Another New Car

We bought a new car from me last month (a Prius Prime – that I have posted about here and here). This month it was my husband’s turn. He had been looking at the Honda CR-Vs for the past few weeks – reading everything about it on the web, driving one at the closest dealership, and trying to decide which color he wanted. Earlier this week he made a final decision and bought a Molten Lava Pearl (red) CR-V Touring. It’s close to the same size at the car he drove previously – an Acura RD-X – but has a little more inside room and all the new driver’s aides (which were his main reason for wanting a new car). I like it because the was the glove compartment is configured give me more leg room on the front passenger side. I also like the vents and USB plugs for the backseat passengers (not that we have passengers very often).

I was surprised that he decided on the red but the garage looks good with two new red cars!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I bought flowers a few days ago….an early start to our Valentine’s Day. My husband and I will use the flowers for some photography experiments. I’m posting my first round of pictures as a virtual bouquet on a day that celebrates relationship. Enjoy a little beauty of flowers and be in the mood to savor the best of the people you love!

Chicken Soup

Yesterday was blustery and cold. When we first got up there were a few snowflakes but the only place I could find that they were sticking was the skylight on the covered part of our deck (as seen from my office window). The day alternated between a gray winter day with short periods of brilliant sunshine.

It was a good day for making Chicken Soup with the leftover chicken from earlier this week. I started a pan with water, a chicken bouillon cube, and a cup of shredded summer squash from the freezer (left from last summer’s CSA). By the time I had cut up a few mushrooms to add, the squash had thawed and the liquid was bubbling. I added seasonings (not measuring…just added what I thought would be enough): onion flakes, my own grated orange peel, minced garlic, ‘original’ Pinch Perfect no-salt blend. I decided that cilantro would be good in the soup but it has more flavor if it isn’t cooked too much so I put it in the soup bowl and cut it up with scissors – with the plan to pour the soup over the fresh greens. Finally, I cut up the chicken and added it to the simmering soup. It took about 15 minutes…and was just what I wanted for lunch!

A Warm February Afternoon

The historical average temperature for February where we live in Maryland is 46 degrees (Fahrenheit); yesterday it was in the 60s and sunny. And the day before it reached 70. Not a normal February at all so far! I’d enjoy at least one good snow this winter!

I used the warm afternoon to clean out the bird bath and fill it with fresh water - and to photograph the Christmas Ferns that grow under our deck. They look scraggly this time of year but the stocking shape of the pinnae (the leafy segments along the stalk) are still evident. I bought them a few years ago, since they are very tolerant of shade and deer don’t eat them. They have survived well enough but they haven’t propagated themselves yet either.

On the way back up the stairs to the deck, I noticed that some of the stair risers were very green. They are in the shade for at least half the day and the wood must be damp enough to support the growth of photosynthetic microorganisms.

Little Luxuries in Winter

What are the little luxuries of your winter day?

Here are some little luxuries I am enjoying this winter:

The first thing I thought of was – getting into a pre-warmed bed at the end of the day. We bought a heated mattress pad a few years ago and I have enjoyed it most for what it does before I get into bed. I turn it on before I brush my teeth; the bed is toasty by the time I climb in and I turn the heat off (or way down).

There are little luxuries that are foods too: dark chocolate for breakfast, lemon curd or ginger preserves on toast for morning snack, beet noodles for salads or stir fries, a juicy orange for afternoon snack. I’ve learned to create a second round of luxury from the orange peel by chopping it up in my mini-food processor and letting it dry….having all the orange zest I want for soups and stir fries and salad dressings.

Hand and foot warmers. When I know I’m going to be out in the cold, I’ve come to appreciate the foot warmers on the bottom of my feet in my hiking boots and the hand warmers inside my gloves. They make photographing birds on winter mornings a lot more comfortable!

Seeing the sunrise is a luxurious way to begin the day – made easier by the long night/short days. Maybe I am channeling birds to think of this as a luxury; they always seem to be at their most vocal just before the sun comes up.

