provide flu shots.

Downy Woodpecker

We had a woodpecker visit our bird feeder and seed bowl recently. I took pictures then used them to make the identification.

It turns out that Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers look very similar. I looked at many pictures but finally found a side by side comparison that pointed toward the identification of the bird as a Downy Woodpecker:

• It was smaller than a robin
• The beak was short
• There was quite a bit a white in the wing

It must have been a male to because it had a nice red patch on the back of its head.

I was very glad to see the bird after I found the woodpecker feathers a few weeks ago.

Kolache Memories

I recently discovered a bakery in my area that makes Kolaches! I found them online and went earlier this week to see if the confections they made lived up to my memory of my Czech grandmother’s kolaches that were made for special occasions for the first 50 years of my life (she stopped cooking sometime in her 90s and no one in the family picked up the mantle from her).

The tray of kolaches in the place looked very similar to my grandmother’s – lots of fruit rather than just a little dab of jelly on top of a mound of dough that some people claim are kolaches. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have apricot filling (my grandmother’s favorite and thus mine too) but the peach was a good second best.  I bought one to see if the taste would live up to my memories.

Yummy! It was obviously freshly baked. The dough might have been a little heavier than my grandmother’s was…but otherwise it was close enough to bring back a tidal wave of good feelings. I ordered a half dozen with apricot filling (they will make them for special orders) to take as part of my contribution to a pot luck luncheon today! And I’ll probably go back for another half dozen right before Christmas.

Zentangle® – November 2015

Eleven months of Zentangle®-a-day…..it doesn’t get old…but it does evolve. The trend recently has been to use more color (somewhat tied to the season) and to name each tile. I found some Christmas glitter pens (red, silver, green, gold) and have started using them as I transition from fall color schemes.

Gourds, cross-section, puddles…O flower, plant frame, blue thorns…Bindweed, folded leaves, fire, peaks, tangle of color

Water grass, blue aura, flower frame…Aqua, tentacles, papyrus, red and gray…Spiral miscellany, blue and gray, flowers and pine

Crystal earth, micro earth, Tri-fiddle, ball spiral…Curled leaf, triangle figure, ferns, curls, ribbon beads…Green and gold bubbles, diva night, totem

Christmas flowers, frog eggs Christmas, glitter quilt…Lyre, ferns, pumpkin, yarn loops…Fall forest, eddy, crowd space, arches, tassles

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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.

Learning Log – December 2015

November was a busy month – with plenty of learning opportunities.

Coursera. I completed the Ancient Egypt: A history in six objects course from Coursera in November. It was more intense than I had anticipated and help me appreciate how much we are still learning about Ancient Egypt. There are new technologies like DNA sequencing and CT scans that are being applied now. I have finished the reading for the course itself but still have some of the references on my ‘to read’ list.

We got a catalog for non-credit courses from our local community college a week or so ago. I thought I might find a course for the winter months in it but discovered that I am spoiled by the variety and depth of Coursera offerings. I’ll start another Coursera course in December probably…but I haven’t picked it yet.

Travel. In this case – the learning was not in traveling itself…but preparation for it. I am reading every book I can about Hawaii right now in anticipation of upcoming travel.

Schools. I had the opportunity to interact with second graders from several elementary schools in the county over the past month. It is surprising the variability in the schools. The size of the classes, the overall behavior of the children, and the engagement (or lack of engagement) of the chaperones were just some of the dimensions. I was interested in comparing the school my daughter went to almost 20 years ago for second grade with the group that came for a field trip this year; it was different but still ‘good’ in the sense that the children participated and enjoyed their field trip. I decided that it was the myriad of changes outside the school that made up for more of the difference than the school itself. One child had a video game device that the chaperone confiscated before we got very far into the hike…and then he proceeded to participate like everyone else. Learning for all students has a lot of possible paths…and that can be counterproductive sometimes.

