Brookside Garden Scenes

Gardens are more than just plants. Brookside Gardens has some good examples of physical structures that provide framing for the living part of the garden.  I photographed forsythia in two settings: with a curved brick wall

And reflected in the pond. Which scene do you like the best? I’m always partial to reflections.

The color of pots – and their shape – frame the flowers within.

The bench provides a sense of scale for the holly and redbud.

The maze is quite simple – a place to walk around slowly…and contemplate.

The conservatories always hold treasure like this bunch of bananas. Soon the roof will get a white wash to keep the conservatory from getting too hot during the summer.

This part of the conservatory will be used for the butterfly exhibit in a few months. Right now you can barely see the water in the center and the surrounding rocks…they are just enough to give platforms and backdrop to the dense plantings.

So – walls, ponds, benches, a maze, conservatories, bubbling water and rocks….there is more to Brookside than plants!

Fern Feathers

When I was at Brookside Gardens in late March, I thought at first I was seeing feathers sticking out of the brown bald cypress and moss mulch. But it was dried ferns from last fall! They were close to the boardwalk – protected from being stepped on because they were lower than where everyone walked.

I looked at the structure more closely and it was obvious they were ferns that had simply dried and remained standing.

Some of them almost glowed in the dappled sunlight that

Made its way through the still bare branches of the trees above.

I wonder how long they will last into the spring and summer. I’ll look for them again each time I go to Brookside.

Family Web Sites

My daughter and son-in-law are graduate students at University of Arizona and they have set up web sites. It’s one of the things grad students need to do as they prepare for the next step after grad school. Both of them have some outreach items that are of broader interest:

My daughter’s site has instructions for how to make a Pluto globe.

My son-in-law’s site has a video of buzz pollination (slow motions…taken with a high speed camera).

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 9, 2016

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.

Surgery, Stem Cells Treat Cataracts – Removing a cataract damaged lens but leaving the individuals lens epithelial stem cells (conventional cataract surgery removes them) allows the lens to regenerate. Initial results are good; if sustained this may be the new ‘conventional’ treatment for cataracts.

Man-made Earthquakes are on the rise, but they don’t have to be and As US Oil Production Increases, More Americans at Risk of Man-Made Quakes – Two articles about man-made earthquakes. The second one includes a map. Central Oklahoma has a risk of a damaging quake this year as high as the risk in California! Are the building codes in Oklahoma taking earthquakes into account? If they do, it is probably a recent update since earthquakes were not common in the state until recently.

Beware of Food Fraud – Olive oil is at the top of the ‘food fraud’ list evidently.

Streamer – USGS site that traces steams/rivers upstream and downstream. I you even wondered where the river near you comes from or goes --- this is an easy site to use. It map based so it is a simply as zooming to the river of interest and selecting upstream or downstream highlighting.

A Treasury of Prairie Wildflowers – This is a great time of year to get out and look for wildflowers no matter where you live. Even dandelions have their own charm (particularly if viewed with a magnifier).

6 Primary Transformative Paradigms for the Auto Industry – You’ve probably read about most of these in some form. I like collections like this that help me develop a framework for areas of technology (in this case ‘cars’).

Restoring the American Chestnut – Evidently there are blight resistant cultivars of American Chestnut but it is challenging to grow the 100s of seedlings for field trials and then restoration planting. This article is about experiments to optimize root production in the seedlings.

7 Citizen Science Projects for Bird Lovers – Another motivation to get outdoors this spring!

CDC expands range of Zika mosquito into parts of Northeast and Zika Attacked a Baby’s Brain as Doctors Watched – Scary stuff. I am already gearing up to walk around the yard and make sure we don’t have any standing water (and empty and refresh bird baths every other day). This is going to be a tough battle to keep the virus from spreading (and if it does keeping the mosquitos that carry it from continuing to spread it).

