Winter is here in Maryland and I found myself choosing zoomed images from indoors for this month’s post: a bowl of seed caps at the Natural Holiday Sale earlier in the month,
The center of a poinsettia
And the sunlight on poinsettia petals – both in the Brookside Gardens conservatory,
The blooms and a young pod on a cocoa tree,
Water droplets on conservatory plants,
And two very sleepy cats.
I like the zoom on my new camera!
I buy pomegranates almost once a week during their season. Their deep red color and the shape of the seeds are the ‘jewel food’ for the holiday. Of course, getting the seeds out of the peel and membrane is the challenge.
I cut the outer peeling and pull the halves apart --- then beat the peeling over a large bowl causing the seeds to fall it. It works well although there are still some splatters that escape over the rim of the bowl. The process is more like ‘play’ than food preparation!
Since the natural world is pretty drab this time of year – the bright colored foods are on my ‘favorites’ list. I like to make chicken salad with broccoli and cranberries (although I still include the celery that I usually use during the summer too).
I also like to stock up on homemade dried orange peel this time of year – to add to soups or stir fries….or to package up to give as a Christmas present! Have a small plate on the counter all during the month has just become part of my Christmas tradition.
The poinsettias are the seasonal show at the Rawlings Conservatory this time of year….and they can be purchased too! They fill every nook and cranny of space in the entrance and the first room past….lining the permanent beds
And, this year, filling and surrounding a donkey cart.
There are pinks and reds and white and white/red combinations.
The one that looked most different to me this year was an off-white variety that has smaller flowers but lots of curly petals that almost covered the center.
I also looked for the green veined white leaves or petals – not sure which one they were.
I saved this ‘part’ to post about until last….since it was the most Christmasy….we’re getting closer every day.
Previous posts about the Rawlings Conservatory: Cactus Room, Tropical Room.
I posted about the cactus room at the Rawlings Conservatory last week. Today it about the experience of the tropics room. It a warm moist place – perfect for a change of environment on a cold blustery winter day.
It’s not only the temperature and humidity that is different from the outdoors. It’s the colors of the foliage. Everything outside has faded to winter drabness here – while the tropical room is full of color – dominated by green. There were only a few things in bloom and I focused on them for my photography.
My favorite memory of the room was not about the place itself but a mother with a young child (probably 6-12 months old) in a stroller. I commented that her child really seemed to be enjoying the green – wide eyed and alert. What followed was a very pleasant conversation about how different life is when not constrained by a career based schedule. She had stopped working when her child was born and did not plan to return for a couple of years…and I retired. We’re both enjoying this time of our lives and the choices we’ve made to fill our days. The little girl in the stroller seemed to enjoy listening to us talk too!
The tropical room was the part of the Rawlings Conservatory that reminded me the most of the Brookside Conservatory. It has similar plants (like the Bird-of-Paradise below). One difference: the water feature at the Rawlings Conservatory has a water feature that is deep enough that it is stocked with goldfish and there is a dispenser where you can purchase fish food.
Earlier this week, my husband and I made the trek from our house up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Baltimore. We had seen it in passing 15-20 years ago when we were making trips to the Baltimore Zoo when our daughter was young – but we had never stopped and gone inside. It’s not as big as the Longwood Conservatives and is probably about a 100 years older than the Brookside Gardens Conservatories. It was a morning well spent. This post is about the desert room of the Conservatory and will be followed (eventually) by two more posts about the tropical room and the poinsettias.
There was an aloe in bloom. The color attracted my attention at first.
When I zoomed in for a closer look – the coloring became even more distinctive.
Periodically some rocks with rusty swirls were positioned among the cactus…adding other colors to the room. It reminded me of looking down on the terrain of some of the western US from an airplane window.
There was a tiny clump of cactus with seed pods about 1/4 inch across nestled in the spines. There were two elderly women that spotted them and made sure I saw them.
And then I continued my project photographing cactus spines. There were some different types than I had photographed before.
They all look so different from other plants...fodder for science fiction writers imaging aliens.
