Hiking at Belmont

I took a winter hike at Belmont yesterday. The trek went from the Carriage House at Belmont onto the Patapsco Valley State Park’s Ridge Trail – making a big loop. It was a lot of up and down hiking through the winter forest. I had limited time to take pictures….it was a hike not a photo shoot. I liked the very green moss on this fallen tree – that has been cut up after it fell across the trail.

Sometimes the white of shelf fungus catches attention too.

This log had a mixture of shelf fungus, lichen and moss…quite a variety. There are little plants coming up through the leaves as well; we’ve been having some warmer days than usual this January.

Here we were on the trail. The trees with brown leaves still clinging are probably young beech trees.

As we came out of the forest there was a great view of the Belmont Manor House from over the rolling hills.

By the time we got back to the Carriage House, we were all ready for a snack!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 21, 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.

What’s Your Sleep Animal? Find out with this quiz. – A little self analysis…about how you sleep. I’m a lion!

What teeth reveal about the lives of modern humans – It turns out our teeth are not adapted very well for modern diets. And it not just cavities and plaque buildup. It also has to do with jaw growth.  Did you know that wisdom teeth (third molar) impaction became 10 times more common after the Industrial Revolution?

The Chemistry of Bodily Fluid Colors – An infographic summarizes how blood, bile, urine, and feces get their color.

Appendix may have important function – I thought the diagram of the appendix shapes of different animals was as interesting as the idea that the appendix may serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria.

It’s Time to Give Nature the Credit It Deserves – Nature as water infrastructure! Hopefully more areas of the US will include these strategies in their long-term water planning. Good for people, the economy, and the planet!

20 of the Most Stunning Photos Captured by Drones in 2016 – Eye candy that I couldn’t resist sharing.

The Most Precious of Gifts – About gold, frankincense, and myrrh…from the Manchester Museum

The Chemistry of Fireworks Pollution – Wow….there are a lot of bad things that are exploded into the air by fireworks. I’m glad there are efforts to make ‘greener’ fireworks. No one ones a celebration to lead to respiratory problems and exposure to toxic metals.

Designation of Bear Ears National Monument in San Juan County, UT – Some great pictures of one of our newest National Monuments.

Meet Your Newest Organ: The Mesentery – I’m taking a Coursera course on the anatomy of the abdomen and pelvis…and the mesentery is part of the discussion. I just finished a module about how it develops with the gut from an embryological perspective. It’s quite a complex membrane – and now maybe it will be researched as an organ.

Skunk Cabbage in January!

I walked down to the swampy areas on the other side of Mt Pleasant Farm when I was there earlier this week (away from either Construction Zone) and looked at a couple of places I knew Skunk Cabbage grows. The first – closer – place was still like winter – no sunk cabbage coming up in the muck. But the second place had lots of new shoots of the plant coming up!

Once I saw the a few plants – I started seeing even more of them. We’ve been having a warmer than usual January so the plants may be coming up a bit earlier than usual. They are some of the earliest flowers of spring. The early insects (including bees) are attracted to their not-pleasant-to-us smell. They often show up when snow is still on the ground but this year it hasn’t been necessary so far.

One of the shoots has been cut (by a mower?) so the structure of the coiled up leave is obvious.  The structure coming up next to it might be a flower.

As I walked back along the small stream (East Branch), I spotted two green shoots in a relatively narrow and rocky part of the stream bed…probably a new stand of skunk cabbage from seeds produced in the large stand a little upstream.

It will be interesting to observe what happens to these plants if we do have some very cold weather. After all – it’s only January…still some winter left to go.

Mt. Pleasant Construction Zones

There are two construction zones at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant location right now: the expansion of the Gudelsky Environmental Education Center and the restoration (by Howard County) of the Davis Branch. There are some vantage points that look the same as always – looking over the rock wall to the meadow,

The view toward the west from beside the community garden

And toward the Gudelsky Center.

Even though a lot of the construction on the Center is going on inside on the lower level, there is still evidence of activity – fencing and mud! It’s fairly contained compared to the stream restoration.