Something Hot to Drink

When the weather gets cold – something hot to drink is appealing. I’m trying some new hot drinks this season – ones that I don’t feel compelled to add sweetener of any kind to be palatable (last year I used way too much artificial sweetener). Here are the hot drinks I like so far. I make them all in my coffee maker than has never seen coffee!

• A stick of cinnamon in the carafe of the coffee maker. I let I steep until it begins to uncurl.
• A piece of fresh ginger in the carafe of the coffee maker.
• Home grown dried mint in the filter of the coffee maker. A tablespoonful for a pot. I like it plain or with almond milk.
• A small black tea bag added to the mint in the filter (one tea bag for a whole pot). It is bitter enough that I prefer it with almond milk.

Here’s to keeping warm from the inside out this winter!

Nature Photography through a Window

My office window provides a great vantage point of our back yard and I’ve cleaned it so that sometimes I can get good pictures just steps way from where I write this blog. The deer wonder through

And the squirrels are active in the yard.

They climb up the sycamore or the steps to get to the deck if I have seed in a bowl in addition to the squirrel-proof feeder. It is surprising how fast they discover the seed in the bowl!

But I enjoy trying to capture images of birds. There have been some successes this past month. The dove sat for a very long time on the roof of our covered deck that is visible from my window. It was cold day but that was a sunny spot.

The cardinal sometimes shares the seed bowl with others…and sometimes chases them away but he doesn’t stay long so the others get their share.

The female cardinal seems to need water more often than seed!

The titmice come as a pair.

The blue jays sometimes come from water but they often move so fast that there is not time to even get the camera turned on. This one sat for a few more seconds than usual!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 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.

Plastic by the Numbers in the Atlantic Ocean – Samples taken during the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers show that microplastics are very common. There were 0 samples without any plastic! On a personal level, I’m reading labels on face washes and toothpastes now and not buying any that have microbeads.

6 Common Activities that Harm Wildlife – One of the six is ‘microbeads’ so another spur to action. The other activities are also thought provoking: sunscreen, feeding bread to birds, bleached products, removing weeds, and plastic bags. Most of them I had heard about before…sunscreen only recently.

Are superbugs deadlier near where you live? – They are everywhere…some places worse than others. Often they are indicators of use (and misuse) of antibiotics.

An easy pill to swallow – Research into a mechanism to deliver mucoadhesive patches via pill through the digestive tract to the small intestine. There is potential that this could change delivery of protein based therapies (insulin, growth hormone, antibodies, and vaccines) from a injections to a pill.

A Flight of Birds – 14 unusual birds…portraits from the Photo Ark project (one of the 14 is a California Condor)

800-Year-Old Ancient Extinct Squash Uncovered during Archeological Dig on Menominee Indian Reservation – I’d like to see this one in my grocery store!

Shenandoah National Park Counting on Beetles to Slow Invasive Insect – The wooly adelgid is killing the hemlocks in Shenandoah (and in our area of Maryland too). Shenandoah is importing a beetle from Japan (where the wooly adelgid came from). Evidently the beetle has already been used successfully in other parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

1,700-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Discovered During City Sewer Construction Project – Found in Israel by workers upgrading the sewer system.  It was the floor of a large room in a villa during the Roman period.

Pictures: Great Smoky Mountains National Park  and Pictures: Rocky Mountain National Park and Explore the Power of Parks – From National Geographic…lots of great pictures, of course.

Obesity: A Complex Disorder – Graphic from The Scientist with a link at the bottom for the full article. The more we learn about obesity, the more complex it seems to become.

Sunrise

There are two things that make sunrise pictures easier at my house by November: the sunrise is late enough that I am normally already up and ready for the day by the time it happens and the leaves are off the trees so our front porch makes a reasonable vantage point. These pictures were taken about a week ago. It was a very cold morning and I appreciated that I could observe through a window until the color was just right….and then step outside for a few seconds. These pictures were taken about a minute apart. The color shift from pink to orange very quickly!

Happy Thanksgiving!