I took a walk around our neighborhood this past week to try out my new ski bibs; I’d purchased them when we got home from New Mexico where my legs got very cold on some of our early mornings and I wanted to see that they worked before our next trek up to Conwingo to see the Bald Eagles. They – along with my long standing cold weather gear – kept be very comfortable even though the temperature on the day of my walk was in the 20s. They were very comfortable for walking/hiking too.
The neighborhood was so full of color just a few weeks ago – the memory of its brilliance still so fresh – that if found myself searching for anything that was drab winter colors. There were Christmas decoration, of course, but I was more interested in seeing color in the vegetation. I found a stand of Callery Pear saplings (i.e. escaped Bradford Pears) in an area that is not mowed behind the water retention pond. They were catching the morning sun and were brilliantly orange. I admired them even knowing that I shouldn’t like them because they are invasive and will crowd out plants we may need (in prior years this area was the best place to find milkweed in the neighborhood and the Monarch butterflies need that to survive).
The pond itself is typical of many in our area. The maintenance crews mow the slopes very short and they erode. In the case of our pond, the grass if very thin in some areas and there are beginning to be bare spots where there is no vegetation at all. Some moles or ground hogs or chipmunks have made tunnels on some parts of the slope and several have collapsed. There are cat tails and a willow at the edge of the pond. It seemed like both were a little further out of the water than I remembered. The pond is filling in.
The cattails did not offer any color relief but I like the texture of the ‘tails’ – the brown velvet and lighter color of the fluffy seeds.
As I walked back through the neighborhood, I realized that the distance seemed shorter than it usually does so I must have been very comfortable in my winter walking gear!
The conservatories at Brookside Gardens held more than model trains when I went last week. I was drawn to the cactus and took some macro shots of spines – like the ones I took at Bosque del Apache.
The Castor-Bean Begonia (Begonia ricinifolia) and prompted me to research differences between spines and thorns. I checked the Wikipedia article on the topic. I discovered there are prickles and other semantics. Did you know that roses have prickles – not thorns? True thorns are modified branches or stems…so these red things on the Caster-Bean Magnolia are probably not thorns. But are they prickles? Maybe. The larger ones seem to be split into hair-like structures but the smaller one are barbs. I didn’t touch the plant to find out how sharp they were!
I always enjoy volunteering at The Howard County Conservancy’s Natural Holiday Sale in early December. This year was no exception.
I got to Mt. Pleasant about an hour before the event started at 10 and kept the refreshment table stocked with cookies, water, and Russian Tea until about 1 when the next shift came on. I enjoyed the food in the kitchen for volunteers and vendors too: scones in the morning and then a scrumptious lunch of white chili, salad, chips…and cookies for dessert.
It was a cool but sunny day and the turnout was the highest ever at just under 500 people. The vendor with wreaths and larger arrangements sold out by 1 when I left. The event continued until 3. The critter construction with natural materials and glue guns was going strong the whole time. I took some pictures of some of the materials and sample constructions before the event got started…and then got too busy to do more. Next year maybe I’ll make a critter myself. The activity started years ago for children but now it is popular with people of all ages (although still mostly children).
I’d planned to hike a little after my shift but it was cold and I was tired. I hiked past the farm house where a squirrel was active in the leaves
Because I wanted to see Ranger (the barred owl) in his new enclosure. He seemed calm even with all the activity of people constructing the goat house in the enclosure next to him.
On the way to my car, I couldn’t resist a picture of the flower pot people – in their December garb.
Now – I’m in the holiday mood!
On our last full day in New Mexico, we got to the Crane Ponds at Bosque del Apache for our last fly out. The sunrise was brilliantly red and pink looking toward the east
And the colors were only a little muted reflected of the clouds in the west.
It seemed like there were not as many birds on the ponds – although the ducks seemed to be very active with their morning feeding.
The sun came up and I got a last picture of some Sandhill Cranes in the golden sunshine.
We went back to the hotel for breakfast and packing the car to head back to Albuquerque. After lunch, we walked around Petroglyph Nation Monument. We did the three short trails at Boca Negra Canyon. There were petroglyphs of spirals,
And birds (one looks like a duck to me…the other a macaw).
