Highlights of 2016

What are the experiences of 2016 I’ll remember the most?

The trip to New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes tops the list for memorable travel. My husband and I enjoyed it so much we’re already looking for similar events at National Wildlife Refuges elsewhere in the country.

My son-in-law defending his research and getting his PhD…finding a postdoc for 2017…tops the list for memorable family event. It’s quite a milestone. My daughter will have a similar one in 2017. This kind of milestone is a huge change for them --- no longer a student, physically moving somewhere very different, etc. --- and has the potential to be a pivot point in their lives. It’s on my list for memorable experiences because of the flurry of activity we’re involved in these last weeks of the year…and knowing that there is more to come in early 2017.

Of course – there are many other things I could put on the list – courses, volunteering, travels to familiar places. I chose these two because they were so different...they are not part of the ‘norm’ that we enjoy all the time!

Rawlings Conservatory – Part II

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.

Easy Sunrise

This time of year, it is easy to photograph a sunrise. I stopped in the turnout before the gate to Gorman Produce Farm (the Community Supported Agriculture farm I enjoy in the summer and fall) on my way to the grocery store last week.

There were no clouds in the sky to reflect the light but the silhouettes of the trees and the shadowy buildings were enough to hold my interest. I enjoyed the scene and thought about how the CSA has modified my shopping habits even when I’m buying my produce from the grocery store – some pleasant thoughts on a winter morning.

The temperature was in the 20s. I took a few pictures and continued to the store. I’ll try again next week when I am on the same errand. It will be a little a few minutes later. I’ll check the exact sunrise time for my location and adjust the time I leave the house just as I did for this picture.

When I got home – I already had my little celebration for the day to record (i.e. the sunrise over Gorman Farm).

Volunteering in December 2016

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!

Zentangle® – November 2016

We were traveling for more than a week in November – but that did not slow we down creating Zentangle® tiles at all. I’ve chosen 10 tradition tiles from the collection. I like colored tiles and inks…although I tend to return again and again to black as my favorite it. This month I have tended to not use as much shading…that is something to improve in December.

I did some not traditional Zentangle items in November. My favorite was owls. I got the idea from a Sue Jacobs blog post and promptly dug through the recycle basket in the upstairs of my housed and found a lot of empty toilet paper rolls to work with. The Ultra Thin Point Sharpie worked well for me. I positioned the owls on top of balsa wood sticks my daughter had bought in bulk when she was in high school and I had stuck in a large vase just waiting (years) for the owls to come along! I start with the eyes then just go from there.

And here are close-ups of the rest of the owls!

I took my car in for service in November and came back with the ‘number’ tag they use to track the car during the service…big red and green numbers…. Hard to resist overlaying a tangle pattern on them!

--

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.

Zentangle® – August 2016

The time spent creating Zentangle® tiles seems like islands of calm focus that fit within the context of the rest of life so easily. Perhaps they fit because they are not overly time consuming….or because the rhythm of creating at least one a day has become a habit…a habit that I enjoy.

I’m still cutting tiles from folders with battered edges from my daughter’s years in public school. The boxes of old school paper are finally being cleaned out and we are only keeping a few mementoes rather than every paper. I enjoy the colored tiles.

Different colors of ink are a change too. I may go through a stage when I am back to off white tiles and black in sometime too --- but not in the near term.

Enjoy the slide show of 31 Zentangle tiles for August!

--

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.

Photography with Belmont Manor and Historic Park Summer Camp

Last week I volunteered to lead a nature photography activity the Howard Country Conservancy’s Summer Nature Camps at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. The day was hot, humid and there was an air quality alert as well. I got there early and took a walk along the path I planned to take with the first group…and that is when I took most of the pictures for the day. I noticed the Norway maple’s ripening samaras (invasive tree that was planted as part of the landscaping around The Cottage),

The wineberries (good to eat but watch out for the thorns),

Thistle seeds ready to blow away with the next strong breeze,

Caterpillars making their tent in the morning sun,

And chicory (from afar it looks like it is mostly stem but the small blue flowers are lovely at close range).

