Lizard on the Front Porch

I see lizards more frequently when I travel (to Hawaii, to Texas, to Arizona) than I do at home. So I was pleasantly surprised to see one on my front porch a few days ago. It was in the later afternoon on a warm day – not overwhelming hot.

It appears to be an American five-lined skink, one of the most common lizards in Maryland – although its tail does not look particularly blue. It stuck around long enough for me to take a few pictures through the long narrow window beside the front door.

It another good indicator of the overall health of the habitat around the immediate vicinity of my house!

Black Eye Susans in the Morning

Yesterday I realized the days were getting shorter because it was really dark when I got up about 5:30. I was keen to do some morning photography by the time the sun came up and decided to try the patch of Black Eyed Susans in the front of the house. The first one I zoomed in on looked like its petals had been eaten by something. Are deer that adept?

I liked the curves and folding of the petals just beginning to expand from this bud.

The lemon light of morning makes the color of the flowers look like a deeper yellow than the mid-day light will show. The petals also do not all keep to the same plane from the central core of the flower.

The tips of the petals are not all rounded – and that gives the flowers more variety…and a sense of movement.

I couldn’t resist the curlicue of these petals!

Chipmunks around our House

There are more chipmunks around our house this year than I can remember. I think their base is under our deck but they make their way all around the house and up onto the deck as well. They used to come up to get seed when we put it in a bowl but now that we have stopped putting out seed for the summer, they still come to sample the plants in the pots. They enjoy themselves, even if there is a cat on the screen deck watching them! They don’t scamper away until we open a door to walk out to the deck ourselves.

They are equally confident in the front garden. I photographed one standing very still under the hose reel. As long as I didn’t move…neither did he.

I don’t mind having the chipmunks around. They are small and I enjoy watching them….and remembering the description I heard in a lecture years ago that they have ‘Oreo markings’ on each side.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – July 2016

Our July has been hot….a very summery month. My celebrations included.

Fireworks – but on July 9^th rather than on the 4^th. It was just when our local community held their event. We did buy a watermelon to enjoy on the 4^th of July – a typical food for summer celebrations.

“The Mother Nature” Award – I was so pleased to be recognized by the Howard County Conservancy for my volunteering with them. The contents of the goody bag (artisan bread and strawberry jam) was part of my little celebrations for about a week!

Photography with campers -  I’ve just finished 2 days of nature photography sessions with campers aged 5-12…and I am celebrating their photographs. I’m glad I’ve made it through the 2 very hot days too. Blog posts about the experience to come in the next few weeks.

Green Heron – I always celebrate seeing a bird in the wild that I don’t see very often…the green heron at Kenilworth is a good example. It was certainly the highpoint of that visit to the gardens.

Butterfly outreach – I volunteered to assist with butterfly outreach to 4 Montessori schools this month…one of which my daughter attended 20 years ago! I celebrated that the school is still going strong, much the same as it was when my daughter attended and the wonderful interaction with the children that are there now. They were all very interested in learning about butterflies.

Indoors, staying cool – We’ve had some very hot days recently and I celebrated most of them staying indoors with air conditioning – glad that I didn’t need to do anything outside!

Milkweed tussock caterpillars – Since I have quite a crop of these caterpillars at my house I have been able to photography them a lot this season. I’ll be doing an update soon since they are now even bigger than they were when I posted about them earlier this month.

Kitchen flooring – We have started the process to replace the flooring in our kitchen. It is 25 years old and needs to be done. I celebrated that my husband and I agreed easily on what we wanted and the materials have been ordered.

Carrot cake and Zucchini bread – This is two celebrations. I am using the bounty from my CSA to bake. I love having one of these for breakfast these days so the ‘celebration’ continues for more than just the day that I back. And I have bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer to make more!

1980 Flooding in Plano TX

When we bought our first house in the late 1970s, we were told it was in a 100-year-flood-plain and we were required to have flood insurance. The closest we came to needing it during the 5 years we lived in the house was in 1980 – twice!

In the spring time, heavy rains caused the little stream in the park less than a block from our house to swell and overflow its bank. Water rich is sediment roared through the park scouring grassy slopes. Debris caught on trees that has been growing on the stream bank but were in the middle of the fast moving water during the flood.