The signage and a book on petroglyphs said that the human figure with the lines flowing downward between the legs is a ‘transition to death’ symbol. I wondered how the ancient peoples depicted birth.
At the highest point on the Boca Negra Canyon trails – there is a view of a Albuquerque housing development! The architecture is quite different from what we see in Maryland.
There were some ruins (low walls) on the highest point as well. Someone had made a cairn in one of the 'rooms'. The stones are volcanic.
The saltbush along the trail was full of seeds.
We drove to the Volcanoes area on the other side of the monument and hiked to an overlook of the Rio Grande Rift Valley – that included a view of downtown Albuquerque.
It was a good way to finish our New Mexico vacation. We headed to our hotel and woke up early the next morning for our flight. The weather surprised us: a gentle rain on the way to the airport.
I spent some time in the Desert Arboretum at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our last full day at the Festival of the Cranes. Almost immediately I spotted a dragonfly that wasn’t sitting still but would pause long enough to be photographed. I was glad to have the extra power of the digital zoom on my new camera.
I also spotted some white-crowned sparrows which I had been told about on one of our tours…but hadn’t seen. They nest in the far north and are only in the US during the winter. They have very distinctive black and white stripes on their heads.
Rather than take pictures of whole cactus plants, I decided to look more closely at the spines. At first, I looked for color.
Then I looked more closely about how the spines were attached to the fleshy part of the cactus. I did a series that zoomed in more and more and discovered that the spines almost look like they pierce the flesh rather than grow out of it!
The image below are some prickly pear spines.
Some spines look sharper than others…or maybe it is the golden color of the spines that make them look more menacing. Again – there is a grayish mass (like a blob of putty) where they go into the cactus flesh.
Enough about spines. There was a gall on one of the plants that reminded me a little of the cedar apple rust gall I’d seen at Mt. Pleasant Farm last spring (described in this post).
The only bloom I saw was a tiny plant that looked like the top had been eaten.
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the yucca pods. Yucca pods have always been one of my favorite seed pods. There are some I harvested about 40 years ago in a dried arrangement at my house!
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.
Mysterious Winds Cause Rapid Melting of Antarctic Ice – Fohn winds….a warm wind that may be responsible for calving ice shelves. And some of their most impressive heat waves come in the dead of winter, eroding glaciers at a time of year that no one thought possible.
Electron Micrographs Get a Dash of Color – And they used red and green…so the images looks very Christmassy!
Ancient Royal Boat Tomb Uncovered in Egypt – Found while investigating the tomb complex of 12th dynasty King Senwosret III, located in southern Egypt. The walls of the tomb covered with sketches of boats.
How the Enormous Field of Physics All Fits Together – A short video (less than 10 minutes) that provides a big picture Physics.
NASA’s Bold Plan to Hunt for Fossils on Mars – Fossils of single celled algae and bateria…maybe taking a look at the cauliflower-shaped silica formations inside Mars’s Gusev Crater that look like objects sculpted by bacteria living inside hot springs on earth.
What it’s like to sail a giant ship on Earth’s busiest seas – Part of the BBC’s Future Now series.
Cuba’s Underwater Jewels are in Tourism’s Path – Gardens of the Queen National Park: keys, mangrove islets, and reefs about 50 miles off Cuba. Cuba limits the number of divers and fishermen allowed to visit but could face pressure to increase access.
Birds have skills previously described as ‘uniquely human’ – Caledonian crows use tools, scrub jays remember past events and act accordingly, pigeons can be trained to recognize patterns of letters (words). But they may be processing stimuli differently than humans. Maybe no two species are the same but the brain is often adaptable enough to find a means to meet the needs of the animal.
The most Visual Science Textbook You’ve Ever Seen – History of Evolution….and images of example along the way.
The Chemistry of Turmeric – Fluorescence, Indicator, and Health Effects – The post includes an infographic but the short video is worth watching (rather gathering materials to do the experiments yourself).
