Prius Prime – Month 1

My Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) ownership is one month and counting. I am still on the first tank of gas (still registering as ‘full’) with about 300 miles on the car. I’ve discovered that unless I take a road trip, it will take months to use a take of gas!

I have learned more about the car since my last post about it:

• Now that I have a smart phone – I’m getting used to the wireless charging surface in the car.
• The charging happens between 11 PM and 7 AM when the electricity costs from my utility are the lowest (the car has a feature that allows setting of charging times so I set it to start at 11:10 PM and it finishes well before 7).
• The audio system can play music from a USB drive – so I have one that I plan to just load up with music and leave in the car. Later, I may use music from phone but the USB option is working so well that I am not motivated to change right now.
• There is a handy slot for sunglasses in the ceiling and I’ve started using it.

The permanent license plates came during the month --- so everything is complete. I really do want to take it on a short road trip!

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

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?

A New Phone

My new car prompted me to get a new phone; the old flip phone I had been using could not interface with the car so I finally upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S7 this past weekend. The only thing to be moved from the old phone was the contacts list! There were some apps that I wanted from my tablet: OurGroceries, Kindle, iNaturalist, and eBird. The email and calendar came as well. I discovered that my Fitbit can interface with the phone as well (no more dongle taking up a USB space on my laptop!). I’ve managed to connect the phone to my Prius Prime as well. I’m sure there will be more to learn in the coming weeks.

I got a screen protector and the Geek Squad 2 year protection when I bought the phone from Best Buy. We were in the store just after noon on Saturday so it was busy but the staff was efficient; we only waited a few minutes before the flurry of action to make the purchase started. I was glad my husband had done it before and knew exactly what I wanted.

I ordered the case from Amazon before I even got the phone; I chose one with lotuses and gold fish. As I thought about how I would use the phone as I was grocery shopping I also ordered a holder with a lanyard so that I could have it readily available but have both hands free to gather my groceries; hopefully it will come before my next grocery shopping day.

I’m trying out an old purse that has a pocket that always seemed too flat ---the phone fits in it very easily; the phone is easy to access but still protected by the structure of the purse.

I took a picture with the phone just as I was thinking about this post. The old tablet (in the red case) may be retired by the phone. I won’t be using it for groceries and maybe not for reading material when I travel; the phone is a smaller package but probably more powerful than the tablet! The phone will not replace my camera but I will take pictures with my phone when I don’t have my camera with me…and for when I need a picture inside an app (like iNaturalist or eBird). It will be easier to send a travel picture to family when I am traveling as well

I’m already enjoying having my new phone!

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!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 18, 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.

Top 10 Winter Warriors – Wild life in winter. The ones I see most frequently are chickadees although most of the ones at my bird bath and feeder are Carolina rather than Black-capped.

When is a black bear actually a blue bear? – Black bears are not always black!

Dynamic Wildlife Duos -  Originally posted just before valentine’s day…liked the pictures.

Experts reveal hidden dangers behind supplements – Over the counter supplements advertised to treat obesity and erectile dysfunction problems were labelled as fully herbal but often included dangerous pharmaceutical ingredients that were not listed on the label…..which are often dangerous and can cause serious side effects. One example: Sibutramine (licensed as Reductil until 2010 when it was withdrawn across Europe and the US due to increased risk of heart attacks and strokes) was found in slimming supplements. These supplements are the 21^st century equivalent of snake oil (or maybe they are worse than snake oil).

National Park Service History eLibary Additions for February – Another online source for documents about National Parks!

A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 miles in the last two months – Stories keep coming about the giant crack in the Larsen C ice shelf. This one is from 2/7 and has a lot of good graphics and explanation.

20+ National Park Portraits Celebrating the Rainbow – Colored Lands in the US -  Beautiful images from the National Parks

New, long-lasting flow battery could run for more than a decade with minimum upkeep – If only half the new battery technology stories turn out to be true….the energy storage needed daily life could change dramatically over the next decade.

How to avoid falling for lieds and fake news and How to spot misleading health news – Two stories from BBC Future. With the easy flow of ‘stuff’ around the internet, the skills for determining validity of stories are more important than ever before.

Don’t call it wheat: an environmentally friendly grain takes root – Perennial grains…still needing further development but the potential to create a more sustainable way to produce our bread!

3 Free eBooks – February 2017

Peter Rabbit --- Big Cats --- National Botanic Garden: quite diverse eBook picks for this month.

Potter, Beatrix. Peter Rabbit. Frederick Warne & Co. 1902. Available from Internet Archive here (click on the author link to get all the other Beatrix Potter books available from the Internet Archive). I am reading and enjoying the illustrations of all Potter’s books that have been digitized this month. Peter Rabbit is probably the most memorable story from my childhood. I can remember giggling at one phrase in particular: “…and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.”

Fallen, Anne-Catherine; Shimizu, Holly H.; Solit, Karen; Allen, William C. A Botanic Garden for the Nation: The United States Botanic Garden. Washington, DC: US Botanic Garden. 2007. Available from Hathi Trust here. I was please to find this book online (published only 10 year ago) about one of my favorite places in Washington DC. I’ve posted about it many times (here). We didn’t make the trek in December this year…but maybe we should in the next few weeks. The conservatories are a warm place to tour in the winter!