The water covered the sidewalk and made the signage for the park look short. The area of houses across the park from where we lived was newer. I wonder now if the runoff was made worse by the increase in impervious surfaces with the new housing developments that were springing up all over the area.

In the fall there was another flood. We got out and drove around a little. Some roads were closed – but they were side roads rather than main thoroughfares. The water was not very deep (note the person walking out into the water on the left of the picture below.

The stream in the park near out house flooded again. As soon as it stopped raining – people in the neighborhood came out to take a look.

My husband also took a picture of the failing infrastructure that ran along the side of the stream. The flood water probably had more than just rain runoff in it; the sewer system was overwhelmed at least in some places.

In the time since 1980, that area of North Texas has continued to develop. The land is relatively flat so municipalities have made greenways with space to let water collect or channels to move water more quickly to places where it can collect. I’m glad my current house (in Maryland) is not in a flood plain!

Photographs through a Window – July 2016

I stopped putting birdseed in our feeder in early July when one of the squirrels got coordinated enough to dump a little seed from it. It wasn’t happening consistently so the ‘squirrel proof’ was not filing totally but enough that I decided they didn’t need the extra food in the summer months. I still go quite a few birds to photograph through my office window. The parent of the juvenile house finches featured in yesterday’s post must have been the birds I saw most frequently around our deck.

This frazzled looking Carolina Wren might be a fledgling from the nest in an old gas grill.

Nuthatches always look alert when they are in their head-down stance. This one was enjoying the last seed I put in the feeder.

There is a male indigo bunting that I see periodically so it might be nesting nearby. I photographed the bird from my office window

Then went downstairs to get a different perspective through the French door in our breakfast area. The mourning dove provides a nice size contrast.

The juvenile cardinal still had some downy looking feathers on its breast and around its head

But its bill has turned the adult color over the past month.

I am keeping our bird bath full of fresh water so I expect that will be the reason birds will continue to visit our deck for the rest of the summer.

The bird on the right is making motions like a chick begging for food – but the one on the left does not look like they will be obliging!

Birds with Eyebrows/Horns

I was curious about some little birds that showed up near my window this month that seemed to have tufts of feathers that looked like eyebrows or horns. The lighting for the first picture I got was not that good – but did capture what I was seeing.

I did some research and discovered that they were juvenile house finches! They must have just recently fledged because there was usually a parent bird around when these birds with eyebrows came to our deck.

Sometimes the birds went into begging mode – probably hoping for a feeding from a parent…and sometimes they did not seem as adept at flying as the adult birds. They’ll gain flying skill and lose their eyebrows in a short time.

I’ve been thrilled to see more finches this year even before these fledged….and now there are apparently even more.

Deck Garden Challenges – July 2016

Through June and into July, it rained frequently enough for the pots on the deck to not need other attention. The day lilies bloomed profusely earlier in the month with almost no effort on my part. Give them a reasonably deep pot and they do great.

But then the rains stopped. Everything started to wilt and I pulled the house attached to the spigot down below up to the deck to make watering easier. Now that the temperatures are getting into the high 80s or 90s in our area of Maryland, I water every morning while the deck is still in the shade and the temperatures are still in the 70s. I empty and refill the bird bath every morning too (a way to make sure I am not breeding mosquitoes!).

The day lilies are about done for the season. I’m going to use every pot and large container I have around to transplant day lily bulbs from the flower beds where the deer at the flowers before they could bloom. There are both yellow and red day lilies that should bloom on the deck next summer if I manage to dig the right bulbs!

I’m transferring attention to plants that the birds and butterflies will like now or when they go to seed in the fall. I’ve already had gold finches checking the zinnias; the flowers have not quite got to seed yet so this bird was out of luck.

The black eyed susans will be popular for their seeds too. I planted some sunflowers but they don’t even have buds yet.

I haven’t harvested any mint yet this year and I’m not sure that I will. I love the smell of the plants when I am watering.

