CSA Week 1

Our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) started this week right on schedule; the last few weeks have finally gotten warm enough and dry enough for the veggies to grow very quickly since a week or so ago it appeared that the start of the CSA would be a week or two late. This first week included lots of green: kale, garlic scapes, chives, pac choi, mizuna, and lettuce (I got the red leafed variety just to break the green monopoly). The strawberries also added a nice color contrast. I like everything in the share this week – but the garlic scapes are probably the most ‘special’ because they are not generally available in grocery stores and they are only available for a few weeks; I’m already thinking about how I want to use all 8 of them in the next week!

I used a bin left from some greens bought at the grocery store (and already eaten) to store the veggies I washed right ways: chives, lettuce, and mizuna. The other veggies went into the crisper in the same form I picked them up from the bin at the CSA.

Then I enjoyed a serving of strawberries with coconut milk – my summer afternoon snack.

Mourning Doves in May

I noticed a mourning dove with a sheen on his neck feathers and immediately wondered if maybe there would be dove pair mating on our deck railing like we’ve had for at least twice this spring already.

He fluffed his feathers and strutted. He lifted and spread his tail feathers as he preened while a female looked on. At first the female seemed interested. She approached but then sat down on the railing. The male continued to show off his plumage. He tried grooming the female but she continued to sit although she did groom him a little – not very enthusiastically. Then she moved away. The male seemed surprised and looked around to determine where she went but she had already flown much further away.

Strawberries

It has been a wet, cool spring here in Maryland and the Gorman Farms Community Support Agriculture is going to get a late start…sliding from June 1^st into the 2^nd or 3^rd week of June depending on what happens in the next week or so. But ---- the strawberry season is going strong. CSA medium share members get a pint of strawberries free each day the farm is open for picking!

I’ve been twice so far. The picking is easy from the mounds although that means the path between the plants is lower and very muddy right after a rain….which was definitely the case the first time I went. The good news was that there were plenty of berries to pick and more left to ripen.

On both days I ate half the pint right after I got home! And then the rest the next day.

Aside from just eating strawberries just as they are – I love them in salads. My favorite salad so far has been arugula, quinoa, almond slivers, and strawberries….with an orange marmalade dressing (a little oil combined with orange marmalade). This is salad as dessert (but actually eaten as lunch)!

Next time I go – I plan to pick a bucket of strawberries and pay for the amount over the pint. As a CSA member we get a discount. I’m going to load up the freezer with strawberries to start of the summer.

3 Free eBooks – May 2016

The three eBooks I’ve picked to highlight this month have a common theme: Art Nouveau – a style popular from 1890-1910. Looking at these books from the period gave me lots of ideas for Zentangle® patterns ---- and some home decorating ideas as well.

Fuchs, Georg; Newbery, Francis H.; Koch, Alex. L'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs modernes à Turin 1902. Darmstadt : Alexander Koch, Librairie des arts décoratifs. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style appeared in fabrics and tile and architecture (extending into every aspect of artistic expression as well as daily life) and included a lot of motifs from nature.

Feure, Georges de; Puaux, Rene. Oeuvres de Georges de Feure. Paris. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style included fashion too.

Rehme, Wilhelm. Ausgeführte moderne Bautischler-Arbeiten. Leipzig: Baumgartner’s Buchhandlung. 1902. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The integration of art in everyday places – like windows and doors – still has a lot of appeal. In much of the 100 years since the style reached its zenith, we have standardized elements of our environment to reduce costs but will that continue to be the case? It’s not that the standard doors and windows are ugly – just that they are boring because of the lack of variety.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Our Backyard During a Break from Rain

After checking the front flower beds, I walked around to check out the backyard. The chaos garden needs weeding; the honey suckle is beginning to take over (again). I’ll put it out but leave the fleabane. It’s a weed, but I tolerate it because the small flowers last a long time and add some additional color next to the chives, lemon balm, and mint that I want in the garden.

The Christmas ferns I planted last year survived the winter and may be reproducing! The new fronds are splattered with dirt because the run off from the deck is so violent during heavy rains. If the stand of ferns grows, the muddy area under the deck could reduce the mud and provide some nice greenery that would not need mowing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The violets are also doing well under the deck since they thrive in shade.

