Glowing Tulip Poplar Flowers

The tulip poplars in the forest behind our house are blooming.

On a sunny day last week, I walk our closer to the trees at mid-day and took zoomed pictures looking up in the tree. Because the sun was almost directly overhead the flowers seemed to catch the light and glowed among the greenery of the tree’s leaves.

The shape of the flowers is very tulip-like but the coloring is quite different. The inside of the flower is different too.

I think these are my favorite pictures to date of this tree in the springtime.

Photographs through my Office Window – April 2017

There has been a lot of activity through my office window this month. The squirrels are feasting on the tender samaras in the maple – early in the month

And then a couple of weeks later when the leaves are unfurling.

The squirrels have a pathway around our yard via trees and fence…rarely on the ground.

The robins are around but don’t seem as numerous as previous years.

We now have two kinds of sparrows: chipping sparrows and

White throated sparrows (with the dash of yellow above their eye).

The blue jays are still frequent visitors to the bird bath.

I haven’t seen a lot of grackles but there was one that visited our yard long enough for a picture.

We have a pair of cardinals again this year – probably nesting nearby.

Mourning doves like the birdbath and the roof line of our covered deck. This one seemed to want its picture taken!

Gone to Seed

The first dandelion flowers have already gone to seed. I notice many along the sides of the narrow county roads…and in the plants I photographed earlier on my deck. The plants move from flower to seeds in about a week.

And then the seeds are ready to float away and sprout in any bit of soil that is deep enough for their roots.

These plants that we fight as weeds in our lawns were brought to North America as a desirable garden plant by early colonialists! The leaves and flowers are edible…there is dandelion wine. I try to remember that as I photograph them.

Invasives on the Deck

I left some pots on the uncovered part of our deck from last summer…intending to plant flowers for pollinators in them for the upcoming season…but I have invasives pull the first! One pot has a very health garlic mustard plant (there is more of it at the edge of our forest. I’m pulling all of it that is on our property. I supposed some people might like it in salads….but it is too aggressive in places I want jack-in-the-pulpits and woodland wildflowers for me to like it at all.

The other invasive is dandelions. They don’t seem as bad to me but maybe that is just because they’ve been around my whole life. They too can be eaten and I have gotten leaves from my CSA and grocery store on occasion. There flowers and seed pods are interesting topics for photography. I’ve heard one soil conservation person comment that dandelions might be a good thing for slopes since they have longer tap roots and can hold soil more effectively that shallow rooted plants. So – they do have some redeeming qualities….but they are still weeds and I’ll pull them from my deck pots before I plant the flower seeds in the next week or so.

The Juncos are Gone

Our juncos left for the Canada (or the Appalachians) last week. They are frequent visitors to our bird feeder here in central Maryland during the winter. It seemed that they did not all leave at the same time…but within just a few days. There were the usual number one day…the only one or two the next…then none at all.

They are only here in the winter and then go to their breeding grounds for the late spring and summer. They overlap with the chipping sparrows for a few weeks in the spring in Maryland – the sparrows coming north to Maryland for their breeding season. The birds are about the same size and do not share the bird feeder gracefully.

Around my Yard – April 2017

April has been a rainy month for us – so far. I managed to walk around the yard on one sunny afternoon. There is a lot of trimming and cleanout work to be done as soon as we have a few dry days in a row. I am not a gardener so it is a chore that requires some will power to accomplish. I cheered myself up by taking some pictures of little things I noticed as I was assessing the yard: a wasp exploring a past-prime daffodil,

A dandelion – one of the first to bloom this season (pre-emergent is never totally effective),

A self-fungus on one of the larger pieces in our brush pile,

Violets beginning to bloom,

And a scruffy looking robin!

Fast Salads

This time of year – I am buying all my produce at the grocery store with the locally grown produce seasons still a couple of months away. Once the season starts there will be a lot more cleaning and cutting to make a salad. Right now I am savoring that I can buy my salad ingredients in nearly ready to eat form: mixed leafy greens and purples,

Broccoli and cabbage slaw, and carrot sticks.

I combine them in my salad bowl and use scissors to cut them in to smaller pieces (no cutting board or knife required).