Photographs through my Office Window – January 2017

My office window continues to be a great vantage point for photography. The heated bird bath and a usually well supplied bird feeder attract quite a few birds. Some are occasional visitors (or I don’t catch them on their rounds very frequently): Chickadees,

House finches,

Starlings (the sun was just right to catch this bird’s coloring), and

A downy wood pecker (because of the chisel-like bill….otherwise it could be a Hairy Woodpecker).

The cardinals I see more often…but they seem to be more nervous than usual (perhaps because of the red-tailed hawk frequenting the forest behind out house).

The juncos I see all the time – they are the most frequent visitors to our deck.

The mourning doves have been arriving in larger groups this month. They look very fat on cold days when they have their feathers fluffed out.

We do have a hawk that comes to the edge of the forest. The blue jays usually make a big ruckus when it is in the area…making it easier to photograph.

The jays themselves seemed to enjoy the heated bird bath more than any other bird. The stop for water and then fly off to the maple or tulip poplar.

Yesterday we woke up to a dusting of snow (this has been a warm January with less snow than usual for our area). As soon as it was light enough I took some pictures of the bird bath (no bird tracks) and the feeder (a few tracks on the nearby railing.

An hour later – it was obvious that a lot of birds were out and about!

Prius Prime – Week 1

I’ve had my Prius Prim for a little over a week and am still learning its nuances. I’m not driving any more than I need to (i.e. no special trips to just drive the car) so it’s a slower pace for me than any other new car.

I did drive the car to Belmont for a winter hike with other volunteers. I was a little worried about the potholes on the one lane entrance road and the possibility that I might have to back up if I met another car on that same road. I was pleased that the worst of the potholes had been patched and when another car approached as I was leaving, I was near an easy place to pull off the road. I am learning to drive in a way that helps the car get better mileage, but the car switched from EV to hybrid mode on the way home…very smoothly. It was a good experience.

I also took the car back to the dealership to have the feature for garage door opener buttons to be part of the car (I don’t like to have a separate clicker). It took about 30 minutes at the dealership and a few seconds to program it once I got home. Now I’m familiar more with the dealership facilities for service although – hopefully – I won’t need them very often.

On the weekly grocery shopping day, I discovered that the hatchback easily holds at least 8 bags of groceries (maybe more if I fit them in more tightly). Another positive – the route to the grocery store and my driving pattern yielded the projected mileage in the all-electric mode for the car!

Brookside Gardens is a little further afield than the grocery store and part of the route was at highway speeds. I used the cruise control for the first time. It has some features that are new-to-me: Full-Speed Range Dynamic Radar Cruise Control. I seems to work very well and should make it easier to drive for long distances without having to turn the cruise control off. This time when the car switched from EV mode to hybrid on the way home, the car was at highway speed, on cruise control, and a long uphill climb. It was smooth enough but I heard the gasoline engine more.

I’ll post about my continuing adventure with the Prius Prime in about a month. Maybe I’ll take a short winter road trip….

Morning Sun

I like to photograph in morning light…particularly when I manage to capture the glow it creates on ordinary places. This is the view from my office window every sunny morning – the sun coming down the trees as it rises over the roof of the house. It puts a lot of color in the bare branches of winter trees!

Of course, there are the sunrise pictures. The edges of the clouds caught the blaze although the bulk of the clouds were thick enough still look very gray. The vegetation in front of our house was in silhouette with the light of the morning not quite bright enough yet. The tree in the foreground is an oak and some of the buds are large enough to be seen – even though it’s only January and a long time before it will leaf out.

January is a good month for this type of photography – the sunrise is still late enough to not require getting up early!

3 free eBooks – January 2017

Furnishings – butterflies – tiles….3 interesting topics that seem to be my themes for eBooks this month.

Tracy, Berry B. (curator). 19^th Century America Furniture and Other Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1970. Available from Internet Archive here. The objects were included in an exhibit in 1970 – with this book recording it all. I found the ‘other decorative arts’ even better than the furniture.