So many little celebrations – it was hard to choose just 10!
There is always a lot of good food in November:
Thanksgiving was celebrated with our tradition of brisket cooked in the crock pot…but I enjoyed two new sides even more: a slaw made with Napa Cabbage, beet noodles and crystalized ginger (homemade cranberry relish and olive oil dressing) and butternut squash mousse (following the recipe for pumpkin mousse found here – sort of…I substituted unsweetened coconut for the banana).
Graham crackers have become my ‘comfort food’ for my afternoon snack or in the evening. I like the ‘originals’ the best and celebrate that they are still available!
Pomegranates are in season. They are so beautiful and their season meshes very well with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have become part of my tradition in those big celebrations.
Being home again after travelling was worth celebrating too:
A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard after we returned from New Mexico and I managed to get a picture when the bird sat for a bit in our tulip poplar tree. I celebrated my new camera’s ability to get the picture…and that the bird was around. But I don’t want it to stay around all the time because I like the little birds that come to the bird bath and the feeder!
The Modern World, Part Two is the Coursera course I am viewing this month. I’d taken Part I way back in 2013! I celebrated when I found this one in the Coursera catalog because I’ve always thought my basic knowledge of history since 1900s was patchy.
The trip to New Mexico had so many celebrations…but I managed to pick just 5:
Birds that I had not seen (or maybe had not noticed) before worth celebration: Grebes and Brewers Blackbirds and Pyrrhuloxia to name a few. I should count each new (to me) bird is a little celebration all by itself!
Sandhill Cranes silhouetted by the sunrise…the image, the luck to catch it, just being at Bosque del Apache.
Wild Turkeys in action. Turkey being stately is one think…turkey running down the road to catch up with their cohort…I celebrated their quick analysis of their situation and seeing them move in hurry!
Macro Photography of Cactus. I haven’t gotten around to posting the pictures yet…but I celebrated how well my camera worked in the small botanical garden at Bosque del Apache.
Petroglyph National Monument. I had read a book before I left for New Mexico about petroglyphs in the southwest and celebrated being the place (near Albuquerque) to see some. They’ll be a topic of an upcoming post as well.
We signed up for and early morning ‘Bosque del Apache Hot Spots and Elusive Birds’ tour that started at 5:30 AM on our second morning at the Festival of the Cranes. That meant me had to leave our hotel before 5…and it was cold. The tour participates and our guide climbed on the bus and were at Crane Ponds before 6 – well before dawn. The goal was to see the sandhill cranes and snow geese ‘fly out’ of their roosting area (in the water) to feeding areas in the fields in and around the refuge during the day. The action took place in less than an hour. The slide show below includes the time ordered images – once it got light enough for my camera to work reasonably well.
There was almost no wind so the reflections were good. I photographed a cottonwood tree repeatedly. The two pictures below are about 25 minutes apart…the pinks before dawn and the yellow light after.
There were other birds on the ponds too. The two pictures below are a female and male Northern Shoveler. The female is peeking out from behind pond vegetation…in the orangey reflections after sunrise. By the time I photographed the male about 30 minutes later, the magic of morning light was gone.
There were Canadian Geese on the ponds too – a familiar bird to us and not as numerous as at Bosque as where we live in Maryland.
A last picture at the ponds before we headed back to the Visitor Center for breakfast: the mountains reflected in the Crane Pond. If you look toward the top of the image, you’ll see the moon peeking out from behind a cloud.
After warming up while we ate breakfast, it was back on the bus. The Great Blue Heron we saw in one of the irrigation canals is so consistently present that the refuge staff has informally named him: Hank. The herons are not as prevalent at Bosque del Apache as we’ve seen in places like Conowingo Dam in Maryland…but another familiar bird to us.
Another familiar bird was surprise for me: an Eastern Bluebird. Evidently there are both eastern and western bluebirds on the refuge but the Eastern ones are more common in November…and this one looks more like an Eastern Bluebird to me!
And I got a picture of the legs on the Yellowlegs in one of the ponds.