Shelled soybeans and salad dressing goes on top.

Lunch is ready in under 10 minutes!

Cherry Blossoms

It hasn’t been a great year for cherry blossoms in our area. We had a mostly warm February then some very cold days just as the cherry trees were beginning to bloom in Washington DC – where we usually go to view the large number of trees around the tidal basin.. The cherry tree in our yard is usually later that the trees The District…and it was not as damaged by the frosty days. Unfortunately – it is not situated well for whole tree pictures but I did get some pictures of the flowers themselves this week.

One of my sisters is in Salt Lake City, Utah this week and their trees are blooming right now too. She sent me some pictures that are more typical of the ones I take when we walk around downtown DC….just not this year.

Zooming – March 2017

I decided against creating collages this month for the zoomed images and tried to pick images I had not used elsewhere. Early in the month there is a little winter weather and I used the camera to create some zoomed images through my office window: snow on maple blossoms and

The top of our bird feeder.

Then it was onto some warmer March days: new leaves on a rose bush trimmed last fall,

Dutch iris in a garden in Texas, and

A cat surveying the neighborhood from the top of a gate (also in Texas).

A few days later – there were lots to zoom items at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh: a slipper orchid,

A Chihuly bowl, and

The inside of a tulip.

The following day there were the birds at the National Aviary: an ibis,

Flamingo feet,

A hornbill (with feathers that look like very long eyelashes and a lot of cracks and scars on the bill), and

The complex features of an Andean condor.

Back in Maryland – the bark of a persimmon tree and

The delicate petals of a daffodil that survived snow and ice a few days prior to this picture.

Photographs through my Office Window – March 2017

I travelled enough during March that I missed seeing some birds that visited our backyard. I did see a Northern Flicker that seemed very interested in the area where a large branch was torn from a forest tree behind our house…probably insects there.

The crows come to inspect the debris in the gutter of our neighbor’s house. There are plenty of tulip poplar seeds still flying from the trees.

The blue jays are frequent visitors. This one is fluffed against the cold.

The juncos are still around and chase other birds away from our feeder. They’ll be leaving to head north soon. This one was in the maple tree…on a cold day.

The doves were around to get a drink of water from our heated bird bath…this one flue up to the roof of our covered deck afterward.

The most exciting visitor was the pileated woodpecker. My husband saw the bird first – in our sycamore…and then it flew to a pine. It inspected all the pots on a neighbor’s deck then flew to the roof of our covered deck.

I managed to photograph a squirrel in the sycamore just before it made the leap to our deck. It gets a drink at the heated bird bath and sometimes tries to get seed from our feeder (but has not succeeded in dumping the feeder yet!).

And then there was the landscape pictures of our backyard: highlighted tracks (human) through the snow and

The forest on a foggy day (yesterday).

Prius Prime and Samsung Galaxy S7

I thought for sure I’d made a road trip sometime during my second month owning the Prius Prime but we took the new Honda CR-V for the road trip to Pittsburgh (more on that in the posts over the next few days). I’ve included a picture of the car with a backdrop of snow piles at the South Mountain rest top on Interstate 70.

We did tease out about how much the electricity cost to charge the Prius Prime for my “around town” driving: the car got about 300 miles on about $5 of electricity!

I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy S7 for about a month….have most of the apps I’ll use frequently loaded. I leave it on my desk when I am at the computer – plugged in so when I leave it is always fully charged.

I added the app for my grocery store (Wegmans) so I can see the coupons I clipped electronically, experimented a little with the iNaturalist app for BioBlitz and used several apps while I was traveling recently: FlightView (to get the current info for my air travel), the Accuweather forecast for where I am and where I am going, and texts to people I need to connect arrival and meetings. I also have started using the phone for (Kindle book) reading on the plane.  I bought a lanyard phone holder so the phone is attached to me (without me dedicating a hand to it) in the grocery store and on the plane. I’m still experimenting with the length of the lanyard but the holder part works very well and will attach to just about any lanyard.

I’m very pleased with my 2017 tech purchases and am still learning how to best apply them --- using the technology effectively for the way I want to live.

