Ten Days of Little Celebrations – December 2016

I decided to choose the little celebrations I looked in December that were non-traditional. There were four groupings:

Classes

I thoroughly enjoyed a 2-day class on aquatic macroinvertebrates last week. It’s been almost two years since I too anything that was more than a few hours in duration….and a long time since I had been in a lab. I celebrated the subject matter and the experience that reminded me a lot of my undergraduate days.

There are two Coursera courses that I celebrated – linearly since I was not taking them concurrently: Osteoarcheology and Anatomy of the Abdomen and Pelvis. They are probably among the most challenging Coursera courses I’ve taken…but I’m so interested in the topics that I’m celebrating their availability and that I have the time to dedicate to them.

Food

I volunteered at the Howard County Conservancy’s Natural Holiday Sale and celebrated the huge variety of cookies to choose from. I like trying different kinds of cookies – never having enough time to try all the cookie recipes that ‘look good.’

I made the Paleo Chocolate Pudding (made with avocado!) and wow! I’ll make it again as part of our celebration at the beginning of 2017.

Backyard Birds

I heard an owl in the forest behind out house just before it was light enough to see it…and celebrated knowing it was there.

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard again. I celebrated that it did…and that it didn’t stick around long enough to scare away the birds that visit bird bath and feeder.

Out and About

The most Christmasy items on the list of little celebrations are a walk around Brookside Gardens’ holiday lights and the poinsettia display at Rawlings Observatory.

And I always celebrate seeing Bald Eagles at Conwingo. The birds – rare not so long ago – are back in large enough numbers that it’s possible to seem them often. Something to celebrate!

Zooming – December 2016

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!

Spines and Thorns and Prickles

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!

Brookside Gardens’ Model Trains

Every year there is a train exhibit in one of the conservatories during Brookside Gardens’ Garden of Lights. When we went to see the lights last week, I decided to come back during the day to photograph the trains because the light would be better. Last Friday was the day. It was a sunny day – which met my criteria for the light – but I was dismayed to find the entrance crammed with three school buses! I turned around to park in the Brookside Nature Center parking area. I was worried that it would be too crowded to enjoy the trains…but it worked out. There were a lot of children (early elementary…and some pre-school), but it was fun watching them try to find the superheroes and villains…monsters…Santa…magical creatures…Disney characters --- in add places along the train tracks. For some it was hard not to just watch the trains. One of the trains even had a smokestack!

I found myself taking more pictures of the scenes along the tracks rather than the trains. Enjoy the slide show – the best pictures I managed to get with the crowds of very excited children in the conservatory.

Brookside Gardens’ Garden of Lights

Earlier this week my husband and I enjoyed a walk around Brookside Gardens’ Garden of Lights. We’ve always liked this display because it is experienced on foot rather than driving through it in a car. We don’t go every year and were surprised at how brilliant the colors are with the LED lights; they are quite an improvement over the older technology.  We arrived just as the display was opening at 5:30 PM. The sun had set more than a half hour earlier so it was already very dark. I enjoyed the ‘landscape’ of the garden in lights

And looking closer at the structure of some of the displays as well. Each flowers structure created takes many of the small lights – arranged to form the image.

Most of the displays are outdoors/nature themed although there are some fantasy elements too. Look at the slideshow below. Can you find a:

• Caterpillar
• Spider
• Rainbow
• Moon
• Campfire
• Sea serpent (and baby)
• Giraffe
• Coyote
• Fox
• Ent (from Lord of the Rings – in this garden it has big purple branches on a green trunk – two glowing eyes)
• Butterfly

Zooming – November 2016

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.

Outside at Brookside – November 2016

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.

Mums at Brookside Gardens

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.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – October 2016

More than half my ‘little celebrations’ this month were place/activity specify. There were 3 celebrations of familiar places/activities:

• I spent 4 mornings at Belmont for BioBlitz with fifth graders. The weather was near perfect – much better than the wet weather for the event last spring. Every day held a few surprises and I was pleased that my husband joined me this fall rather than my volunteering on my own.
• My walk around Brookside was a fall morning – a little cool – that was near perfect for walking around the garden loop. I’ll have to go back to see the mum exhibit in the conservatories.
• Mt. Pleasant Farm is probably one of my favorite places in the fall. What’s not to like about hiking with elementary school field trips! This fall the 1^st grades were the most frequent visitors. I got plenty of practice leading those hikes.

Another 3 of new places/activities:

• I’d never been to State College (Penn State) before. We picked a great weekend to go – colorful fall squash, gourds and leaves everywhere.
• Waggoner’s Gap was also new. The weather was not great for raptor spotting…so I celebrating finding the place….but want to go back again to actually spot some birds.
• Being with high schoolers assessing the Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook was new too. The place was full of fall leaves and the river had plenty of scenic variety….and the perspective of high schoolers doing field work (sometimes with water flowing over the tops of their boots) added elements to the celebration that went beyond just going to the place on my own.

There were some serendipity sights that I celebrated via photography:

• Getting out to the meadow before the dew dried to photograph spider webs and
• Bright fungus growing on a tree where lightning had struck (and killed the tree).