There was a red-tailed hawk in one of the snags. It is a little too far away to be a ‘good’ picture but the distinctive patter on the breast make it good enough for identification.
There was a coyote watching Sandhill Cranes feeding. The predator was keeping its distance from the big birds.
I couldn’t resist some more zoomed shots of cranes. The red color on their head is such a vivid mark.
Our guided tour took us down a refuge road that is not part of the wildlife loop; the road was called ‘turkey road’ and we did see turkeys! They were come out of a path onto the road. As soon as they noticed the group of people taking pictures – they ran in the opposite direction! The turkey further back in line ran the hardest when they got out on the road and realized their ‘friends’ were so far away.
Then we turned around and saw another group of turkeys behind the bus. We must have seen about 50 birds just from that one vantage point.
It was quite a morning. We had excellent barbeque sandwiches from a food truck for lunch then headed out to our afternoon adventure...that’s the topic for tomorrow post.
We made a leisurely tour of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our first day (November 13) – not trying to get there in time for the fly out which happens at sunrise. We’d arrived at our hotel after dark the day before and took in the scene of the Magdalena Mountains to the west – and the moon - from our hotel parking lot as we got ready to go to the refuge for the first time.
After a quick stop at the refuge’s visitor center, we drove around the wildlife loop. There were flooded fields and one of the first birds I saw was a yellowlegs – a bird I’d also seen on the west coast.
Cattails were also prevalent.
There were lots of crows that moved around together as we took a short hike.
A train came through.
I was so focused on photographing the train that I was startled by two javelinas coming toward me! After they crossed the path, I managed to get a picture of them as they continued to move away.
We saw sandhill cranes feeding in the field. The sometimes raise their necks and heads straight up and make lots of noise…and they ‘dance’ too.
I was close enough to zoom in to get a picture of vegetation through the nostrils of a sandhill crane (nostrils are on the upper part of the bill)!
There were many Northern Pintail Ducks on the ponds
And American Coots
And Northern Shovelers (male and female)
And Buffleheads which are notoriously hard to photograph because they go under the water so frequently
And turkeys
And two morphs of snow geese (white and blue, they are distinguished from the Ross’s goose by the dark mark on their bill).
The cottonwoods were still full of yellow leaves since the weather had been mild until the later part of the week we were there.
It was a lot to see in one day!
November is my second month with my new camera (Canon PowerShot SX720 HS). My earlier posts this month have used a lot of zoomed images…but I’m sharing 7 in this post that are new. The first is an immature milkweed bug. See the stubs where the wings will be in a later instar? In October, I thought they would gone by November but the weather stayed reasonably warm and there were still green milkweed pods well into the month. Some of the bugs probably didn’t make it to maturity before the first frost.
November included the brightest fall color this year. I like the light shining through these maple leaves.
The Bald Cypress cones were more obvious against the rusty brown of the foliage being shed this time of year.
Ferns have sporangia on their underside; these reminded me of the dots on dominos.
Inside the conservatory at Brookside the banana plant had maturing fruit.
I’m not sure what this is…but it is growing (and blooming) in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.
I discovered Virginia Creeper growing on the brick in front of my house. It is turned red with the cooler temperatures.
On the day I went to photograph mums at Brookside Gardens, I also made my normal loop walk around the gardens. The first segment is the boardwalk between the conservatory parking lot and the Nature Center. The boardwalk was dusted with leaves. The ferns were still green but the thick undergrowth that blocked the view of the Cyprus knees further along had died and they were visible again as they will be until next spring when the skunk cabbage grows again.
I was there early enough that the sunlight cast a warm glow on the stones of the scent garden.
There were robins – looking a little scruffy – looking for food in the leaves.
I took pictures of single leaves on the ground all along the way and they are included in the slide show below. Can you identify the maple, several oaks, tulip poplar, redbud and gingko?
A gingko was dropping its leaves quickly and there were drifts of them along the path.
The Japanese tea house overlooks the pond – this time without geese or turtles around.
There were some surprise bulbs blooming - perhaps a fall crocus.
Many of the leaves had already fallen but there were some swaths of color.