Later in the morning when I was hiking with the 6 to 8 years old campers, I managed to capture a picture of ripening Jack-in-the-Pulpit seeds and

The forest canopy reflected in a mud puddle. It was getting hotter all the time and our hike lasted less than 45 minutes.

With the older group (9-12 years old) we headed to the formal gardens. It was after lunch and me tried to stick to the shade as much as possible. It worked for a little while. We took a lot of pictures at the water lily pond. Many of the children were as patient as I was to get a picture of a dragonfly on a water lily bud.

I liked the margins of the lily pads – the green, the black water, the glint of the sun…and tiny piece of brown debris.

We misted everyone with water we’d brought to make spider webs more visible and managed to stay out as long as the morning group even though the temperature was hotter than in the morning. Everyone welcomed the cool of the nature center building when we got back!

CSA Week 7

I used up a lot of the week 6 squash by making 2 batches of zucchini bread – one as little cakes which I have been enjoying for breakfast.

I also used the week 5 bunch of carrots to make a carrot cake. I didn’t make icing for the cake – so it will work for breakfast as well. Needless to say, with only my husband and I around more than half the baked goods are now in the freezer! Otherwise I did well eating up the veggies from week 6 – only some carrots and cucumbers were left when I went to pick up the next share.

The medium share at our CSA this week was ‘heavy’ both in terms of size (two bags again) and weight (included 6 pounds of squash and 3 pound of cucumbers). Starting up at the upper left corner and working around the picture below clockwise: cucumbers, onions, carrots, summer squash, chard, basil, lettuce, and kohlrabi. The hotter days will reduce the greens in a few weeks but now we have plenty for salad stuff: lettuce, carrot tops, basil, and chard.

I’ve already decided to shred the squash and freeze it in 2 cup portions. 6 pounds is a lot of squash! It will take up less space to freeze in that form than baking it already into zucchini bread to freeze. I might do something similar with the carrots although I haven’t gotten tired of carrot raisin salad yet.

CSA Week 3

Wow – week 3 of our Community Supported Agriculture share was a very full bag! Starting at the far left and moving clockwise around the image: Napa cabbage, kohlrabi, lavender, oregano, pac choi, red leaf lettuce, broccoli, spinach and parsley. The pac choi was from the ‘overage’ table but I like it so much I couldn’t resist. The ¾ pound of spinach was a stuffed bag…several salads for sure (and I plan to use as least part of it in one of my favorite salads: spinach, strawberries, almonds with marmalade dressing). It will take some heavy veggie meals to finish off most of this before next Wednesday. I still have some of the romaine, chard, and garlic scapes from the week 2 share.

One of the things I have learned from the CSA over the past few years is how to end up with relatively little waste from the veggies. For example – when I process collards, chard, kohlrabi, beet, or kale leaves, I cut out the tougher stem first (example below is a collard leaf) and then save it for use in soup or stir fry.

This past week, I made a stem soup: cut the stems into ½ inch lengths, cooked at a slow boil in beef bouillon and seasonings with dry roasted peanuts added for the last few minutes of cooking for protein. It was an excellent lunch.

Before I started getting veggies via a CSA, I didn’t buy large leaved veggies. I have become better at handling them over the last few years. Now I roll the halves of the leaves together,

Cut the roll lengthwise and then across. It makes small bite sized pieces! I have discovered that I like using collard leaves in salads when they are cut this small. My plan is to add some of the last of the collards from week 2 to the spinach salad with strawberries!

6th Graders at Storm Water Engineering

Last week I volunteered during a 6^th grade field trip to Belmont Manor and Historic Park. It was the last of the Middle School spring field trips there. The field trips activity were a mixture of history, technology, and science. My station for one of the day was about storm water engineering. The majority of the students realized that Belmont is on a hill and that the rain water would run downhill to the Patapsco River into Baltimore Harbor then to the Chesapeake Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean. Each team of 4-5 students was given a paint tray with a mound of earth at the high end of the tray as a model for what happens to storm water. They could add sticks, stones, and dry grass in any way they wanted to slow the flow of the water when it ‘rained’ (via a watering jug) on the soil. After 10 minutes of engineering by all the teams, the teams did a short description to the whole group and then the ‘rain’ came as everyone watched.