Insects in our Garden

A few days ago was out working in our garden by 7 AM – pulling weeds and cutting spent flower stalks in our flower beds…but I got sidetracked observing insects. The first I noticed were on the skeleton of a milkweed plant. The milkweed tussock caterpillars had eaten all the leaves leaving only the stem and the larger veins of the leaves. They had started crawling over to the bush next to the stem. It seemed like there were hundreds of caterpillars.

After I finished some work, I went inside to clean up and recover from heat. I started wondering if the caterpillars would find the other milkweed plants that were about 5 feet away from the one they had consumed. I went to check at 9 and they had indeed found another plant! I continued to check periodically throughout the day. The gradually spread to 3 more plants. Sometimes they would appear very active and other times they would be resting underneath a leave that was still whole. When they ate, individuals worked on the leaf from the top and the bottom. It was a mass feeding frenzy.

The next surprise came the following morning. I went outside and found that the caterpillars had been active overnight and seemed to be larger. When I went back to check an hour later – more than half of them were not anywhere on the milkweed and I watched as more of them dropped off the plants. It was time for them to go roaming in the leaf litter!

On one of the checks of the caterpillars, I noticed some insects on a blazing start that was in bloom. They were tiny – about a quarter inch. The yellow and black insect is a syrphid or hoverfly.

There were two other insects on the plant but they stayed down in the flowers so much that it was hard to get a good identification.

Maybe some kind of bee?

The two types of insects did interact a little…did not seem to like the other being nearby.

I was very pleased with the performance of my camera (Canon PowerShot SX710HS) and the monopod’s contribution to stabilizing the camera to get clear images.

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 6

I am not getting further behind as far as clearing out the crispers – but I’m not catching up either. This week I still had carrots, a full head of cabbage, some broccoli, and a few beet leaves left from the week 5 medium share….and it was another 2 bag share for week 6.

Starting in the upper left corner: collard greens (one of my favors for rolling up and cutting in small pieces for slaw), fennel (new this week…and I haven’t decided what to do with it yet), onions (not cured so have to be used relatively quickly – they had been out on a trailer beside the barn and were warm from the sun….very alive), beets (the beets will become fruit beety that will go into the freezer and I’ll eat the leaves in salads, the stems in stir fry), hiding behind the beet is a small bunch of arugula ( from the overage table since adds flavor to any salad), cabbage, 3 pounds of summer squash (all the zucchini is going for zucchini bread – some of which will be frozen), 3 pounds of cucumbers (I tried to get small ones and will put one in every salad until they are going), lettuce (this will have to be eaten before the beet and collard greens) as well the carrot tops (I have so many carrots…some of them will have to go toward carrot cake).

Whew! That’s a lot of veggies.

Zentangle® - June 2016

June has 30 days so I chose 30 Zentangle tiles from the ones I created in June! My goal is to create one-a-day but I’ve discovered that it is not a hard goal to meet – sometimes I just keep going and create several.

I had several tiles that were odd sizes – because I am reusing any card stock I find – old business cards, left over pieces from when I cut a 3.5 x 3.5 tile.

The colored tiles are cut from old folders I’m finding as I clean out keepsake boxes. So far I am only cutting up the ones that are too raggedy at the edges to be used as folders…but that may change since I don’t have much use for folders anymore and most of them are not new enough looking to donate for school supplies. I like the rust brown tiles the best of the non-whitish tiles. Enjoy the June ‘show’!

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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.

Day Lilies

The deer are very hard on the day lilies in our flower beds. Most of the time they eat the buds before they can open. This year I have implemented a strategy of sticking the small branches that self-prune from our oak among the day lilies so that the deer get a bite of sticks along with the buds. It has slowed them down a little….but not much. The yellow ones that blooms were very low in other foliage and almost under some bushes.

The only orange ones that survived looked like they were blooming inside the bush!

I cut some buds the deer skipped because of the sticks (eating all the others that did not have enough sticks) and put them in a vase to so some photography. I discovered just how fast the flowers open. The first picture was at 6:40 AM.

Two hours later they were about half open. And I took a lot more pictures of them (including the picture of the stalk in the vase. I liked the lighting outside – using the green of the trees as a backdrop.