Here’s a path that has an ‘icing’ of leaves (mostly maple) to top of mulch.
Some oaks have leaves that look very red in bright sunlight but brown on the ground. The light was bringing-out-the-red on this tree.
On the path – within sight of the conservatory again – a squirrel made enough noise in the leaves for me to notice and was still while eating an acorn….I took the picture.
The gingko near the conservatory seemed to have more leaves than the one I’d walk by earlier. Some were still tinged green.
In a pot – someone had stacked a small pumpkin on a larger white one…a little cairn like we saw a few weeks ago in State College.
There was some lantana blooming nearby and a skipper was enjoying a meal.
There is always something new to see at Brookside.
November has been a good month for photography through my office window. The crows come to look for things in our gutters.
House finches come for water (this one is a male).
There was a purple finch (female) that visited too – seemingly very nervous.
There were bluebirds too – two days in a row. The second day was colder and the feathers are fluffed to keep the bird warmer.
The Carolina Wren is still around. The noises it makes in the fall are quite different than the spring song.
The bird I got the most excited about was a Northern Flicker (yellow shafted) that was in the maple tree long enough to get several pictures.
The blue jays have been around (very noisy)…but have not settled for long enough for me to photograph.
The squirrel has visited our deck several times and I suspect that the bird feeder is the attraction. It is supposed to be squirrel proof and – so far – has not been dumped. One squirrel figured out how to do it last spring….but so far the area under the feeder has remained free of large amounts of seed.
Usually we do have leaves on the roof --- but the leaves are swirling and it rained, so we have a few that are temporarily stuck: tulip poplar and maple. They dry out soon and be blown away (hopefully not into the gutter).
The conservatory at Brookside Gardens is filled with mums – the flower of fall. I always enjoy photographing the vivid colors and curves of the petals. I try to go early in November because I know they’ll be setting up the model train in the same conservatory later in the month.
The spider mums are some of my favorite. Sometimes the petals remind me of fiddleheads (of ferns) because they unfurl from a compressed spiral. I like the space between the petals as much as the density of the center.
Sometimes the colors are so bright they are almost blinding.
The shape of these petals is rolled at the center – an open flared at the tips. It could serve as a design for a vase or a neckline.
Some of the very large mums seem to have petals that will unfurl for a long time. One of the great things about mums is the length of time the flowers last – looking great the whole time.
I always think the curly petals on the outer edge are the most interesting.
The walk at Centennial Park was full of fall color a week ago when I took these pictures. I took a lot of pictures with the reflections of trees in the water. The leaves on many of the tallest trees like tulip poplar had already lost a lot of their leaves but the maples and sweet gums – the reds – were still plentiful and the beeches provides some yellow. The oaks still had some green. My favorite of these pictures is the one that include the rocks that are beside the boat launch; they break up the reflection with their smoothed surfaces.
Then zoomed in on some leaves – maple
And oak.
There were also seed pods along the shore of the lake that I recognized – goldenrod
And Queen Anne’s Lace.
Every time I go to the park there is something to photograph….this time is was ‘fall.’ (Last time it was ‘birds’.)
I decided to make some leaf rubbings during one of my leaf raking flurries. I took out a clip board, scratch paper, a red crayon, a graphite pencil and a blue colored pencil.
When my daughter was young we had always used crayons. But we still had some left-over fat crayons from her first grade. The crayon I used was found in a junk drawer – probably from a restaurant. I peeled off the paper to enlarge the area of crayon available to make the rubbing. It was hard to hold the leave still pressing down on the paper from above while I was trying to also hold the clipboard and move the crayon! The small leaf in this first one is a tulip poplar…the larger one is a sycamore (a rather small leaf from that tree).
The second page was a small tulip polar leaf and two maple leaves.
I switched to the blue colored pencil. There is a partial tulip poplar leaf in the lower right corner. The others are maple leaves.
The last one I did was a larger tulip poplar leaf with the graphite pencil. I couldn’t resist using it as a string for a Zentangle!
And now I have another round of raking to do….
Celebrating the whole of life....
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