And mixed in with those celebrations was one ‘lazy day’ that I celebrated because it was so different from the rest of the month!

Walking in Brookside Gardens

I’ve already posted about the serendipity and the catbird from my walk in Brookside Gardens last week. There were plenty of ‘normal’ scenes that I enjoyed too along with quite a few people walking the loop around the gardens. Here are some highlights:

The white wash is still on the conservatory. It’s there to help reduce the heat of summer inside but is washed off once it gets cool enough in the fall.

There are still flowers blooming.

And the seed pods of the magnolias have their bright red seeds (they always remind me of red M&Ms).

Some of the leaves are beginning to turn but most are still green.

I’ve been reading so much about the rusty patched bumble bees that I’ve started paying more attention to all bumble bees (this was is obviously not a rusty patched)!

Caster plants have maturing seeds. I always notice these at Brookside because one of my grandfathers always had a few plants in his garden.

The Tea House was empty as I walked by…the pond cloudy with sediment after recent rains.

Some of the ferns had spores on the underside of their fronds.

My last stop of the morning was in the conservatories. They were just setting up the mum displays --- and none were blooming enough to photograph – yet. I’ll go back in November. Along with a lot of gardeners working the garden, there were also people putting up lights already in preparation for the display beginning around Thanksgiving.

Catbird and Winterberries

Last week when I was walking around Brookside Gardens, I heard a noisy bird in the bushes beside the path. It did not take me long to spot it among the branches of a bush with nice red fruit…and take a picture. It was grayish bird with a black head and tail….and a rush colored rump. And it was gorging on the red fruit.

I managed to get a few pictures that helped me identify the bird when I got home – a Gray Catbird – and it the red berries look like winterberries which are one of the most popular bushes planted around Brookside Gardens. We like them for their color in the fall and winter….the catbirds are evidently very fond of the fruit!

Brookside Serendipity

When I walk around Brookside Gardens – I savor the little serendipities of even a familiar place. This week I made an effort to photograph some of those surprises: a yellow petal that had landed on a very green leaf,

A turkey tail shelf function on an otherwise smooth stump,

Sunflowers in the children’s garden (I imagine this is a photo stop for many groups of children; I was too early for them although there was a mother reading a nature book to a young child at one of the tables in the children’s area),

A hat on a rock (there were a lot of volunteer sin the garden but nowhere near the hat),

A chipmunk that sat still long enough for a portrait,

A bald cypress knee in the plantings just outside the conservatory (the tree is on the other side of the sidewalk and there are no knees closer to the tree).

One of the reasons, I like natural areas – including gardens – is there is always something new….something not quite anticipated.

Hummingbird Moth at Brookside

I was thrilled to see a hummingbird moth enjoying the flowers at Brookside Gardens last week. The insect is always one I look for during the mid to late summer in the fragrance garden since that is where I’d seen one before. They are probably their every year but I have not seen then consistently so it was a special treat to see it and photograph it too. The images are good enough to identify it as a snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris diffinis) (Info from USDA and Wikipedia).

The wings have red veins but are almost always moving so fast that they are blurred or can’t be seen at all. The insect moves rapidly from flower to flower – similar to the way a hummingbird moves. I watched this one in two stretches. (Interrupted by a group of women with strollers in the garden for a ‘new mother’ outing; they need the full path and I stepped out of the way…remembering fondly that time of my life that is now more than 25 years ago).

I took lots of pictures, trying to get every angle and proboscis position. Look for the following in the slideshow below:

• A skipper butterfly photobomb
• Extended proboscis
• Fully extended wings – with a flower send through the ‘clear’ wing
• Coiled proboscis
• Antennae structure
• Bristles on the end of the abdomen
• Fuzziness of the thorax

Brookside Gardens – June 2016

I had guests over the past two weeks and Brookside Gardens is one of the places that just about everyone enjoys. We got their early enough to be part of the first group into the Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. The butterflies inside were pretty much the same as we saw in late May that that I posted about early this month. I did get to see caterpillars for the black swallowtail. I had them on parsley growing on my deck a few years back – so many of them that the parsley was demolished!

There were insects in the gardens that were active because the day was already warm: dragonflies like the garden rooms that include a water feature and

Bubble bees seem to be everywhere.

There was a mockingbird that made lots of noise from the pinnacle of a small tree.

Every bush in the rose garden seemed to be blooming.

I like the ones that seemed to glow from within in the bright sunlight.

A succulent has been planted in an urn where it was blooming and spilling over the side.

The early summer flowers were at every turn.

The tadpoles near the Tea Garden pavilion were huge – about 6 inches long. since the tail was still so long I wondered how long it would be before they made the transformation to frogs.

The native dogwoods are already done with blooming for the year but the Asian ones were still in bloom. I liked the soft pink of one so much that I took a lot of pictures of it. My three favorite images are below.

Brookside Gardens at the end of May

The overabundance of rain we got in April and May caused the gardens to become lush very quickly as soon at the temperatures began to warm toward the end of May. There were people enjoying being outdoors before we went into the butterfly exhibit…and after we came out.