Turner, Alan; Anton, Mauricio (illustrator). The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. Available from Internet Archive here. Another more recent book – published only 20 years ago. There are more different kinds of cats with long canines in Earth’s past than I realized.

A Few Seeds

Most of the fluffy seeds of milkweed and dogbane are scattered by now but there were a few caught in the pod that I noticed last weekend. Based on the shape of the seeds – these are probably dogbane rather than milkweed.

With all the stiff breezes we’ve had recently, the parachutes of these seeds must be very  firmly attached to the pod; most of the seeds flew away last fall shortly after the pods split open.

I like the bright white of the fibers – the puffs made by the stuck ends of the fibers at one end and the seed on the other…the ones on the others side that have half their fibers free of the pod. The deep red color of the outside of the pods contracts nicely with the lighter color of the inside.

…savoring the little serendipity of a hike!

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!

A Jaunt to State College PA

Yesterday my husband I drove to State College and back to see my daughter and son-in-law…and switch cars. We’re replacing both of our cars (mine was already replaced with a Prius Prime…more on the replacement for my husband’s car in the next few days) and decided to give them the better of the two cars; the other will be traded in when we buy my husband’s new car. It was a 6-hour round trip; it rained most of the time.

We did a little looking around State College since it could become the place my daughter does a post doc – drove buy two houses that were ‘for sale’ that I’d seen on a real estate site and had lunch at Wegmans. Both houses looked nice from the outside and the Wegmans was very like the one I shop at every week – a little smaller, but still very familiar and not a place I want to be during peak grocery shopping hours!

Then we met up with my daughter and son-in-law at her hotel. While my husband and son-in-law did the car switch (set up of nav system with new addresses, etc.), my daughter and I walked to the Penn State campus following the route she would use to the building where she would be giving a talk and meeting with people for the early part of the week.

And then we were back in the car we would trade in and heading back to Maryland! The rain was lighter on our drive south but the clouds were low and sometimes reached the ground. I was glad the temperature stayed above freezing all day.

Skunk Cabbage in February

I lead a hike yesterday at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm – a skunk cabbage swamp stomp. I finally managed to photograph the spadix (round, ovoid, bearing true flowers) inside the spathe (flesh hood, wine or brown with vertical speckled brown or green).

After the first two pictures, one of the younger hikers held a small flashlight for me….it’s much easier to see the flowers on the spadix with the extra light.

I’ve created a slide show with the rest of the photos. There were a lot of skunk cabbage to see – multiple spadix in clumps, tightly coiled leaves with split purple or brown coverings, a few plants so close to the stream that the water carried the soil away from their roots, some sprouting withing the stream, others camouflaged in the grassy remains of last summer’s vegetation, and mud everywhere! Skunk cabbage like it wet.

When I was putting together slides to introduce the plant to hikers, I realized that I had pictures of blooming skunk cabbage from January,

March,

And April.

Now I can add February to my collection!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 11, 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.

High-Resolution Satellite Imagery at the World’s Fingertips – Interested in archaeology?…here’s an opportunity to contribute as a citizen scientist via the GlobalXplorer community.

The Secret to Living a Meaningful Life – A little self-analysis…can go a long way.

Five Endangered Species Recoveries You’ve Never Heard Of – I’d heard of the brown pelican (and seen some too).…but not the others.

How heat from the Sun can keep us all cool – Another technology that might help us in a warming world.

Pitcher Plant Enzymes Digest Gluten in Mouse Model – Pitcher plant secretion are approximately as acidic as human gastric juices and can snip bonds linking the amino acid proline to other amino acids…and prolines make up 15% of gluten!

19^th Century Experiments Explained How Trees Lift Water – fluids are not supposed to have tensile properties….but that is what the cohesion-tension theory – explaining how water moves up into the tree again gravity.

Inside the Far-Out Glass Lab – The article starts out with a gif of flexible glass bending like a piece of plastic and ends with a picture of an ultra thin glass spiral (looks a little like Slinky). Corning’s research center is full of innovations with glass.

What I learned after banning screens from my home for a month – Maybe this is something we all need to do periodical…get back into the mode of using technology rather than being so addicted to it that it takes control of every moment of our lives.

#ColorOurCollections - Free Coloring Pages from Museums and Libraries – Not just for children. Take a look at the #ColorOurCollections page to see the whole collection.

Hundreds of ancient earthworks built in Amazon – Evidence of ancient agroforestry in the Amazon…and geoglyphs.

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.

Conowingo – February 2017

We picked a cold sunny day to trek to Conowingo Fisherman’s Park last week. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center to bundle up: ski bibs and footwarmers inside hiking boots. When we got to the park we added a balaclava, hat, coat, and handwarmers inside gloves. The extra layers of warmth kept use reasonably comfortable. My nose got cold because I couldn’t pull the balaclava up over it without my glasses fogging up. The first think I noticed was that weren’t many birds about. There were icicles on the railing. The churning water creates just enough spray for them to form on the section closest to the dam.