Weed, Clarence Moores. Butterflies. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company for Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1927. Available from Hathi Trust here. I liked the vivid colors of the illustrations. Butterflies are generally colorful but the backgrounds were just a vivid in this book. Do you recognize the Tiger Swallowtail?

Campbell Brick and Tile Co. Designs for encaustic and geometrical tile pavements, also of encaustic, glazed, majolic̀a, and other tiles for hearths, fireplaces. Leicester: J. Fleming & Co. 1877. Available from Hathi Trust here. I like decorative tile…great ideas of Zentangles and (maybe) a renovation project for my house!

Ten Little Celebrations – January 2017

January started out with a burst of travel – driving cross country between Maryland and Arizona with a stop for a week in the Dallas area. There were associated ‘little celebrations.’

Leaf earrings from a local artist in McKinney TX – I celebrated finding earrings I like a lot…and if they are created by a local artist that makes it even better. I find it very easy to remember where I purchase earrings so they are great mementos for my travels.

A day on my own – Usually when I travel, my time is full of interacting with other people and I end up exhausted after it continues for too many days. On this 9-day trip, I had one day that was almost all ‘me time’ and I celebrated the lull!

Getting to the hotel in the snow – One day I was out and about in Dallas when it started snowing. I thought it wouldn’t stick but it started before I could head back to the hotel. Dallas does not use salt and there had not been any time for sand to be out either. I was driving an unfamiliar car too. I white knuckled the drive (overpasses particularly) but made it back to the hotel without incident…and celebrated.

Then there were ‘home’ related celebrations:

Home again – I enjoy traveling but coming home again is always a little celebration.

A good night of sleep – I came home from my travels with a cold so the first night that I sleep well was cause for celebration.

A sunny day – January in Maryland has been full of gray skies and drizzle (no snow) so I celebrated one on of the few sunny days.

A new car – Maybe this is a big celebration rather than a little one. I only buy a new car about every 10 years or so…and I’m still savoring the lingering celebration of acquiring the Prius Prime.

There are instances of little celebrations in my favorite activities as well:

Anatomy of the Abdomen and Pelvis Course – This might be the most challenging courses I’ve taken on Coursera – but tremendously interesting. I am celebrating every module. Kudos to the Leiden University Medical School for producing it.

A hike and finding skunk cabbages – I enjoyed a winter hike and was celebrating being outdoors when I found skunk cabbages already up in the winter muck…and that made for a bigger celebration.

Red-tailed hawks – It seems like I am seeing red tailed hawks a lot more frequently this winter….or maybe I am just becoming a better observer. My daughter and I saw them on our cross-country road trip, there is at least one that is frequently the woods behind out house and I saw one at Centennial Park when I was there last week. I celebrate that the birds are thriving and that I am seeing them!

So much ‘stuff’

I’m starting spring cleaning early! The easy part was clearing out old receipts and bank statements from before 2000 (some went as far back as the 1980s). They had been organized in bags and boxes in our house (where we have lived for 20 years) – just there because we had space for them. The items with bank account, credit card and social security numbers are loaded into boxes to go to our Credit Union’s shredding day and the rest went into the recycle bin.

Then there are a few bags of clothes gleaned from closets and the cedar chest. I am still suspicious that there are items in my husband’s closet that he will never wear again, but he is very clear that he is not ready to part with them yet.

I went through the books I had in my ‘to read’ pile and discovered some that I’m not sure why I ever picked up. So they are added to the books I’ve read and decided not to keep….another few boxes of stuff staged to leave the house.

Then there are the miscellaneous things that come into the house – greeting cards from charities soliciting donations, baskets and vases from arrangements (How many do we need to keep? Certainly fewer than we have in the house now) and rolls of wrapping paper that I will never use since I use gift bags all the time now.

I made the appointment with a charity to pick up the boxes and bags from my front porch….and feel great about the prospect of the house being a little less stuffed!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 14, 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.

