Gleanings of the Week Ending May 13, 2017

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.

Sounding Off on Noise – I’ve been thinking a lot more about noise since I started driving an electric vehicle. I notice and enjoy the quiet of the vehicle even though the noise from the well-maintained gasoline powered cars was something I accepted as ‘white noise’ for all the years of my life up to 2017. I would rather hear natural noises (birds singing, wind in the trees) that noise from a highway or airplanes overhead.

Albatrosses counted from space – Even nests inaccessible to humans (on the Chatham Islands off New Zealand) can be seen in satellite images from the WorldView-3 satellite. The numbers of nesting pairs were lower than expected. Several more years of observations will be needed to determine if it is just a poor year or the numbers of birds are indeed declining.

The Nature of Americans: A national initiative to understand and connect Americans and Nature – There is a lot on this site. I started browsing with the Major Findings and then Recommendations. It is well organized and intended to be actionable.

Foods that Lower Cholesterol – No surprises…but the review is good.

Guggenheim Museum Releases over 200 Modern Art Books Online for Free – I am enjoying browsing this collection on the Internet Archive.

Saber-Tooth Cats, Dire Wolves Found in La Brea Tar Pits Show Wounds from Ice Age Battles – Based on analysis of just under 2,000 bones that revealed signs of trauma sustained in combat….events of lives etched in bone.

2-ingredient no-sugar date caramel sauce – Yum! I made this in my small Ninja – very easy and yummy. I’ve used it as a dip for apple slices and spread on toast. A great treat and counts as a fruit and calcium.

Moose hair and birch bark – Taking a close look at an artifact that will go into the Native American Voices gallery at the Penn Museum later this month – after a bit of treatment in The Artifact Lab.

A first-ever find in Egypt: 4,000-year-old funerary garden at tomb entrance – Before now, this type of garden was only known from illustrations on tomb walls.

The secrets of the Coke and Mentos Fountain – A fun experiment….and chemistry lesson.

Phipps Conservatory – Pittsburgh

It was very cold the day we visited the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens last week. I only went outside once…drawn by the red branches of a Japanese maple…and then quickly went back inside to enjoy the lush plantings that bask in the glass house warmth even in winter.

As usual – I was drawn to closer looks at cactus spines.

There were a lot of people working on garden decorations for the spring exhibit that will debut this week. Some were made of plants or plant materials…all were set among beds that develop over the months of the exhibit. I think my favorite was the rabbit with a dried hydrangea flower for a tail. The three bears with a hobbit like house were in the same area.

Fiddle head ferns are another classic draw for me to photograph.

The orchids were in a room with glass figures (long, slender…as alien looking as the orchids themselves). Slipper orchids are always my favorites.

I finally understand how ‘screw pines’ got their name. The way the leaves come off the trunk really is just like a screw. When I saw one in Hawaii, I was more interested in the fruit….didn’t even look closely at the trunk.

I’ve grouped the ‘best of the rest’ in these last collages. There were so many great plants to photograph…and the conservatory was not very crowded the afternoon we were there. I want to go again already!