Macro in the Garden

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My garden plot has done reasonably well for its 1st season. I am letting all the wildflowers bloom and make seeds. The bulbs will hopefully be more robust next year too. The plot has been a joy to see at every stage – a reward for my efforts to plant and keep watered.

The added benefit is the variety of plants for macro photography (using Samsung Galaxy S10e phone). My goal is to make the rounds at least once a month since the plants change throughout the season. The highlights this month are the poppies making seeds and the sunflower just beginning the process. The red leaves are a rosebush next to the patch of wildflowers and bulbs.

Next to the wildflower garden, I have a vine of miniature pumpkins. There are three that are getting  bigger every day.

I noticed that the petals of the showy flowers have spikes at the tip that shortens as the petals unfurl. When I first started looking at the flower, I noticed some small insects were there. I wondered if they were pollinators; then a black carpenter bee came, and I switched to video mode. Clearly the carpenter bee was the pollinator!

In the front yard – there were three types of mushrooms growing where the large tree was cut down well before we saw our house; I know it was there because of the depression and general bumpiness caused by the decaying roots. The most numerous mushrooms this time were white blobs pushing up out of the grass.

In closer looks – they remind me of toasted marshmallows!

The second type was darker and still had rolled edges. They had previously been the most numerous kind I’d seen in the area…but not this time. I wondered if there is a fungi succession when it came to tree stumps/roots.

The third type was a single specimen….more delicate looking than the others. I see it elsewhere in the yard.

 The macro world….easier to observe with my phone in hand!

Plant of the Month: Pokeweed

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A little history…about Pokeweed becoming my ‘plant of the month.’

In Maryland, I battled pokeweed that emerged in my flowerbeds – pulling them and digging up their roots. Here in my Missouri yard – the plant’s exuberant growth has won me over; the large, bright green leaves look good against brick/wood or against other vegetation that is a different shape/texture/color. Its become an appreciated plant in my landscape.

The small blooms are not all that obvious…but are interest at close range. The plants will produce dark purple berries that songbirds will eat in the fall! We have mourning doves, robins, northern mockingbirds and cardinals that are among the birds species known to eat pokeweed berries.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – July 2023

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July has been hot…though not as hot as Texas. I’ve appreciated being home. The month started dry but then suddenly we got 2 inches of rain in 2 days after teasing with clouds and forecasts for rain that didn’t materialize. We have a good vantage point for the sunset over the neighborhood pool house from our patio.  

I saw a large red-eared slider on the move across the neighbor’s yard behind our house; it appeared to be moving in the general direction of the ponds. By the time I got out of the house with my phone for the picture, the turtle was at the tennis court…and quickly discovered the fence barrier. I noticed that the back of the turtle appeared wet; I wondered if it (she?) had been laying eggs – maybe in some damp, mulchy place. I assume the turtle managed to get back to the pond; I didn’t stick around in the heat of midafternoon.

About a week later I walked out into the eastern side of our yard to photograph the sunrise from two perspectives over neighbors’ houses.

More recently I took a morning walk around the ponds. We have more Purple Loosestrife that ever this year at the edge of the ponds….which is not a good thing since the state says it is “a noxious weed in Missouri and should be removed as quickly as possible.” Maybe it takes some finesse to remove it with propagating it? I hope eventually we’ll eradicate it and plant something native – like buttonbush (one of my favorites).

Note that the second picture (above) is near the willow tree…the one that had grown around a stake. There seem to be more plants around the base of the willow this year than I noticed last year.

Asian honeysuckle – another non-native invasive plant – is also growing in clumps around the pond. I wonder if there are children that pull the flowers to taste the nectar? I remember doing that as a child…and taught my daughter to do it too!

There are maple seedlings that are growing in the areas that don’t get mowed and a small clover hill that is full of blooms even with the occasional mowing.

I tried an artsy picture of the sun glint on the water silhouetting the shore vegetation. It looks like a picture that could have been taken at night!

Bullfrogs are some of the more recognizable sounds at the pond. It is harder to see them. This one was under one of the loosestrifes. I heard another one not far away while I was photographing this one.

As I headed back to our gate, I saw a robin on our fence…observing me!

July is a great month to be outdoors in the morning…but the afternoons have been stifling – good time to be indoors with air conditioning.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 22, 2023

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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.

The ground is deforming, and buildings aren’t ready – Underground climate change in urban areas where heat islands underground cause enough expansions and contractions to damage building foundations…particularly in older buildings.

How noise pollution impacts nature – A study out of Vail, Colorado, showed that increased trail use by hikers and mountain bikers disturbed elk so much the cows birthed fewer calves. Another out of Grand Teton National Park showed that backcountry skiers scared bighorn sheep during winter when food was scarce, with potentially lethal consequences.

Hospital understaffing and poor work conditions associated with physician and nurse burnout and intent to leave - The study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing found that physicians and nurses, even at hospitals known to be good places to work, experienced adverse outcomes during the pandemic and want hospital management to make significant improvements in their work environments and in patient safety. The solutions to high hospital clinician burnout and turnover, they say, are organizational improvements that provide safe workloads and better work-life balance NOT resilience training for clinicians to better cope with adverse working conditions.