Earlier this week, I was with a group that hiked down to see the progress. There are big pieces of equipment to move dirt (and mud) – creating a new channel for the stream that will reconnect with its flood plain more easily and create some wetlands too. The bridge warped my last summer’s storm surge is being straightened so that it can be used to cross the new channel. Gray chunks of rock are being placed to create riffles and drop the run of the stream by about a foot. And everywhere there are hoses to pump the water around the work site; this has been a bigger job that originally planned since the rehabilitation of a pond upstream (and not part of this project) is happening simultaneously and releasing more water than expected to the stream. All the hoses and pumps, big machinery, rocks and temporary erosion control measures made me think of this as a ‘stream on life support’ during this reconstruction; hopefully the stream will come out in better condition than when everything started!

Texas Canyon Rest Area

About an hour east of Tucson on Interstate 10 is the Texas Canyon Rest Area. I almost always stop there – whether I am headed to or from Tucson. Last week, I was headed to the city after a very long day of driving from Texas. It had been very cold when we left the Dallas area and still cold when we left Abilene…but the day had begun to be warmer by the time we passed through El Paso and we were glad to leave our coats in the car. The stop as Texas Canyon was very pleasant and I took a few pictures of the rocks.

It was sunny afternoon with enough clouds to make the sky more than a blue backdrop – if I didn’t zoom in too much. It was the desert in winter – but the rocks are the highlight of this landscape all the time.

Highway through El Paso, TX

The best highway art on our drive between Abilene, Texas and Tucson, Arizona on Interstate 10 was through El Paso. My daughter was driving so I could indulge in photographing some of it. I had remembered some of the structures from previous road trips when I was driving and thus unable to do any photography. There is quite a variety: decorative supports, stripes and medallions on the sides of the decking, elaborate railings, metal sculpture, towers on abutments, and colorful retaining walls. The colors send to be muted…very much like the colors of the surrounding mountains and desert.

The road was in good repair and not too busy on the Sunday (a week ago) that we drove through. The city crowds to the sides of the highway…and the University of El Paso campus is within site of the highway. It is easy to image the interstate as the backbone of the city.

Wind Turbines in West Texas

Last Sunday, we left Abilene while it was still dark to drive to Tucson. I ask my daughter to take the first driving stretch because I wanted to photograph wind turbines at sunrise as we drove. The timing was good since we started seeing the big turbines almost immediately along Interstate 20 – and they continued for miles and miles. Most of them were set away from the highway but there were a few close enough to see the colorful sunrise light on the blades. The area must be one of the largest (if not the largest) in the US for wind power generation.

There were a lot of RV parks that looked full in the area and I wondered if RVs have become the housing of choice for temporary workers. There were people out and about – buddle up for the cold and working. Ranching, oil, wind….all industries big in the area that require outdoor work even when it is cold and a Sunday morning.

Surprisingly the wind did not bother the car as much in that stretch of highway as it did in the up and down area as we got further along – past Pecos. The terrain channels the wind into swirling gusts that we could feel in the car steering. We watched the big trucks more closely and minimized our time passing them….kept moving along at the speed limit – which is 80 mph for a lot of the drive through West Texas.

Grackles and Mockingbirds – Grapevine, TX

Earlier this week I posted some sunrise pictures taken through the hotel window in Grapevine, Texas. I was at the hotel later one day during our stay and enjoyed photographing grackles and mockingbirds through the second-floor window of our room. It was a very cold and breezy day. All the mockingbird pictures show them looking fat with fluffed feathers. It’s always surprising how much bigger and rounder a bird can look when it’s cold.

The grackles (probably Great-tailed Grackles based on their size, tail, and location in north central Texas) didn’t seem bothered by the cold. They are all sleek and full of assertiveness. They seemed to be aware that they were being watched…and they glared back at the camera! Notice how robust the toes/talons are; they make the mockingbird look delicate.

Birding through a window…the way to go on bitterly cold days!

Josey Ranch Lake – January 2017

I saw some of the same kinds of birds I saw back in February 2015 when I walked around the lake last week. It was cold --- and the wind made it feel colder. We did not dawdle but I did manage to take a few pictures. As if 2015: There were lots of Lesser Scaup (the first picture is of 3 males and 1 female) but they were all over the lake with their oddly shaped heads. These birds are only in Texas for the winter.

The Northern Shoveler is also a winter bird.

The swans were still around too. They stay on the lake all through the years.

This time I also noticed American Coots. All About Birds says they are in the area throughout the year but I don’t remember seeing as many of them as I did this year.