There was a jack-in-the-pulpit with a drying out bloom in the boundary area between our yard and the forest. I’d put a lot of leaves into the area last fall and was glad to see this forest plant in bloom. I watch to see if it produces the red seeds.

The black walnut is the trey I am trying to watch this spring. The end of each branch sprouts a crown of new growth (stems and leaves) which I always think of as a ‘bad hair’ configuration. The tree is young enough that I only saw one nut on it last year. Maybe there will be more this year – but I imagine they will be well above the deer browse line.

The tulip poplar is full of flowers and buds. These trees are the most common large trees in the forest behind our house.

As I went up the stairs to our deck, I saw a crane fly – still. I left it there after taking photographs from several angles.

The old turtle sandbox on our deck has several dandelion plants that I’ve been harvesting when I need greens for a salad….and there is quite a lot of mint coming up as well.

Overall, the backyard is in pretty good shape. The main weeding work is in the chaos garden. The challenge on the deck it to make sure all the pots are draining adequately and that the bird bath water is changed frequently enough to avoid breeding mosquitos.

The Flowerbed in Front of our House

It has been so rainy that I haven’t been able to do much work in the flower beds around our house. In the front, the growth is luxuriant. The chives seem to be growing faster than I can harvest them to add to salads. Yesterday I added a handful of chopped chives (flowers and all) to pureed hardboiled egg and hummus. I spread it in a pita and used the leftover as a ‘dip’ for celery sticks and carrot chips. Yum!

All around the chives, the day lilies are everywhere and the deer have not bothered them like they have in the past few years (eating the leaves down to the ground as fast as they grew). Hopefully with all the other food this spring, the deer will leave the lilies along. Comin up next to the downspout from the gutter are two milkweed plants. They are weeds – but I’m going to let them grow and hope that some monarch butterflies visit our garden to lay their eggs.

Do you see the tulip poplar seedling? That is something I need to pull before it gets any bigger. The daylilies and Black Eyed Susans will stay.

And then there are the irises – just beginning to bloom. Some of the buds look like they got waterlogged or too cold and are not developing further. But the plants that are blooming are gorgeous as usual. I like them even more because the largest grouping of irises is visible from the skinny windows that frame our front door.

On the other side of the front – there is another milkweed growing in a bed that is being overrun by grass. Some focused pulling needs to happen all around it and the young nine-bark bush we planted a year ago.

The front of the house looks very green – and will look even better as soon as I am home on a sunny day and spend the time to do a bit of clean up and out in the front flowerbed!

A New Bird to Our Deck

Earlier this week, my husband commented that there was an unusual bird on our deck. I looked down from my office window to where I had poured seed into a bowl from the feeder (the seed had gotten a little wet and sprouted). Sure enough – it was a bird different from any I’d seen at our seed on the deck.

I went downstairs for a better angle. It was gobbling seed.

It had a lot of blue and then some browner areas. The beak was not chunky enough to be a blue grosbeak (like we’d seen at Chincoteague about this time of year a few years ago). The markings on the side were not the distinctive cinnamon like the grosbeak either.

I continued taking pictures as long as the bird continued eating.

After the bird flew way, I got out my tablet and used the Merlin App and decided it was an

Indigo Bunting!

It has appeared at least once more on our deck (probably more since we haven’t been around as much the past few days). Hopefully it will nest nearby and I’ll learn to recognize the female – which is brown with faint streaking on the breast…whitish throat (i.e. a small and hard to distinguish bird).

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.

Thundercloud Plum

Our Thundercloud Plum tree blooms at the same time as the cherry tree and is overshadowed by white frothy blooms of that tree just beside it. The blossoms of the plum are smaller and pinker than the cherry…and the leaves (purplish red) seem to come out more quickly than those of the cherry.  These pictures were taken on March 25^th.

I looked back at other posts about the Thundercloud plum and saw that the tree was blooming on April 12^th in 2013. That must have been a last spring because by April 12^th of this year the Thundercloud Plum was full of leaves with the flower petals gone for a couple of weeks.

Photographs through a Window – April 2016

The juncos are still around but there at not as many of them at the feeder recently. Some may have already left for their nesting ground further north. A Carolina Wren has visited several times.  It is full of song either from the railing of the deck or atop the weather station. The birds always seem to sing facing the forest (the daffodils that are blurs of yellow in the background of the photo series are at the edge of the forest). By mid-month, this bird had built a nest in our old (unused) gas grill.