Why some companies are trying to hire more people on the Autism Spectrum – The pilot programs in companies like SAP and Microsoft are net positive – for the companies and the high functioning autistic people they employ.

Ancient Chaco Canyon population likely relied on imported food – There is physical evidence that timbers, pottery and chert in Chaco came from the Chuska Mountains which are some 50 miles west of Chaco Canyon; corn probably did too. The soils in the canyon and the its tributaries are too salty to grow enough to feed any sizable population.

Researchers record trillions of migrating insects swarming through the skies – A study monitored insects flying over southern England above 500 feet. There were a lot more than expected – insects that move north in the spring and south in the fall. 70% of the migration takes place in daylight hours. A similar study of insect migration has been started in Texas…and had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of invertebrate they are finding!

The Next Big Thing: Healthy Homes – Important to think about for long term health….and maybe not as expensive as it once was.

What have the world’s oldest mummies kept under wraps? – Digital reconstructions of 7,000 year old bodies from South America is in its initial stages. The mummies are deteriorating because of microbes that are more active as the climate of the Atacama becomes more humid.

2016: Compound Interest’s Year in Review –  I like this site…and have included some of these postings when they originally came out…but there were more that were interesting.

United Stated of Cookies – A cookie for each state….and the recipe for it. Maryland is the Berger Cookie.

Scientists can now make lithium-ion batteries last a lifetime – Sometimes small changes make a big difference!

How the world’s biggest cities are fighting smog – There are techniques to take smog out of city air…technologies to apply in parallel with reducing pollution at its source. In many cities – both strategies are urgently needed.

Twelve new tombs discovered in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt – Even with so much focus on archeology in Egypt…there are still new finds.

Rhythm of my Seasons

The Rhythm of my Days and Weeks were posted a few days ago. This post is about seasonal rhythms.

Clothes. I still move things from closet to storage and back twice a year (usually spring and fall…whenever the temperature changes enough). I don’t wear corduroy pants and sweaters when the weather is warm just as I don’t wear shorts, skirts and capri pants when it is very cold. Some things stay in my closet all the time – and they wear out the fastest.

Volunteering. Spring and Fall are when I spend the most time volunteering. Those are the seasons that the schools have most of their field trips and stream assessments.

Travel. My husband likes to do traveling in the spring and fall – and that is probably the time for most our travel…but it happens in the other fall and summer too so there might not be a season for travel.

Classes. There is more time for classes in the winter and summer. I’m always a little surprised that I enjoy them more in winter although I am not sure why.

Outdoor work around the house. There are chores that dominate in every season. Cleaning out and planting in spring. Watering and mowing in summer. Raking leaves in the fall. Shoveling snow in the winter.

Food. Pomegranates in December. Orange squashes and apples and pears and cranberries in the fall. Tomatoes and melons at the height of summer. Garlic scapes and strawberries in late spring/early summer. Yum (even though sometimes I buy them out of season because, these days, many are in season someplace in the world).

I still have not come up with any of my rhythmic habits that I want to change in 2017….but writing these posts has heightened my awareness of the rhythms…and confirming to myself that they are what I want them to be.

My First (and still primary) Cookbook

I still have my first cookbook. My grandmother bought it for me when I was in later elementary school. It has a copyright of 1963

And was ‘The New’ at the time.

It’s never been something I referenced daily but the cumulative use over 50 years has made a mark. The corn breads page is particularly crumpled from splashes over the years.

Some of the recipes are annotated. Sometime along the line I marked off nutmeg and lemon rind from the Apple Brown Betty!

Other pages that are marked with paperclips and spills are popovers and gingerbread. One of the first times I made the gingerbread was the day I had my wisdom teeth extracted; that was in 1973! This cookbook is a part of my life history because I carried it along everywhere I moved from the time I got it until now; it isn’t ‘stuff’ to go into a giveaway pile.

Rhythm of my Weeks

The Rhythm of my Days was posted earlier this week. This post is the rhythm of my weeks.