There were the Mallards too – another year round resident.

I spotted a Cormorant too.

Finally – the tail and back feathers on this duck seem to glow. It was such a gray day that the feathers stood out. There are also water droplets on the head and breast. I don’t know what kind of duck it is.

Grapevine, TX Sunrise

I traveled with my daughter to the AAS Conference in Grapevine, TX last week. We didn’t stay in the conference hotel (the Gaylord Texan) – opting for a less expensive hotel near the Grapevine Mall. The plan was that I would drop her off at the conference, visit with family in the area during the day, and pick her up when her sessions/dinner were done for the day. We planned to go down to hotel’s breakfast as soon as it opened each morning. The very first morning we came back to the room after breakfast to a spectacular sunrise as soon as we opened the drapes! These were taken from our hotel window.

The next day – we were a little later getting back to the room…and the sun was already up – muted by clouds. It was a lot more orange...still a nice sunrise.

A good breakfast and a beautiful sunrise. I like to start my day that way.

McKinney, Texas

My sisters and daughter took a walk around the old down town of McKinney, Texas – a place none of us had ever been. It’s a small town that has been around for a long time but is not feeling the encroachment of Dallas. The down town has become a place of repurposed buildings. It has a lot of boutique type shops and eateries. We did our walking around before lunch.

There is a courthouse at the center of it all that has been repurposed to be a performing arts center. Most of it was not open on January 2^nd but we appreciated the outside part of the building. Most of the visible façade was built in the 1920s.

There are also two ‘bank’ facades. When they were built, the thought must have been that they would always be banks!

There are bits of whimsy along the sidewalks too. I’m not sure how many painted frogs there were. I managed to photography two of them.

One store had a metal giraffe with a scarf outside the doorway.

There was a cotton boll wreath in one of the store windows. At one time, the town economy was based on cotton and it was prosperous enough to enable to remodeling of the courthouse to its present form.

The store fronts themselves are interesting and the businesses appear to being doing well enough to maintain them. Unlike a lot of small towns that are overcome by a nearby big city, McKinney seems to be thriving as itself. There were people enjoying a sunny (and warm) winter day all around the square while we were there and the Irish Pub where we had lunch filled up while we were eating our lunch.

If you are in the area – it’s worth spending a few hours browsing the shops and having a meal.

Road Trip to Texas

I started 2017 on a road trip to Texas. We (my daughter and I) left while it was still dark the morning of the 31^st from Maryland and arrived at our destination near Dallas on the 1^st. It was cloudy – misty – rainy both days. Fortunately, the temperature stayed well above freezing. We did see a dusting of snow on the hills as we drove the ups, downs, and curves of the Interstate in southwestern Virginia…the Appalachians.

The route was through the backbone of Tennessee on the Blue Star Highway: Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis. The rest stops in Tennessee are probably the best along the route.

My daughter drove as we crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis into Arkansas. It’s difficult to get a good view of the river with the high railings of the bridge….safety first rather than view.

We made good time both days. Most of the route was good highway and the construction areas were not active on the holiday weekend. Traffic was light to medium. We encountered one accident along the way that was on the other side of the highway. The flyovers on some the newer interstate connections approaching Dallas were almost too high for comfort; I focused on the road rather than the scenery!

And we arrived about when the nav system predicted.

Zentangle® – December 2016 – part 2

I continued making owls out of toilet paper rolls in December. I lined them up on the window ledge of my office. I always start out with the eyes and try to make them different than the day before. I like the Sharpie Ultra Fine Point marker because it overcomes the brown of the cardboard.

I try to vary the patterns as well although minor changes in a pattern make it look different enough. When I am creating them – I don’t think about gender…but afterwards I sometimes get an impression. The one in the middle below looks feminine to me!

The spiral highlight in the eyes was an idea I got from an owl on a ceiling fan pull chain that my sister bought for me as a gift.

I was looking at a book about algae, diatoms, and water plants and used one (upside down) as the starting point for the body of the middle owl.

The owls are in the order that I created them….it was well into the month before I used a color other than black!

 Once I started using colors – I continued…. although the purple looks very close to black.

The last one was ‘Christmas’ inks (on Christmas) but the red looks too orangey to me. That’s the last owl for December! I like them on the window sill!

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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.