Sometimes brown-headed cowbirds come to our deck. There was a pair that seemed more interested in glaring at each other at first.

Then they noticed the bird feeder and

Patiently took turns getting a snack (when they both were on the feeder the seed was blocked by the same mechanism that makes the feeder squirrel proof).

During the latest (maybe last) snow flurry of the season, some mourning doves visited the bird bath. They fluffed their feathers against the cold.

The one sitting with its tail in the water seemed be totally unaware. Maybe there are not nerves in tail feathers?

The cardinals are still about. I hear them singing more that I see them. It’s the time of year that the male stakes out his territory. In this picture you can see that the buds on the sycamore are beginning to enlarge.

I couldn’t resist collecting these pictures of a dove from a few days later. The red line on the beak almost give the bird a smile. The different positions on the eyelid almost gives the impression of coyness (upper left) and smugness (upper right). The middle one just looks to me like the bird is ready for anything.

Now for another dove mating. It happened in about the same place on our deck railing as the one in February that I posted about shortly afterwards (here). Perhaps the time has come to start on a second brood. The slide show below was taken last week. This time a pair of birds flew to the railing. On started grooming (1) then walked away along the railing toward the bird bath (2). Another arrived with fluffed feathers (3). The smaller one approach and the feather’s fluffed even more (4). A lot of grooming of the larger bird ensues (5-10). They ‘kiss’ (11-14). They mate (15). They cuddle (16). They separate and the female preens (17-20). The female walk past the male stepping on his tail (21). The female flies way and the male chases away the bird that had originally arrived with the female (and had watched the action from other side of the deck) before flying away himself.

Planters in the Window

I am reusing plastic bins from Organic Spring Salad Mix as planters. I had a sweet potato vine that I’ve started from a sweet potato that I didn’t eat quite fast enough this winter. I will probably eat the leaves rather than wait all season to harvest sweet potatoes in the fall.

I also planted a maple seedling that I pulled out of the flower bed last summer. It rooted in water for months. The leaves turned red in January and most of them fell off. It still has one…and I hope to see the bud at the tip of the stem begin to enlarge soon. It should enjoy having its roots in soil – although it is too early to know for sure if it will have a second season.

I’ve also planted radishes and lettuce seeds - that have now sprouted. If they do well, I’ll harvest them both for salad. Even the ones I pull to thin out the bin will be good eating. I like radish leaves and always am disappointed that the tops in the grocery store are generally wilted.

I haven’t decided whether I will transplant any of these except to bigger pots on the deck. Our area has an overabundance of deer and our yard seems to be in a main thoroughfare from the forest behind our house and into our neighborhood. Everything gets thoroughly sampled….and sometimes browsed…by the deer passing through.

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!

March Sunrise…and Sunset

The horizon around our house becomes blocked by trees after March – so this is probably one of the last sunrise/sunset posts from our home until late fall/winter rolls around again. Even in winter the bare tree branches are pretty thick between our front porch and the sunrise but the colors are good through their silhouettes.

The robins like our oak and generally seem to be facing the sunrise while they sing the morning awake.

The sunrise is visible from our back porch – and my office window. The trees are mostly tulip poplar – very tall. On the other side of the trees is a horse boarding area…so a relatively thin forest that still lets the color through as long as the trees are bare.

Somehow noting the colors at the beginning of the day – the clouds that add definition to the sky…is always worth a photograph.

Beautiful Food – March 2016

I am enjoying unadorned whole foods for snacks and realized that they have a beauty all their own. Walnuts with their convoluted surface. I always put them in a very small container so that I don’t eat more than a serving (1/4 cup).

Blueberries (partially) thawed from the freezer. There glistening purple color is quite a contrast from other foods.

Oranges are a day brightener both because of the beauty of their namesake color and their taste. I like to eat them standing at my kitchen sink watching the birds at the bird bath. I take off the skin before eating the pulp so I can chop the peel up to dry or include as extra peel in a batch of orange marmalade.

The is the time of year I begin to make the transition from foods I enjoy on cold days like soup (butternut squash curry with lots of topping: pumpkinseeds, broccoli flowerets, and a hardboiled egg) and

Breakfast for dinner (pancakes with apples cooked in cinnamon butter on top)

To foods that are best eaten cold – like the colorful spring leaves that have quite a mixture of green, purple and read leaves.