A surprising number of teams did not think to cover the soil at the top of the tray. It ‘eroded’ when the rain came down and often resulted in fast water runoff and the water was muddy too.

Some of the teams did cover the soil and used rocks and sticks to hold grass in place both over the soil and rocks; the grass turned out to be very absorbent. The water took a long time to get through to the bottom of the paint tray….and was generally clear.

As I watched the teams decide what they were going to do, implement their design, present their design, and then test it, I was intrigued by the ‘light bulb’ moments of learning that were visibly occurring all along the process.

As I walked back to my car after the last field trip – I took a picture of the bald cypress down near the pond – the tall grasses waving in the misty day…. feeling happy to have been a part of the field trips for middle schoolers at Belmont.

CSA Week 2

My pickup on Wednesday afternoon at the Gorman Farm Community Supported Agriculture was very breezy…and full of green. Picked a red leaf butter lettuce to just get some color variety.

When I got home I rinsed everything and organized it into bins, bags, and trays: red leaf lettuce and half the scallions in one bin….the lettuce needs to be eaten before the other greens since it will wilt first; the older half of the scallions and romaine lettuce into the second bin; the kale and garlic scapes into the third bin; the collard cut in half and into a gallon Ziploc, and the thyme spread out on a small tray to dry. With the exception of the thyme – it will all go into the refrigerator.

I managed to eat everything we got in the week 1 share but I’m already anticipating that it will be more challenging with the second week simply because it is larger. I already am planning to make Kale chips from all the kale leaves (the stems will go into a stir fry as will the collard stems). I am going to skew toward salads immediately to use up lettuces and scallions and some of the garlic scapes. Hopefully having everything in closed bins and plastic bags will help keep the rest in good shape long enough to get it all eaten!

Thrift Store Finds

Every time my daughter comes to visit – we check out the 2^nd Ave. thrift stores in Columbia and Laurel. She went back to Tucson with skirts and dresses, and a pair for jeans…13 pieces in all. Her closet has been refreshed for the summer!

My closet is already in reasonable shape but I couldn’t resist the bargains either. I got two pair of casual shoes for summer – a little more substantial than flip flops. Both have leather uppers.

I bought two skirts as well. One is a gray knit – a ‘go with any top’ classic – and the other is more artisan with bright blue highlights and a handkerchief hem. That second one is a good example of something I probably would not have bought at full price but will enjoy tremendously this summer and celebrate its bargain price of $8. It is the type of find I enjoy most in a thrift store.

I always feel good when I can find things I will wear in a thrift store. It is a good form of reuse. The clothes are ‘new to me’ and I enjoy finding the bargain…increasing the range of clothes I have in my closet. Sometimes I like what I buy so much that I wear it out in a few years – other pieces I only wear for a season. Either way – I donate clothing I am not going to wear again and the reuse/recycle continues.

Zentangle® - May 2016

I’ve selected 31 Zentangles to include in this post since there are 31 days of May. Five that I chose were made on the back of old business cards – so did not display well with the square slide show of tiles. I liked them too much to pick others so I’m displaying them first. Some are plant like…

Others start out as webs….

Or loops.

I was inspired by art nouveau books I found on Internet Archive and Hathi Trust as well.

Those same themes show up in the tiles as well. The tiles also are some new colors this month. I was cleaning out boxes of brochures and old folders; instead of putting everything into recycling, I used some of the heavier paper to cut tiles: red, yellow, and rust. I also found some dusty poster board that had probably been on the shelf for 10 years that I cut up into 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles!

Enjoy the May slideshow!

--

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 – May 2016

Most of the learning I logged in May was experiential or in conversations with other people. I went to a lecture on wildflowers – the closest I came to a class. The speaker included a segment on buzz pollination, reinforcing what I already knew about it from my son-in-law about the topic. He also pointed out that the jack-in-the-pulpit flowers look the same from the outside but the male and female flowers are quite different inside – but one has to cut away the outer part of the flower to see the structures. Not something I would do!