Previous Posts about the Prius Prime: My New Car – a Prius Prime, Prius Prime – Week 1, Prius Prime – Month 1

Previous Posts about the Samsung Galaxy S7: A New Phone

Two Big Trees

Last week on a misty morning, I heard the noise of chain saws and heavy equipment coming from the back of a neighbor’s house. By the time I got out on my deck to look, one of the uppermost branches had be cut off and was being lowered to the ground. It was a very tall tulip poplar that was at the edge of the forest and evidently had moved around a lot during the last wind storm – enough to cause the homeowner to decide it need to come down before it fell on the house.

I went upstairs to my office to get a better vantage point. Yes – there is a reflection that gets in the right side of the images…but I decided to document the process from my office. The crew had a truck with a tall boom. A person was on the controls for the truck and a person was up in the tree….and another man went up to attach ropes to the next branch to be cut so that it could be lowered slowly to the ground.

Another big branch – being lowered to the ground.

And the person going up to attach the rope to the next branch (he looked like he enjoyed the job!).

The branch comes down. Notice the rope that is holding it up…and will allow for it to be gently lowered to the pile.

And now the big trunk begins to come down. Note that the tree is not hollow or rotten. Tulip poplars are notorious for toppling in strong winds…and evidently they don’t have to be sickly for it to happen.

And then I realized that they were cutting down two trees instead of one. Here is the last cut to take the second tree down and

The big trunk being gently lifted to added to the pile.

Then it was all about clean up. It took about 7 hours of work for the crew to get the 2 trees down (and one branch that was rotting from another tree) and everything cleaned up.

I felt depressed that two trees at the edge of our forest were gone…but no one wants a tree to fall on their house.

A March Sunrise

It won’t be so easy to catch a sunrise from our front porch as the days get longer and the leaves fill the trees. The tree in the foreground is an oak and many of the others are that are silhouettes of bare branches now are maples. All of them will become effective drapes on the sunrise color.

I’ve just finished taking a Coursera course on Ancient Egypt and learned about Khepri – a god in the ancient Egyptian religion connected to the rising sun. It’s a word to add to my vocabulary describing that special light that is so great for photography in the early morning:

Khepri light.

Making (Zentangle®) Tiles

I’ve been experimenting with cutting 3.5 x 3.5 inch squares for Zentangle tiles from items I would typically put into the recycle pile. Some packaging is not worth it: boxes of protein bars are too small to be worth the effort (two tiles per box) and some is textured (Lindt dark chocolate bars) and some is a little too dark or heavy (like the quart size food bags). The one I’ve come to like – a lot – is the Wegmans Sparkling Water box. It makes 12 tiles – avoiding the parts that are perforated. Sometimes there is writing on the cardboard which reduces the number of tiles to 11. That is worth it! My old paper cutter is getting workout.

The golden brown on the right in the image below is the color of the box. Note that some of the tiles from the Sparkling Water box have imprints of the can tops…but that just gives me a ‘string’ on the tile before I even start!

I like the way the color of the Ultra Fine Point Sharpie blends into the cardboard too.

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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.

Signs of Spring? – Part 2

The first part of this post was posted last week after a walk around our yard…on a warm afternoon. I posted the series of American Robin images first…now for the rest of what I saw --- There were some milkweed pods in the litter of one of our flower beds (yes – I let some plants go to seed there); there is the first milkweed bug of the season too!

I saw a bee investigating something in the leaf litter too. The day was so warm that the insects probably thought it was spring already.

The crocuses are come up through the leaf mulch left in the flower bed. I’m going to plant some out in the yard next fall since I like the look of the flowers in the lawns of Belmont.

 The miniature daffodils are blooming too.

There some of the larger and taller ones that are still green leaves and buds. When the leaves first emerge, they sometimes have kinks that straighten out before they start blooming.

The red maple is blooming. This time of year is it easy to tell the difference between this tree and other maples. All the others look dull compared to this red.

There is a tree in the forest behind our house that has lost its top and there are woodpecker holes around the wound in the part that remains.

There is a holly that has sprouted under a downspout – not a good place for a holly so I will have to pull it next time I put on my gardening gloves.