I walked back toward the entrance to see the buds of the Paulownia that grows on the cliff side of the park. They are brown and velvety already. They are an invasive species in our area but this one does not seem to be propagating itself.

The gulls that were so plentiful last time were scarce…but the black vultures were around. They seem to like the view from the top of the dam.

There were very few eagles about (we’re spoiled because there are often so many of them). My husband got a few ‘in flight’ pictures. I decided to just watch the birds rather than trying to follow their flight with my camera.

As we were leaving there was an eagle in a tulip poplar tree on the cliff side. Its feathers were fluffed against the cold. He kept looking toward the river…and eventually flew off in that direction.

Gray Day at Mt. Pleasant

I responded to a request for volunteers so was at Mt. Pleasant last Friday. It was a cold gray day – not raining but looking like it could start at any time. The construction on the Gudelsky Environmental Education Center is proceeding. I’m going to try taking pictures from this angle every time I go to Mt. Pleasant. Hopefully it will be completed by late spring.

The witch hazel along the driveway to the farmhouse added a bit of color. The flowers are not as big as the witch hazels I photographed at Brookside recently – probably not a recent hybrid.

Near the picnic area, a forsythia was beginning to bloom. The bush is protected by its position under an evergreen.

Montjoy Barn is the same as usual. The red on the barn door is more appreciated in the winter – when any color other than brown stand out!

Peacock Feathers

I’ve tried to photography peacock feathers by getting close to them…but decided to use the zoom on the camera instead yesterday. I put the feathers in front of a window to use natural lighting. It was more satisfied with the result than my previous attempts although it is hard to capture the iridescent quality of the color.

These feathers are over 30 years old. My grandmother picked up feathers that her peacocks shed one year in the early 1980s and then gave them to her granddaughters at Christmas time. I am so glad I still have them!

Looking closely at the images – it is possible to see the dust that the feathers have accumulated. They are getting fragile and I try to not touch them these days…let along try to dust them.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 4, 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.

Face of 9,5000-year-old Man Revealed for First Time – A mummy from Jericho. The skull was covered in plaster…with eye sockets containing sea shells. Now just the skull inside, a probably face has been revealed via digital imagining, 3D printing and forensic reconstruction.

Site Diary: What we found inside the Morecambe Urn – A cremation urn…with fragments of bone…painstakingly sorted. At first they thought there was too much bone to be just one individual, but the analysis of the fragments they were all from the same person: young adult, relatively healthy.

Magical Photos of the World’s Oldest Lake Frozen Over – Eye candy….but educational too.

New Publication Reveals Birthplaces of Eastern Monarchs – The whole region east of the Rockies contributes to the Monarchs that make their way to Mexico. I’m glad that so many people are planting milkweed appropriate for their area of the country!

How solar may save Ukraine’s nuclear wasteland – What to do with the area around Chernobyl. There is a project to start installing solar panels. The electric power lines are already there so getting the electricity generated to the power grid.

Eye-opening Photos Capture the Terrifying Beauty of Melting Polar Ice Caps – It’s winter even though we haven’t had any substantial snows in Maryland yet…I’m enjoying photos of ice instead for their beauty but realize that this is an indicator of a warming planet. Some of these lakes are formed from very old ice.

TED Dialogues: An urgent response to a dangerously divisive time – I’ve signed up to be notified of the events. The first one will be on 2/15 at 1PM EST. The speaker for the first one will be Yuval Noah Harari. I enjoyed his class on Coursera – A Brief History of Humankind.

Seven heart-health habits could save billions in Medicare Costs – $14 billion per year in Medicare costs could be saved if all beneficiaries achieved ideal levels in 5-7 heart-healthy habits (the 7 are: cigarette smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels). Of course – it all starts before you get to Medicare age. How many of the 7 habits are you achieving?

What Peter Pan Teaches us about Memory and Consciousness – Barrie was an astute observer of how we learn to think.

Peacock colors inspire ‘greener’ way to dye clothes – 3-D colloidal crystals (polystyrene nanoparticles and polyacrylate for mechanical stability. It does not produce contaminants…but are the particles themselves problematic? The article didn’t say but microbeads and plastics have been in the news as problems in the oceans – already.

Brookside Conservatory – January 2017

There was work replanting some of the conservatory beds at Brookside Gardens when I was there last week. There were still enough plants in bloom to enjoy….and it was much warmer than outside! I liked the view from one of the bridges over the bubbling water…so dense with foliage that the water itself couldn’t be seen.

Pink and green always seems like a beautiful color combination.

A bloom had fallen into the water and looked very much like a butterfly.

The bird of paradise flower always reminds me of a spiked mohawk haircut!

And there are plant pompoms (or powder puffs) too.

The banana palm had bananas! The plant seems to frequently be in some stage of fruit development but I’ve never been around when the bananas were any color but green.

And then there were flowers for zoomed portraits.

The tree fern had many fiddleheads. I enjoyed photographing them and savored the memory of my trip to Hawaii a little over a year ago.