Successful dying: Researchers define the elements of a ‘good death’ – The themes culled from 32 studies were: preferences for a specific dying process, pain-free status, religiosity/spirituality, emotional well-being, life completion, treatment preferences, dignity, family, quality of life, relationship with the health care provider and "other." The bottom line is to ‘ask the patient.’ That seems to be common sense but how often is it actually asked by medical professionals and family member?

Horse Chestnut

There is a Horse Chestnut at the end of the row of trees along the drive to Belmont Manor and Historic Park. I’ve been photographing the opening of its buds over the past few weeks and arranged them in a series for this post.

The first photographs I took were on a morning after some high winds that had broken off a large dead branch and it had broken off a smaller branch that was very much alive with swollen buds almost ready to open.

The unfurling starts with the bud opening at the top

And the tight packed leaves beginning to emerge (note the scarring on the stem from last year’s growth)

As they open begin to separate from the tight fold – it is obvious that there is a fuzziness about them.

The bud begins to look very crowded with a lot of leaves

And that perception continues as the leaves unfurl enough to look like leaves but still retaining the fuzziness on their undersides.

I will continue the project until the blooms emerge….I’m not sure at this point where the blooms originate. Remembering from last year they are large clusters of flowers that appear well after the leaves unfurl completely.

Ginkgo Buds

Ginkgo trees are often included in ornamental plantings; the male trees are appreciated more than the female tress because the fruit smells like rancid butter or vomit. The trees I’ve photographed so far have been male trees. I started about a week ago with a tree at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. The buds were just opening and the leaves were spiraled into themselves.

The male cones were tightly clustered around the leaves.

The next day I photographed the ginkgo buds on the tree near the conservatory at Brookside Gardens. The stems of the leaves had elongated a bit making the leave poke above the rest of male cones.

I took pictures that showed the whole bud since they are quite different than other trees.

The buds are so long that they look like short branches.

The tree begins to look tufted with the new growth.

Yesterday, I was at Belmont again and took pictures of the ginkgo again. The leaves have grown significantly; they are large enough to identify the tree as a ginkgo – even though the buds give it way earlier.

The male cones are now at right angles to the bud

Or drooping down over the bud.

The tree is full of greentuffs: male cones and leaves.

I learned that there is a female tree somewhere at Belmont since there was a problem last year with stinky fruit. I’ll look for it next time I go to Belmont.

Brookside Wetland

The boardwalk between the Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center goes through a wetland where a little stream of running water runs and after rains the ground is soggy. The fence to keep the deer out of the garden crosses the area and the boardwalk. By the end of March, the skunk cabbage is rapidly spreading its leaves under the Bald Cypress trees (see the cypress 'knees' in the picture) and the red winged black birds are screeching and move around in the trees jockeying for territory and mates.

A few of the of the skunk cabbage have blooms – those odd looking purple and white structures hugging the base. In other years those blooms can be seen when snow is on the ground but this year March was very warm.

The plants like to very wet areas but not necessarily in places where the water is constantly in motion.

Most of the time the cypress knees look old and worn. But they must be growing too this time of year since many of them amongst the skunk cabbages has a smooth reddish sheen that was new growth.

As I neared the gate going back to the nature center, there was a cardinal in a holly – on the garden side of the fence. I posed with its feathers fluffed…between songs.

The little stream that runs between the wetland and the parking lot has a rocky bottom – probably scoured with the runoff from every rain. Wet rock always looks more colorful than the dry.

National Arboretum at the end of March 2016

Last week we walked around a small part of the National Arboretum. The day was sun and the sky was a great backdrop to the spring greens of these new leaves

As well as the evergreens with cones on their branches.

There were a lot of trees in bloom.

The camellias were nearing the end of their season

Leaving a carpet of temporary color at the base of the trees.

We were a little late for the deciduous magnolias but I enjoyed the walk through the section of the arboretum anyway.

The trees still had plenty of color at eye level

And looking up.

One tree only had three blooms left – but one seemed perfect to me.