There were still some azaleas blooming although the peak of their season was well past.

The rhododendrons were full of blooms. I took a cluster through a veil of a cluster closer to the camera.

There were other flowers as well – in small trees.

Mixed with green foliage closer to the ground,

And vines (I think this was a morning glory just beginning to unfurl for the day).

Insects were beginning to make an appearance too. This leaf hopper was using a bridge railing as a highway to the next plant.

There was a moth perched on a poppy.

Sometimes – leaves are spectacular enough to catch attention: the color of these in the shade and sun – layers or

The combination of color and shape (I think these were leaves although I wonder what the flower will be like) or

Huge leaves uncurling (this one reminded me of a scroll with the bumps being writing).

Peonies were blooming the gardens near the exit from the butterfly exhibit. The plants were full of blooms…were lots of buds left to open too.

The alliums caught my attention as I turned to go. They often remind me of the large fireworks that burst into a ball of bright light. The big difference is size and the alliums are more durable!

Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy

Brookside Gardens’ annual butterfly and caterpillar exhibit is going on now - continuing until September 25th. It’s best to go as early as possible since the conservatory where the exhibit is housed is about 10 degrees warmer than the outdoors. It if gets above 100 in the conservatory, they often close the exhibit; the butterflied like the heat but people wilt quickly in the heat and humidity.

The caterpillar part of the exhibit is an entry way before the main exhibit. A volunteer is there to explain the exhibit and point out the caterpillars on the food plants. Can you find the cecropia moth caterpillar in the image below?

If not – I’ve circled it in this thumbnail.

Right after I entered the butterfly exhibit – a blue morpho settled for a bit on one of the walls. Usually they do not sit for long with their winds open like this so I felt lucky to get the picture right away. This one looked very battered – probably near the end of a relatively short life cycle of about 115 days.

The day was warm enough for all the butterflies to be active and one of them settled on my T-shirt; I got a picture before it flew off.

But it came back and landed on the hat I’d tied to the strap of my bag.

Another butterfly liked the back of my pants.

Enjoy the slide show of my photo picks from the rest of my walk around the conservatory. I’ll be going again every time we have guests from out of town this summer!

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.

The best of the rest of Brookside

There was a lot more than fiddleheads, azaleas and goslings at Brookside Gardens last week….so this post is a ‘best of the rest’ from my collection of pictures.

The Red Buckeye near the conservatory parking lot was blooming.

I’d never looked at the flower up close before. I looked it up and discovered that it is closely related to the horse chestnut.

The jack-in-the-pulpits were coming up. These are flowers that one has to be looking for to spot although these striped ones are pretty distinctive.

Many times the leaves and the flowers are almost the same color.

The dogwoods were blooming too. Depending where they are in the garden they can be still green in the center

Or already yellow.

And there are some that are very different – from Asia rather than our native variety of dogwood.

There as a chipmunk sorting through the debris in a concrete culvert – finding seeds.

The area of the gardens that has been ‘under construction’ for the past few years was open and there were yellow irises around the pond,

A newly planted magnolia with large leaves and mature blooms, and

A robust stand of horsetails.

I noticed a bench that evidently is not used often ... judging from the plants growing around it.

I’d never noticed how the bark of this Hawthorne wrinkled as the branches flared out from the trunk!

Even the pines have interesting features in the spring.

It’s a great time of year to take a closer look at the garden!

Brookside Fiddleheads

The fiddleheads were another sign of spring at Brookside Gardens last week. I enjoy seeing how the fronds of different ferns start out so tightly packed and then unfurl in graceful curves.

Some start out very fuzzy looking. It is hard to image the frond from the fiddlehead form.

Some of the fiddleheads are further along and the expansion of the frond nearest to the stem happens rapidly enough to make it look like the tip of the frond is a knot…but is simply has not expanded quite yet.

Sometimes I imagine other things that look a little like fiddleheads  - like intricate round earrings heavy enough to weight their wire

Or the tentacles of an octopus.

I generally thing about fiddleheads being near circular but there are exceptions – the oval shape shows up almost as often.

Fiddleheads are another sign of spring – the harbingers of the lush ferns of summer.

Brookside Azaleas

The azaleas were glorious at Brookside Gardens last week. The day was cloudy – the best we could do with the weather pattern that seems dominated by rainy days recently. I got 3 selective focus shots that I liked - successfully tricking the automatic focus algorithm of my point and shot Canon Powershot SX710 HS to create the image I wanted. There were dark pink with the same color blurred in the foreground and side,

Light pink with some purple azaleas making the blur in the foreground,

And yellow azaleas with yellow blur in the foreground bottom and sides.

I also tried pictures of azaleas with other plants – like these flowers that had fallen onto a bed of ferns

And some that were blooming next to a pine.

While I was photographing the azaleas near the pine – I noticed a relative of the azaleas that also blooms this time of year – a rhododendron.

Even though the clouds were pretty thick – it was bright enough to see the reflection of azaleas in the pond.

Everywhere we walked was full of azalea color. If it has been drier – the benches would have been used! Walking around it was still a celebration of springtime in Maryland.