They are all part of the beautiful meals of March!

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!

Daylight Savings Time

Aargh! Changing our clocks by an hour – forward in the spring, back in the fall – is a massive synchronized exercise. Almost every state in the US does it even though more and more studies have shown that its supposed ‘benefits’ are outweighed by the negative impacts that arise from simultaneously messing with the whole population’s circadian rhythm.

This year I tried to go to be a little early on Saturday night and I did wake up about the normal time (according to the clock…so really an hour early) on Sunday morning. It was very dark. I was rested but it was a downer in winter darkness during my breakfast. Every time we change is annoys me a little more.

I can remember a great aunt that didn’t change the main clock in her house because it was too hard to set – or that was her excuse. Now I realize that there are too many ‘clocks’ in our house and cars that change automatically on their own so I can’t make a similar decision.

Hopefully more states will decide to stay on either standard or daylight savings all year long…and then the whole country will make the decision. The status quo is not healthy!

We have snow!

It snowed overnight – one of those easy-to-deal-with snows that makes the trees and lawns pretty but leaves the streets and sidewalks clear. I started taking pictures before it was really light because there was a light rain already trying to wash it all away.

The bushes that overwinter with their leaves leaned over with the weight of the snow but not enough to break. This one is beside our porch.

The cherry tree is lightly flocked.

On the deck – the juncos can’t find the seed bowl under the snow; they appeared to be waiting in line for the feeder.

The heated bird bath that I had been considering putting away for the season but decided to clean and put in fresh water yesterday - is rimmed with snow.

The turtle sandbox that serves as my mint garden on the deck in the summer is hardly recognizable.

Is this our last snow of the season? Probably not – sometimes we have snow in April here. But we are close enough to the end of winter that I am enjoying this one as if it might be.

Zentangle® – February 2016

My Zentangle-a-day goal was very easy to meet in February since I didn’t travel way from home and didn’t have many other commitments. I learned the Molygon pattern (upper right tile below) and proceeded to use it throughout the rest of the month.

I often decide that I like to use just one color. I experimented using a label for a tile this month – too glossy, won’t do that again.

I occasional get in the mood to use black paper and gel pens…but not frequently. The biggest tile of the month was the back card stock weight from a pad of paper I used up. The 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles are still my favorite size.

I found a package of file cards – lines on one side and white on the other. They make for an odd tile size; I don’t have another use for them so I’ll continue to use them but I won’t buy more.

I’m also using up some very old colored pencils – a set that my husband had in high school that are probably 40+ years old. Sometimes I get in a mood to not use any color at all!

But then I swing back to color – sometimes extreme. There is definitely a link between Zentangle and the popularity of adult coloring books! I don’t think I will ever buy a coloring book since I enjoy the Zen aspect of drawing patterns. Adding color is just an extra step

 It is true that I don’t fill in the patterns with as much tangling if I am in the mood to add a lot of color.

Sometimes alternating layers of color become a theme.

Sometimes developing something mostly round (mandalas) is a theme.

Sometimes almost round shapes remind be of shields. Botanical themes pop into my tiles frequently.

Toward the end of the month – I made more tiles without color. Looking at them now they could use some additional shading but – for some reason – I didn’t take the time.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – February 2016

Here are my top 10 celebrations for February – there was a lot to celebrate in this winter month:

There were a lot of birds to celebrate through my office window –

The crow with a glint in its eye,

The pileated woodpeckers in the forest,

And the mourning doves that were around frequently including a pair that mated on our deck railing!

I also celebrated good results from medical tests on myself and a family member (that counts as 2 celebrations!). Even when the majority of tests result in good (or benign) findings, there is always worry that builds and the relief translates into a little celebration when the results come back

Every time I wear my new fern imprint jewelry (ring, bracelet an earrings) I celebrate – savoring the living ferns I remember and the event where I made the purchase.

I also celebrated Christmas again every week that I work the cuddle socks one of my sisters gave me as a gift! They are indeed warmer than regular socks and comfy without shoes.

There were outdoor activities to celebrate too –

A walk around the neighborhood in the snow,

A sunny day walk at Mt. Pleasant farm (even though it was cold, breezy, and muddy), and

The birds on the ice at Centennial Park.