By noon the flowers were open. They only last the day – hence the name of these flowers.

After last year’s fiasco when I had no flowers at all because of the deer, I dug up some of the bulbs to put in pots on the deck. I noted the times for the photographs. This first set was at 7 AM. Not there were was already a spent flower to the left of the one that is opening…and lots of enlarging buds.

By 11 AM the flower was open.

Two days later, many of the buds had opened and were already wilting.

Another pot had a different lily. The first picture was at 9 AM.

The second is at 8 PM the same day. The petals are already beginning to wilt…the pollen has been spent....but there are still buds to open on subsequent days.

I’m going to dig up more bulbs this season so that I can enjoy them on the next next summer.

CSA Week 5

It was another two bag week at the Gorman Farm CSA this week….another good week of eating skewed toward the veggie side. Starting in the upper left of the picture below there are: 2 kohlrabi (roots and leaves), 2 pounds of summer squash (I got 3 yellow and one green), cone head cabbage, scallions, 1 pound of cucumbers, 1 pound of broccoli, arugula, beets (roots and leaves), carrots with tops, and kale. The scallions were from the overage table where I could have gotten more greens (collard greens or chard) but I still have both left from last week.

Not the variety of leaf shapes and sizes between the kohlrabi leaves (large), the beet (red veins) and the arugula (convoluted margins). The beet leaves and arugula will be eaten with the carrot tops in salads. I am still trying to decide whether to make the kohlrabi leaves into chips just like I intend to do with the kale.

After I had cleaned up from the first round of prep of the veggies into plastic bins, I found this tiny leaf. I think it might have been from the kohlrabi. It was only about an inch long....very delicate.

I have been eating a lot of the stems but decided to start freezing more of them so that I will skew what I eat now to leaves that will not survive freezing. The stems have to be cooked (steamed, stir fried, or put into soups) because they are so tough – they work well coming from the freezer. In fact, freezing may reduce the cooking required.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – June 2016

June has been transition month – from the flurry of volunteer gigs for spring field trips to settling into summer.

A flock of gold finches were feeding on grass seeds in the meadow during one of the last field trips. The third graders and I just stood and celebrated the birds as they moved around us. There was an indigo bunting with them too.

Progress on cleaning out – I’ve had cleaning out boxes of keepsakes on my ‘to do’ list for quite a long time and am finally making progress that I can celebrate!

Dutch Apple Caramel Cheese Cake – This was a splurge at the Cheesecake Factory. I ate half with dinner and saved the rest for breakfast the next morning….2 celebrations in one piece of dessert. By the way – I discovered that the best way to do this is to request it in a ‘to go’ container from the beginning so every bit of caramel goody stays with the part you are going to eat!

Getting home from a long drive – I was so happy to get home from a 4-hour drive (2 hours longer than I had anticipated) that I celebrated! 

The CSA started the first week of June. I celebrate every week when I fill up my bag with veggies I know are going to turn into delicious meals.

Finding kitchen strainers in the $1 store – They came in package of 2 for $1 (celebrating the bargain!) and will work great when I volunteer for macroinvertebrate field trips in local streams/rivers.

Computer glasses – I finally got some and now wonder why I didn’t get them years ago. I’m celebrating them as a ‘gift to myself.’

Shopping for new flooring – My husband and I have been talking about replacing the flooring in our kitchen (first and then other rooms). I celebrated that we have finally started shopping….making progress toward getting the project done.

Finding Merrell sandals at the thrift store – I found a pair of gently worn Merrell sandals at the thrift store for $5. When I first saw them, I thought – “this is too good to be true, they won’t fit” – but they did! I celebrate the bargain every time I wear them!

A day at home – May and the first half of June were so busy that by the time I did get a few consecutive days at home …. It was something to celebrate. I love photographing birds and the day lilies opening….getting caught up on things that took a back seat when so many other things were going on.

Photographs through a Window – June 2016

The wildlife has been active at the bird feeder and bath on or deck this month. The squirrels empty the seed bowl so quickly that I am not filling it very often. They still come to sniff around periodically – looking for the small windfall from the birds dropping seeds to the deck as the feed at the squirrel-proof hanging feeder.