Or maybe this pair are the best. It’s hard to choose.

There were several kinds of white deciduous magnolias blooming as well.

Sometimes the seed pods left after the petals fall away are as interesting as the flowers!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 2, 2016

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.

19 Different Foods that Surprisingly Bloom Beautiful Flowers – Great visuals and informative too. Think of all the different kinds of pollinators needed for these flowers too.

Fulfilling Water Needs as Big as Texas – The Nature Conservancy has created the Texas Water Explorer – wish Maryland had a similar app although I did find Water Quality Assessment Maps for Maryland which have much of the same information. I liked the picture of the Pedernales – brought back memories of a vacation in the state park along the river almost 40 years ago.

New knowledge for managing tree-killing bark beetles – After learning more about the southern pine bark beetle when I visited Chincoteague, I’ve been more aware of the damage it is causing…noticing articles like this one. There is really no good news.

Monet-esque Micrograph and Bug Brothers and Subterranean settlers and Zika viron and Cretaceous Chameleon – The Scientist almost always includes an image in its newsletters. Here’s a collection from March.

Blood test can predict risk of developing tuberculosis – It would be good if a blood test could do this. I remember having to get chest x-rays for my job since I responded to the TB skin test (i.e. was a latently infected person) …and repeated chest x-rays are not a good thing.

It has fast become antiquated to say that you ‘go online’ – Living constantly online…it’s becoming the norm for more and more people. And even when we turn off our devices, our online world continues while we are away. It is the new normal.

Developing better drugs for asthma, high blood pressure – The point of the project is to avoid complications from drugs that require treatment – separate from the original reason the person was taking the drug in the first place. It’s a good goal but I prefer the research toward interventions that address the root cause of a problem rather than starting with a drug that works most of the time and trying to avoid complications from it – which seems to be the goal of this research.

Sleep: The A B Zzzzs and  Learning with the Lights Out and Desperately Seeking Shut Eye and Under the Cover of Darkness (infographic) and Who Sleeps? And Characterizing Sleep (infographic) – The Scientist has had a number of interesting articles about sleep. I wonder how often a person’s sleep (or lack of sleep) is the primary cause of a health issue….and how often doctors decide to treat a sleep problem unless is overwhelming obvious that sleep is the problem. Some sleep problems may be very difficult to treat and may require a significant change in lifestyle which is often very difficult.

These Ancient Trees Have Stories to Tell – I like trees…and these are artfully photographed. They were printed in black and white; I think I like trees in color more.

The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now – I like the idea here – particularly that it takes into account the patient’s history and circumstances…not just symptoms. One of the things I have observed is that doctors typically key off one or two recent test results rather than taking the patient’s full history into account. They have the problem – like all of us – of being overwhelmed by data. Having an AI that would take all of that into account would benefit the doctor by saving a lot of patient history review time and the patient would get a more informed diagnosis and treatment.

Learning Log – March 2016

March was a huge month for classes...both online and traditional classroom/field work.

The 6 modules of Coursera’s Big History were a whirl wind discussion beginning with the Big Bang to the present and then initiating the importance of our understanding Big History as we contemplate our actions into the future. This is unlike any history course I’ve taken before in that it integrates a lot of disciplines rather than the traditional view of history. In Big History - wars and memorization of dates are way down on the scale of importance. Instead thinking about increases in complexity and energy flows are the drivers of change….and human history is in the context of the universe rather than insular to our species. I still have some references from the course to read/view but I was so fascinated by the material that I did all the lectures in March!

I finished 9 of the 11 modules of Coursera’s Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Unit 2: Belief Systems. This is a continuation of Unit 1 which I finished in February. This part of the course is delving more into neuroscience and psychology. I’ve enjoyed it.