The first activities I thought about that take place weekly are ones that keep ‘home’ functioning and they’ve been part of my weekly rhythm for my entire adult life:

Groceries. Buying food is something I do once a week. During my career years, I was busy Monday-Friday so I almost always went grocery shopping on Saturday morning. Now I go Thursday morning and savor the uncrowded store! I also have started getting produce from a Community Supported Agriculture which happens on a weekly rhythm too.

Laundry. Both my husband and I prefer to do laundry once a week and Saturday has been our preferred day for the last 40 years! I asked him if he wanted to change days now that we could do it any day of the week – but he wants to stick with Saturday.

It took me a little longer to think of other weekly rhythms. I had to look back at notes and my calendar. It became obvious that I communicate via phone or email or in person with certain family members virtually every week! That is something that has happened in the past 5 years: a post-career addition.

Looking at the daily and weekly rhythms – I realize how much of my time is ad hoc – and I love that about the way my post-career life! Variety is the spice of life!

Rhythm of my Days

Here we are at the beginning of another year. It’s a good time to try to be objective about how my life is going and decide of I want to make any changes. This year – I couldn’t come up with anything substantial that I wanted to change so I decided to look more methodically – what are the rhythms of my days, my weeks, and my seasons within the year. This is the first post of the series.

The rhythm of my days are mostly habits. Some are longstanding:

• Getting up before 6 AM and being in bed by about 10. I feel better and enjoy my days more when the sleep/wake cycle is almost the same every day.
• I eat my meals at about the same time every morning…trying to have the largest meal as midday although that is not always possible. It is easier now that when I was away from home most days during my career.
• Reading ‘books’. I always have a book I am reading and that has been a long standing daily activity. IT was physical books…but somewhere along the line became more and more digital.

Some are additions since I’ve retired:

• A daily blog post. I write it and schedule it to come out the night before. When I travel, I double up before I go and the posts still come out once a day.
• Zentangle and meditation. They are two separate things. They both provide an interlude of centering…of drawing myself completely into the present. The creation of Zentangle tiles is a pleasant byproduct.
• 12,000 steps is my goal for each day (measured via a Fitbit). The way I get them can vary. Many times, it includes ‘bounces’ on my Swopper chair in front of the computer. I ramped up before I retired but the activity level became a lot more consistent once I was not in the thick of career related activities.
• Writing 3,000 words a day just became a goal in 2016. It got easier as the year progressed. The goal includes words written for the blog post, writing about the events of the day, and notes from classes ----really anything I want to write about.

What is not part of my daily rhythm that once was?

• Reading a newspaper. These days I use news feeds from multiple sources and it’s a more technical skew that newspapers had.
• The evening news. I watch some stories while I fix or eat dinner – but very rarely watch a full program. Looking back, there were many periods that I did not watch news…because I was too busy. I remember listening to The News Hour when my daughter was young (20 years ago) because at that time it was not graphic – it was interviews without pictures to back them up – so was something we could watch while she was with us.

The rest of the day is full of other activities that differ from day to day, week to week, etc. As I wrote this post, I surprised myself with how many items are ‘daily’ for me. I still haven’t discovered anything I want to change in 2017!

Zentangle® – December 2016 – part 1

I did so many Zentangle® sessions in December that I’ve divided then into 2 posts; this first one is the ‘tiles’ only.

The first group is normal square tiles. The ones that look light brown are cut from boxes of canned drinks. Sometimes the indentions from the cans make circular shapes that I use as strings. I like the light weight cardboard; it absorbed ink well and is easy to handle. It’s a little harder on the paper cutter than card stock. As usual – some of the designs are patterns from Zentangle sites…others are derived from botanical structures, portions of modern art paintings, or stylizing a landscape. Sometimes everything I look at seems to have potential for a Zentangle tile.

The next group is not square…and not all the same size. I found a package of 4 x 6 inches note cards that I cut into 4x3 tiles but there are some that are other sizes too – not sure how I created them.

I’ll post the rest of the December Zentangle projects in a few day.

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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.