One area of experiential learning in May was picking strawberries. Years ago when I picked strawberries, I did so on my knees so I was pleasantly surprised that the mounds of my CSA’s strawberry patch made it easier to just bend over to gather the fruit. I’m still enjoying the strawberries I picked.

The other big experience of the month was using the scanner – primarily for old slides, pictures and Zentangle tiles. I learned to use a can of compressed air to clean the dust off periodically and how to scan multiple items at a time (into separate images). I also raised the scanner on a stand so that I didn’t have to bend over slightly each time I loaded it.

There were a lot of factoids I picked up in conversations with other naturalists before field trip hikes:

• Carolina wrens build multiple nests and then the female chooses one (from a birder),
• Earthworms come to the surface during rains not because they are drowning but because they are migrating (from another naturalist that had been reading about it),
• How the ‘points’ of antlers are counted (from a chaperone of a hiking group),
• Inexpensive wire mesh kitchen strainers work great to capture macro-invertebrates in rivers and streams (from a leader of a field trip to the Patapsco River).

Rain and More Rain

It has been very rainy in our area recently. It has not been with the fanfare of thunder and lightning – more prolonged and gentle showers. We’ve sandwiched in some outings – not always being able to dodge showers. On one trip to Brookside I took very few pictures because it was sprinkling the whole time! We did walk around with the hoods of our windbreakers up and generally enjoyed the scenery.

There was a field trip with 3 graders that it rained the entire 2 hours we were hiking. I was prepared with my stream boots and an umbrella for myself and 4 extra umbrellas for the students (I had 8 in each hiking group so it worked out OK with 2 students for each umbrella…and the chaperones had brought an umbrella too. We proceeded to be out on the grassy trails until everyone was tired of dodging muddy patches and puddles. The challenge turned out to be shoes; some students had boots but most were wearing their normal athletic shoes; eventually – there were a lot of wet feet (uncomfortable and cold). By lunch time they were ready to be indoors! When I got home I had a very wet backpack, hat and umbrellas - which we draped across the yard equipment in our garage.

I’ve been noticing that a lot of the water retention ponds are very full. That means that they aren’t slowing down the run off any more. Our 10 day forecast shows half the day with less than 50% chance of rain….so maybe we won’t stay quite so soggy as we are right now.

Organizing Every Day

When I ended my formal career a few years ago, I realized that the way I organized my days would change significantly. The big chunk that was the 40+ hour work week plus commute time (sometimes adding 10+ hours to the work week) was not going to be the big rock that I needed to organize around. There is a lot more freedom in my post-career days.

I choose to have a few rhythms. From the very beginning, I’ve included a daily blog post, some journal writing, and some reading. The goals have changed over time and sometimes become minimized when there is an overwhelming amount of other activity (like traveling). I’ve added a daily Zentangle in the past year or so. The only weekly rhythm that I’ve retained is grocery shopping; I do it on a weekday morning rather than a weekend morning like I did when I was in the thick of my career.

Some things I’ve kept from my career days.

• I still have a calendar – mostly for things that are away from home. And I share it with my family just like I used to share my work calendar with my staff. The calendar is not as full….and everything on it is something I want to do! Those activities are easy to plan around….they are the only things that have to occur at a particular date and time!
• There are also projects that I organize for myself. Right now I am in the thick of scanning our old slides from the 1970s and 1980s. It is quite a project and will probably take me months. But I’m the one that determines how fast it proceeds. I usually set a goal for my projects (like hours per day) and then just finish them at that pace. I’ll do another blog post with more on my scanning project in a week or so.
• I’ve continued my early mornings. Just because I don’t have to get up and get to work does not mean that I am not up before 6 AM these days….and without the aid of the alarm clock that made sure I was up at exactly the same time every work day morning! The early morning is my favorite time to get off to a fast start on whatever is in store for the day.