When Thanksgiving Day first started, it was a celebration of the abundance of food after the annual harvest. Now – the vast majority of people have ready access to plenty of food throughout the year and the day is a holiday that (hopefully) acts as a reminder to be thankful for that aspect of the modern world. I applaud the efforts of organizations the seek ways to make the availably of food true for everyone, going beyond the majority that it true today.

The holiday period from Thanksgiving through the New Year have been a time of overeating and weight gain. I’m starting with a strategy this year to avoid the weight gain: spread out the treats so that no particular day is ‘over the top.’ I started off my making my ‘new’ treat for this season based on the cranberry carrot cake recipe from VegKitchen on Tuesday and enjoying one piece each day as my morning snack. I substituted grated sweet potato for the carrots and processed an apple with its peeling for the applesauce….and didn’t make the icing at all. It is still yummy.

Thanksgiving is also a time of traditions – particularly food related. My husband does not like turkey so we’ve always had roast. We have pumpkin custard (not crust) as one of the desserts. Sometimes I can’t resist a pecan pie but I make a small one (about half the usual size…and skip the crust). One food tradition that faded away with my grandmother was kolaches (apricot) and raisin buns; no one in the family makes that kind of bread any more.

Enough about food….there is a lot we all have to be thankful for every day. Having a day set aside each year with the name ‘Thanksgiving’ is a good reminder to realize that more often…not let the busy-ness of life cause us to savor and appreciate the wonderful aspects of our lives.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – November 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 November 2015.

Like October several celebrations involved the volunteering I do with the Howard County Conservancy. There were several types of volunteering this month and it was a grand finale to the season for me:

Fall hikes for 2^nd graders. This is the last season for the soil hike for 2^nd graders because of curriculum changes. I celebrated every hike that I did because the hike is such a favorite with the children and they participate so enthusiastically – getting their hands dirty learning about soil.

Belmont Colonial Holiday Celebration. The event is the beginning of the season for me and it gets me in the mood to decorate…to cook…to enjoy the people I am with.

Mailing Party. The ‘party’ to stuff envelopes with the annual accomplishments and request donations for the Howard County Conservancy is a ‘once a year’ volunteer event. We all are work madly for 3+ hours…but there is a lot of laughter and sharing of stories while we work. This time we took a break for a delicious Italian food lunch and then got back to work to finish everything. I celebrated the comradery and good food and getting it done!

I celebrated two ‘close to home places’ in November too:

Conowingo. Seeing a Bald Eagle is always a celebration. They have made quite a comeback in the 30 years we’ve been on the east coast. I remember vividly the first time I saw one in the wild – at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore of Maryland…in 1990. Now we go to Conowingo and consistently see many of them fishing in the river there.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory. There is something special about every visit to Brookside. This time the highlight was seeing how they clean the glass top of the conservatory! I celebrate that we have a place like Brookside Gardens in our area.

And there were things at home that were good too:

A cold autumn day at home. Sometimes after being out and about almost every day – I celebrate a day at home. This month it came on a very cold day and I celebrated that I could stay indoors! There will be many more cold days soon but in November they are still ‘new.’

Wind blowing the leaves off the lawn. I had to rake quite a few of the leaves on our lawn but some of them were carried by the wind into the forest where they will decompose and nourish the forest. Hurray for the raking effect of the wind!

And 3 more celebrations to round out the 10 for November:

The Martian. I celebrated a going to a theater…and seeing a good movie!

No cavities. I had a dental checkup this month and I thought for sure I had a cavity on one of my front teeth…but it was only a stain! They polished the stain off….and I celebrated all the way home.

Getting things done on my list. Sometimes I move items from one day to next….then I have a day that everything gets done…and I celebrate that discipline comes to the fore!

Holiday Decorations at Belmont – 2015

The Howard County Conservancy hosted their second annual Colonial Holiday Celebration at Belmont last weekend. I volunteered to help with set up and registration – just as I did last year. There was enough time during the set up to photograph some of the beautiful decorations.