The Howard County Conservancy provided volunteer naturalist training for the spring field trips that will beginning in April for pre-school through middle school students. There was quite a range of topics: rocks, history of the places where we hike, insects, habitats, watersheds, literacy, seasons, and Bioblitz. In each of the 7 sessions, there was a classroom segment and then a hike to demonstrate the types of things we would do with the students. We looked at macroinvertebrates in the stream, learned to use iNaturalist, explored the hiking routes in detail, and sometimes pretended we were students. The first field trip is next Monday….so we’ll see how prepared we all are very soon!

Then there were all kinds of experiential learning going on – here are my top three for March:

Observing the effect of the combination of pine bark beetles, tree age, salt mist, and big storms at Chincoteague

Noting the large number of Tundra Swans at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge and Snow Geese at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Seeing two organisms I knew about from books and pictures but had not seen in the wild: the hemlock woolly anelgid (see previous post here) and a wood duck (more images coming in an upcoming post).

Cherry Blossoms

This week was the week for cherry blossoms in our area. We didn’t get down to the Washington DC Tidal Basin but I enjoyed the trees at – even though it was breezy and cold when I was there yesterday. It is spring break for a lot of the schools in our area so the garden was full of more than just week-day regulars: there were lots of children enjoying the gardens too.

But the best tree for me this year was the one in my own yard. I trimmed some of the longest scraggly branches last summer and the tree has been spectacular this year.

And it has the advantage of being near at hand to photograph on every sunny day until the wind blows the last blooms away. This little clump of blooms was growing on the trunk just as it transitions from smooth bark with large lenticels to the rougher bark of the trunk. There is even a bit of lichen growing just below the clump of new growth.

The first 6 images of the slide show are from 6 days ago. The rest are from yesterday. In the earlier pictures there are still some flower buds visible. They start out very pink. The petals are pink too until the flower opens almost all the way. It is that little bit of pink that I like the most about the cherry trees. Enjoy the show!

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

I’d heard about Hemlock Wooly Adelgid killing the hemlocks in the Eastern US….and this morning I saw an infested tree at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. Aargh! Those white, cottony tuffs are the egg sacs.

They were not as thick everywhere on the trees. I thought the branch with the cones that I photographed was relatively free of them but now that I look at the image more closely – there are some tuffs here too.

On the plus side – I wondered if the lady bug on one of the branches was eating the insects or the eggs. The branch looks damaged (black) and there appear to be some hatched insects in the lower right corner of the image. But the lady bug looks covered the adelgid fuzz and goo.

(All images can be enlarged by clicking on the image.)

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!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 26, 2016

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.

Forests reveal lingering effects of native cultures – The researchers looked at patterns of honey locus in the Southern Appalachian region. The article drew my attention because the native culture in the area was Cherokee (maybe some of my ancestors) and I had read something similar about the native stands of bananas.

Goodbye, America. I’m becoming a nomad (again)! – Mike Elgan is currently in Cuba and blogging about the experience….a lot more about daily life in Cuba that the Presidential visit.

Pregnant T. rex could aid in dino sex-typing – A T. rex with a medullary bone – the same as modern birds (female) have to shell their eggs. It comes and goes with the bird’s reproductive cycle so not only indicates that the fossil was a female --- but that it was also in the egg laying part of its reproductive cycle.

Climate variations analyzed five million years back in time – We have to go back into the geological history of the Earth a very long way to find a climate as warm as what we are heading towards and we cannot detect the detailed variations….but we already know that there were abrupt climate shifts back then.

Artist Paints Elaborately Colorful Scenes Using Only Her Fingers – This is quite different than a child’s finger painting? My favorites are the lily pads with the fish underneath, the deer looking through yellow leaves, and the curled up fox.

Tunable windows for privacy, camouflage – I would enjoy not having to add blinds and/or drapery to windows….but it would have to require very little electricity to be opaque (since that is the mode that probably would be wanted most at night when solar energy was least available).