I like the chipmunks better and cheer when they find the seed first when I fill the bowl. I think the chipmunks have their home under our deck since I see them in that area almost every time I am in the back yard.

The gold finches made a few appearances.

But the house finches are the frequent visitors

As are the chipping sharrows.

I had to be quick to catch the Carolina Wren. This was one was looking for nesting materials so there may be a second brood starting.

There was an occasional white breasted nuthatch on the roof and at the feeder. They are easy to identify at the feeder because they almost always are head down – not on the usually perch.

Not filling the bowl means that the cardinals and the mourning doves don’t get seed as much either since they are too big for the feeder. That caused a particular problem for the cardinal parents. Their baby was very demanding. The male brought it to the deck under the feeder first.

He was looking frazzled from the constant begging by the time they flew away.

The female brought the young bird as well.

The chick was as big as the parents – looked bigger with the fluffiness of the down that had not been quite replaced with ‘grown up’ feathers.

Finally – the young bird appeared on his own under the feeder just yesterday. Do you think it is a male of female? It will become recognizable in the coming weeks. I’ll include the follow up pictures of the bird next month – assuming the young bird keeps coming to our deck.

CSA Week 4

The medium share at the Gorman Farm CSA was large again this week. I’m going to take two bags instead of one next week…since the bounty really does require the spaces – and I can more easily spread the weight to carry it all to the car. This week the share included (starting in the upper left corner and moving clockwise: mizuna (my choice from the overage bins…it is only available early in the season and I really like it), peas, scallions, beets, chard, Romaine lettuce, collards, broccoli, savoy cabbage, and kale.

I took some close up pictures of the broccoli,

Chard, and

Peas….so many beautiful foods for this next week.

I fit the leafy things into two plastic bins and some plastic bags. The beets (minus their leaves, cabbage, and broccoli in the crisper. So far, I’ve not had anything go to waste via spoilage and I want to keep it that way.

I’ll make fruit beety tomorrow. While the beets cook I’ll make kale chips. Both will keep longer in processed form although the fruit beety is one of my favorite summer snacks so I probably won’t put any of this batch in the freezer.

Milkweed Update

A few days ago the milkweed flowers were still only buds. Now they are blooming and the insects are very active around them. The smell very sweet to human noses too!

I have seen several types of bees – the very large bumble bees

And the smaller honey bees and native bees.

There are other insects as well – did you note the ant on the flower in the first picture?

There are bugs on the leaves too. The one I noticed yesterday – and identified via a web search – was a Pennsylvania leatherwing beetle or goldenrod soldier beetle. The yellow ovals on the ends of its legs are aphids!

Unfortunately – I can’t find any Monarch caterpillars. I hope we have some that hatch and survive when the Monarchs arrive from Mexico since the early ones seem to have all perished. I talked to a third grader that had been in a class where they tried to raise Monarch caterpillars this spring and she told me that most of their caterpillars died because they were infected with parasites…and that it seemed that the stripes of the ones that died early were more wiggly than straight (i.e. they looked different than the caterpillars that survived to make their chrysalis and eventual emerge as a healthy butterfly). I don’t have a large enough sample size for comparison but from now on I’m going to photograph every caterpillar I find so I can do some comparisons with photographs.

Monarch Caterpillars

Some milkweed came up in my front flowerbed. It is not the best looking plant around and my husband was lobbying to dig the plants out. I asked him to wait until I got out to photograph them since they were just getting ready to bloom.

Some of the leaves has been partially eaten…and I took a closer look. Sure enough – on the underside of the leave was a monarch caterpillar! The elementary schools in our area raised caterpillars in their third grade classrooms this year – and one of the resulting monarchs must have found its way to our milkweed. That clinched the decision to not dig out the plants at all.

Later I found another smaller caterpillar ---- and then I haven’t found them again in the past few days. Usually they are obvious as they get large because of the amount of the milkweed foliage they eat. Their food generally makes them unpalatable to predators but maybe something else has caused them a problem. We are still leaving the plants for other monarchs that reach our area….something we can do to help the population of Monarchs to increase.

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!