Zentangle® - April 2016

Several changes this month:

• I am doing a selection at the end of the month – forcing the number of Zentangles® in this post to be no more than the number of days in the month.
• I bought some colored pens used them for the tiles I made while I was in Texas then left them as a gift. I’ll buy myself another set sometime in May.
• Toward the end of April, my husband and I bought a scanner to digitize all our older pictures and slides….and it works for Zentangle tiles as well. This is the first month for scanned versions of the tiles and they do look better than the photographic method I had used previously.

Enjoy the slide show of the April Zentangles!

--

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 - April 2016

The majority of learning in April was experiential rather than formal course work although it seems that I always have at least one course in progress or scheduled!

I learned about mealworm cookies and Fresh Paper (for keeping strawberries fresh longer) while during my volunteer gig at my county’s STEM Fair and

Realized that I was glad cooking for 12 people was not the norm for me (it is quite a bit more work that cooking for 2-4) and

Was pleased that I didn’t panic when an opossum carcass turned up beside the stream where 7^th graders were going to appear to search for macro invertebrates in a few minutes (no shovels were available so we pushed the stinking mess into a bucket and dumped it into some nearby brambles).

I did take a macro photography class via Creative Live: The Art of Seeing: Macro Techniques for Flowers and Plants with Frans Lanting. I wanted the course on the day it was broadcast (and thus ‘free’) and then have been experimenting with selective focus since then. One of my first attempts is the picture below. It is fun to ‘fool’ the autofocus on my Point and spShoot camera (a Canon Powershot SX710 HS) into creating blurs in the foreground and background.

I also finished the second unit of the Soul Beliefs course available via Coursera from Daniel Ogilvie and Leonard Hamilton at Rutgers. I’ll do the third and last unit after the spring field trip season is done – maybe start in mid-June.

About Trees

I volunteered to be the ‘tree lady’ - staffing the tree nature station at the family event following the 5K Green Run at Belmont last weekend. Some of the children just enjoyed looking at tree cross sections (tree cookies) and buds cut from trees around my yard earlier in the morning (tulip poplar, black walnut, red maple, and sycamore) with magnifiers while others were keen to fill in all the blanks in the booklet to earn the Howard County Conservancy’s Junior Naturalist Badge. Most of them left my table and headed down the slope to look at some trees up close – sweet gum, white pine, and sycamore. The sugar maple around the corner from the carriage house got some attention too.

It was a good day to be outdoors – sunny and a near perfect temperature. The turnout was not huge – but enough to make it worth the effort.  It was good to see children learning something new about the natural world…and enjoying the outdoor activities (the tree nature station was one of three stations).

I didn’t take a picture of the whole table – just two of the small branches I took as ‘living’ examples. The black walnut has leaf clusters coming out of knobby stems.

The sycamore is just beginning to pop its buds! I had some sycamore leaves pressed from last summer to illustrate how big the leaves would eventually get. Looking at the branch at it is now, that size increase hard to imagine.

The black walnut and sycamore are far behind the tulip poplar that already has leaves as big as a hand and big flower buds. The red maple is already shedding its seeds while the green leaves rapidly unfurl.

Field Trip Training

I attended all the training sessions this month for the spring field trip volunteers by the Howard County Conservancy. The field trips for elementary and middle school students will start soon even though this year the weather has been warm enough they could have started earlier than mis-April. Some of the training sessions were the same as last spring – but I learn something a little extra each time…and I enjoy the short spring hikes that are incorporated into the training. Things change so fast along the paths in spring that there is always something new to notice.

Once the field trips start – the challenge will be to focus on the hiking groups and guiding their discoveries. Every hike is different. Sometimes it works to stay totally on topic…other times there is something along the trail that captures everyone’s attention so we just celebrate the serendipity. Last spring several of my groups just stood for several minutes and watched tree swallows building a nest in blue bird box! I was impressed with how quiet the second graders could be when their interest was focused. Will the same happen this spring? I hope so.

I have a little break for a week and then the flurry of spring field trips start. It will be over by mid-June (even with snow days delaying the end of the school year). It's a great volunteer gig!