Bald Eagle Cam (DC) – Just in case you have not seen the story elsewhere. This article has a link for the live cam and the twitter feed. Yesterday when I looked the day was warm enough that a parent was standing to the side of the nest while the babies slept (they are still young enough that they fall over in a ‘food coma’ after they eat!

Potential Zika virus risk estimated for 50 US cities – A very scary map. It has been long enough ago that German measles caused birth defects when pregnant women contracted the diseases…this time we don’t have a large number of people in the population that have immunities from having the disease previously so if the US does have an outbreak it would have traumatic outcomes.

Chocolate Chemistry – On a happier note – chocolate. Dark chocolate is my favorite ‘splurge’

21 Enormous Man Made Holes – Mines, nuclear explosions, wells…lots of reasons humans have made giant holes on the surface of Earth.

Zooming – March 2016

In February – birds dominated the zooming post. This month there is more variety. The first two collages are from Brookside Gardens – and are all plants in the conservatory.

Outside the plants were mostly dried vegetation from last falls – but the collage below contains a feather too.

And then we get to some birds: snow geese and a yellow legs. I liked the shell within a shell shape.

Shelf fungus and pine codes --- pine needles as background for heads of a Great Blue Heron and an egret.

A splintered tree trunk – a physical reminder of how power storms can be. Tundra swans with sunrise colors in water and sky as background.

Close up of two birds revealed the red in their eye. The frog looks happy to be surveying the pool with lots of eggs already laid. The daffodil is just the beginning of the spring flowers.

Belmont Manor and Historic Park – March 2016

I’ve been to several Howard County Conservancy training sessions at Belmont this month. The short hike associated with the first training was into the nearby woods. The trees were still very much in winter mode. A few of the young beeches retained dry leaves from last season. The large trees in this forest are beech, tulip poplar, sycamore and oak (fewer oaks, and they are smaller than the other trees).

The only green around were plants close to the ground protected by the buttress roots of trees or

Moss growing on tree trunks.

The next training had a hike that went out to the cemetery on the property. Just outside the fence is a huge tulip poplar. There is a hollow place on the side of the trunk toward the fence and it is unclear how far up the tree that hollow goes.

There is a row of White Pines with picnic tables underneath. I’ve never stopped there for a picnic but last summer the area under the pines was a good place to look for mushrooms to photograph.

We hiked back to the front of the manor house and I finally got around to photographing the date on the plaques above the front door. CPD stands for Caleb and Priscilla Dorsey – the builders of the oldest part of the house.

It was a wet day – but the view from the drive in front of the manor house was still scenic with the large magnolia on the lawn and the pond beyond – a bald cypress standing vigil at the water’s edge on the left.

The dampness gave the gum balls on the ground more color. The wind had trimmed one of the nearby white pines recently to add to the arrangement.

On some of the old trees the lichen on their trunks looks more robust than the tree.

During the third training we hiked through one of the fields and I found a blue jay feather – a little battered from being on the ground for several days.

After the training I decided to stop at all the turnouts along the one lane wide road. The part of the road that has been newly paved now has speed bumps. This is the entrance to Belmont showing the trees along the drive.

A lot of trees have been cut along this newly paved section – supposedly to winnow out unhealthy trees. It has been going on for the past several years. I made a slide show of the pictures I took of the stumps. Can you tell which ones are not part of the recent cutting? (1, 4, 9) One looks like an unfurling scroll to me. (3)  There were several that I wondered why they were cut – they weren’t hollow so there must have been something else that made them candidates for the saw. One such was (11 and 12) --- but then I noticed the space between the bark and the rest of the wood; something was definitely wrong. The one with the biggest hollowed out area would have probably fallen soon had it not been cut (13). Some of the wood from a large branch looked very spongey (14) so clearly the tree was rotting. Still – it is sad to see so many trees cut down at one time.

3 Free eBooks – March 2016

So many good books to peruse online….so little time.