Here is the front door – with wreath hanging from the knocker and urns full of Osage orange seed balls. We put small sacks with LED lights on the stairs before it got dark. Those stairs look like they seen a lot of traffic over the years!

The registration table was just inside the front door and we had homemade ornaments to commemorate the event on the tree just beyond (and for sale). I was part of the team that had the adventure creating them!

I loved the old style decorations like strings of popcorn and read ribbon.

The dried hydrangea with magnolia leaves on one of the mantles was very attractive. The color remaining in the hydrangea flowers are very subtle…..and they provide a contrasting texture the magnolia leaves’ velvety brown and shiny green.

I like the ribbons draped from the chandelier with cranberries as ‘weights.’ This was the decoration remembered from last year and I was glad to see it again.

Now for a slide show of some of the other decorations. The decorators focused on natural materials rather than glitz of modern decorations. Pomegranates, cranberries, nadina, holly, bittersweet, clove studded oranges, and apples for the reds and oranges…boxwood, pine and cedar and magnolia for the greens….gum balls, dried vines, pine cones, turkey feathers, antlers, and acorns for browns…hydrangea for the light green, pink and blue. Wow – it’s quite a collection!

Conowingo Dam – November 2015

We are planning day trips to Conowingo Dam (Maryland) this winter to attempt photography of the Bald Eagles that feed there from the fish in the outflow from the dam when electricity is being generated. We went in last May and saw more Bald Eagles than I had ever seen in one place before (my post from May is here) and it wasn’t even the peak season for the Bald Eagles being there! Now it is getting to the peak time so we are planning to make the trek once a month – on a time when the roads are not slippery. It’s about an hour from our house so a comfortable day trip (and we’ll bundle up and take something hot to drink).

The parking area below the dam already held some cars when we got there at mid –morning last week. And the photographers were lined up along the fence. The number of big lenses was impressive. There was a lot of water coming from the dam and we saw eagles immediately on the rocks

And perched on the electrical tower.

Periodically we’d spot an eagle flying over the water – and catching a fish.

This one caught a large fish and took it to one of the equipment towers. There were black vultures and an immature eagle that gathered there to eye the fish. Eventually – the eagle with the fish flew away with it. Who wants to eat with that kind of audience?

Sometimes the fish is small…sometimes large.

Next time I hope to position myself to improve the background for the photographs…and to go on a brighter day so that the wing movements will not be a blurry. I may also pay more attention to the black vultures next time we go. I only saw one Great Blue Heron on this trip (last May we saw more); they are frequently photogenic if they are not too far away.

On this particular trip – I enjoyed the remnants of fall color next to the parking lot (turning my back to where the eagles were).

I also noticed a feather. I wonder whether it was from a Bald Eagle or a Black Vulture.

There is a Facebook page for the Conowingo Bald Eagles Community for more information.

Fall Yard Work

There are a lot of fall yard chores! I’ve been trying to do a little on every sunny day recently.

Raking leaves always takes a lot more energy than I remember. Our trees are 20+ years old and big enough to have a lot of leaves….too many to leave on the grass since there are enough of them to form thick mats and kill the grass. Actually – the raking is easier than carting them back to the forest where they can decay into thick mulch on the forest floor. The yard crews use high powered mowers to blow them into piles and into the forest but the noise is overwhelming; for me it negates the pleasure of being outdoors on an autumn day…so I rake.

Cleaning up the deck takes some time too. This year, I am cutting the dried summer stalks and transplanting day lily bulbs (taking them from the beds where the deer always find the buds before they can bloom) into pots and planting native flower seeds (False Indigo and Joe-Pye Weed) that require overwintering before they can sprout. Our deck should attract even more butterflies and hummingbirds next summer! I’ve also harvested the celery stems and leaves that rooted last spring from the base of purchased (organic) celery. I’ve already enjoyed them in soup!

My husband will do a final mowing of the yard sometime this week to mulch the leaves still on the yard…and we’ll declare the fall yard work ‘done’ – ready for winter.