Part 1 was posted last Friday.

A Little March Snow

I’d taken pictures for a second post about signs of spring in our yard….but then I woke up to snow! I got a picture at first light since I was sure it would melt away quickly. There were already deer tracks through our back yard.

As it got a little lighter, the snow on the pines and back into the forest gave the scene from my office window a new look.

There was a robin that kept moving around in the red maple that is blooming.

The tulip poplar seed pods from last summer are mostly empty of seeds at this point; they make a little basket for snow accumulation.

The miniature daffodils in the front yard are blooming and they caught the snow as well. They handle it better than the larger and taller flowers that sometimes bend to the ground with heavy snow. These daffodils are progeny of bulbs that my mother-in-law bought for us over 25 years ago and I’m always thrilled that they are so durable through the snow.

Signs of Spring? – Part 1

We have had an unusually warm and snow free winter in our area of Maryland. This morning there is a cold snap and I am wondering if some of the pictures of our yard I took for this blog over the past few days are of things that will be frost damaged next time I walk around. I have been seeing one or two American Robins are warm days for the past week or so. The robin in the slide show below was in a neighbor’s yard – looking for and finding worms. It looked like a fat and healthy bird enjoying the bounty of our neighborhood lawns without a lot of others of his kind around. It is easy to associate a personality with this bird on a mission!

I’m noticing the advantage of having the 40x optical zoom on my camera (rather than 30x of my previous camera or 0 optical zoom of my smart phone). The image stabilization is good too; all these were taken hand held – no monopod or tripod.

February Rainbow

A few days ago, thunderstorms were forecast and once the rumbles started I turned off my computer/other electronics. It seemed like the sun came out again very quickly after a short heavy rain….and I glanced out the window. There was a rainbow! It’s a little unusual for us this time of year when we normally have snow rather than rain. The rainbow’s location was more toward the northeast since the sun is further to the southwest in the afternoon this time of year.

I took the picture from my front doorway. The trees with reddish looking branches are maples. They are already blooming. The branches on the far right of the image are the oak that is near our mailbox.

February Mornings

I general have at least one snow post in February – but we have had no significant snow at all this winter (so far). We have had some wonderful early morning color. Here is what the sunrise looked like from my front door on February 10^th.

The color was transferred to the trees behind my house on Valentine’s Day. The color only lasts a very short period of time when it is reflected like this….I was pleased to catch it!

On the 17^th, I photographed the sunrise from the front door again. It was a little further along than on the 10^th since it was more orange than pink.

Finally – yesterday I looked out my office window and noticed a bird I had not seen since early fall – a robin in the morning sunlight that was making the tallest branches of the tulip poplar behind our house glow. Is it spring already?

Photographs through my Office Window – February 2017

Our February has been very mild so far – some cold mornings but generally warmer than usual – and not snow. The birds frequent both our bird bath and feeder. The cardinal likes the maple or sycamore.

The chickadee comes when it can get a drink or a few seeds when the juncos are not around.

The doves are sporting a sheen to their feathers.

I don’t see flickers every day but there was one that must have been very thirsty. It arrived and kept the juncos away from the bird bath --- and I had time to take some portraits. My favorite is the last one of this sequence that shows the feathers fluffed against the cold.

The red-tailed hawk is still around. I first saw him peering from the black walnut tree through the pine. He flew to another tree where I could only see his front and the beak; can you see him in the jumble of branches?

The blue jays are around every day. They have quite an attitude! The second picture shows the varying shades of blue and note the way the feather look on the top of the head (almost like scales).

Starlings don’t come around our deck very often – and I’m glad since they usually travel in flocks. Our feeder is squirrel proof…and apparently starling proof too since it closes down if too much weight is on it (2 or more starlings!).

I observed two different types of sparrows this month…didn’t realize it until I looked more closely at the pictures. The first was a house sparrow.

And the second was a white-throated sparrow which is only in our area during the winter. Note the yellow marking between the eye and beak.

The downy woodpecker comes for very short visits to our feeder. It finds most of what it needs in the forest behind our house.

February was a good month for birdwatching through my office window!