There are two botanical print books this month:

Parsons, Frances Theodora. According to the season. New York: Scribner, 1902. Available on Hathi Trust here. This one is in color and included skunk cabbage. I couldn’t resist including the fiddleheads image too for this book!

Audsley, George Ashdown; Greve, W. Ornamental Arts of Japan. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1884. In two volumes from Hathi Trust available here. Mixture of chromolithographs, photoaquatints and carbon prints….beautiful work. I always like the cranes in Japanese art work.

Edwards, George Wharton. Alsace-Lorraine. Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company, 1918. Available from Hathi Trust here. Some of the plates are in color. The aspect that interested me the most was the artists emphasis on capturing the light just as it was on the subject.

Mt Pleasant Farm – March 2016

There are signs of spring at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm but the trees still look very bare. Earlier in the month I posted about the Wood Frogs in the Honors Garden pool. Last week, the frogs (and their loud clacking) were gone, but the tadpoles were beginning to hatch. They were easiest to see on the rocks. They are algae eaters and the little pool has plenty for them to eat. Notice that there is also a tiny snail just above the water line.

The moss growing on the parts of the rocks above the water looks very green right now. Soon there will be a lot more tadpoles in the water below since there is a large egg mass that has not hatched near this rock.

I took advantages of the absence of leaves to capture a stump that is usually hidden by brush. It has shelf fungus

And wood pecker holes

And lots of moss growing on it.

It is near the spot where skunk cabbage grows (previous post is here).

The streams are gurgling (and the paths are usually muddy) this time of year.

The farmhouse is visible from the meadow with the deciduous trees still bare.

I stood photographing a mockingbird for several minutes. At first I thought the breeze was ruffling the neck feathers but then I realized that the neck moves a lot as the bird creates his sounds (mockingbirds have quite a repertoire).

Squirrels are still finding last season’s nuts – and eating them noisily. I would not have noticed this squirrel without that noisy munching.

The maple ‘tree within a tree’ is still one of my favorite stops along the stone wall. Theorizing about why it is that way….and looking for snake skin sheds which seem to be there frequently…are always a hit with hiking groups.

These shelf fungi caught my eye – like little steps up the large branch.

Last season’s dogbane still holds some of its seeds in the meadow.

So even at the end of winter – beginning of spring, there is a lot to see here. It is a calm before the riot of growth that comes in April and May.

Photographs through a Window – March 2016

March has not been the best month for ‘through a window’ photography because 1) there have been a lot of cloudy days (i.e. bad lighting) and 2) I have been out and about away from home/my favorite window on a few too many mornings when the birds are most active. The cardinals are still around. This one seemed to be looking right at my camera!

Early in the month we had snow and the heated bird bath was popular but no birds stayed around very long.

The snow made caps on the tops of the sycamore seed balls and coated the tree’s limbs.

But it was soon gone and robins are around our yard again. This one was fluffed up with the cold.

I usually don’t photograph sparrows but this one looked more distinctive – a chipping sparrow. The juncos are still around too but maybe on the verge or leaving for their summer homes much farther north since there do not seem to be as many.

I’m still tickled when I catch a mourning dove blinking. The light blue color of the lid is a surprise. The pink of the leg and foot is good on this one too. The dove may look a little scruffy because it was cold and wet when this picture was taken. The blur of red behind the dove is a maple in bloom…and the little bit of yellow is a neighbor’s forsythia at the edge of the forest.

Yesterday I saw a red winged blackbird at the feeder. I was surprised that he was light enough to not pull the spring down to cover the seed hole! He enjoyed his snack!

Skunk Cabbage

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is some of the earliest ‘green’ sprouting from the cold ground in spring around here. I start looking for it in March. There wasn’t any up at Brookside Gardens in the first week of the month. By March 16, they were making an appearance at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm.

The leaves will be large and turning the previously brown leaf mulch bank into a vibrant green very quickly. Skunk cabbage are a welcome color change and a sure sign of spring (but stay far enough away from them to not smell them)!