The simple ways cities can adapt to heatwaves – Heat monitoring and planning is become more important for cities…the climate emergency in cities is a health emergency.

New biodegradable plastics are compostable in your backyard – New plastic made from blue-green cyanobacteria that isstronger and stiffer than previous plastics from the same raw ingredient. They can be recycled…but also degrade rapidly in the environment.

Giant Hand Axes Discovered in England Point to Prehistoric Humans’ ‘Strength and Skill’ – More than 300,000 years old perhaps from an interglacial period. Early Neanderthal people inhabited Britain then…and maybe other archaic human species too.

Germs, genes and soil: tales of pathogens past – DNA sequencers and powerful computational tools…applied to ancient microbes…probing their role in human history. This article describes how the work is done, ethical considerations…using examples of what has been accomplished so far. The field of archaeogenetics is just beginning.

Back from the Dead: New Hope for Resurrecting Extinct Plants – There is a global effort to digitize herbaria specimens which had helped identify holdings of extinct plants…sometimes finding seeds. And then the challenge is how to best attempt to grow old seeds.

Pain risk varies significantly across states – Pain due to arthritis varies geographically in the US – with the moderate to severe pain being 23% in West Virginia vs 7% in Minnesota.  There is also a difference between people that did not complete high school…and those who obtained at least a bachelor’s degree – with the delta being greatest in West Virginia, Arkansas, and Alabama. There is a need to focus on the macro-level policies (i.e. generally at the state level) while continuing current individual interventions.

The Acropolis Adopts Crowd Control Measures for the First Time – The post-pandemic travel surge is overwhelming at some places – including the Acropolis!

Indoor Flowers

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My office windows have a limited view to the outside even though there are 4 of them:

  • Irises and violets (long past their blooming) in a flower bed and lawn

  • Hosta and crape myrtle in a flowerbed, pine and lawn

  • Hostas and a bush in a flowerbed, chiminea fire pit, holly trees, bird feeders

  • Patio

The hostas are blooming but not anything else. I appreciate whatever is blooming around the yard and periodically bring them indoors to enjoy in vases that easily fit on a windowsill – out of the way and where I can see them when I am at my 2-monitor computer table. In July the indoor flowers are primarily roses and gladiola.

Periodically I get into the mood to do something with my cameras…and the indoor flowers are obvious subjects – particularly on rainy or ‘too hot’ days. Macro photography (Samsung Galaxy S10e) is easier indoors – no breeze to move things around.

High key photography is also easy enough since the flowers are already in a window that has sun shining in for a short time in the morning.

Most of the time I can adjust enough to eliminate the screen outside the window (I left one image with the screen showing a little in the slideshow below). I had taken the screen off last year but discovered that birds crashed into the window too frequently without it! I have an office chair well back from the window…using the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) to compose the image I want…probably the most ‘artsy’ type of photography I do. I like the gentle curves that combine to form the flowers…the softer focus.

Our Missouri Yard – July 2023

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There’ s always something to photograph when I walk around our yard. I photographed a mushroom that had appeared in the grass near one of the pavers along the route to our back gate for a walk around the neighborhood ponds.

The big players in my macro photography (done with my phone – a Samsung Galaxy S10e) around the yard this month have been the roses that came up from the roots of the bushes that died, the ornamental grass (also coming back from last year), ‘wildflowers’ I planted in a flowerbed near the house that I cleared of rocks and landscaping cloth, and the crape myrtle that came back from the roots (I have 4 and they all came back but only one is blooming so far).

After an early morning rain, I went out to photograph the water on the plants with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) so that I could use the zoom rather than needing to get close: roses, grass and leave/needless, hosta flowers, crape myrtle. The hostas are my favorite.

I like our new home – inside and out!

Lake Springfield Meadow – July 2023

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Earlier this month, my husband and I headed over to the Lake Springfield boathouse for some photography of the meadow.

Before we walked to the meadow, we looked around the boathouse itself. The American lotus is blooming in the shallow water near the boathouse,

The plantings of native flowers in the beds around the structure, and

A non-native, invasive rose is growing at the edge of the forest.

The Purple Martin houses are still full and there appeared to be a young one in the grass…still being fed by the adults but also beginning to fly about as well.

Summer flowers are beginning to bloom profusely in the meadow.

There are lots of insects in the meadow too; they present a little more challenge to photograph. This month I photographed bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. The dragonflies and butterflies were intentional; I waited until they were posed. Milkweed in bloom is impossible to photograph without bees; I am including the picture that had two well positioned bees – selected from many images where they weren’t. I couldn’t resist the bumble bee butt image…a zoomed picture of a flower that a bee just happened to be flying over!

As usual, the meadow is an active place and there is always something to photograph. In August, I’ll be looking for grasshoppers!

St. Louis Zoo

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After our visit to the Jewel Box, we spent the rest of the day at the St. Louis Zoo. We parked in the south parking lot and noticed the animal sculptures as we made our way to the bridge that leads to the zoo entrance.

The giant tortoises were out and the smallest one was moving about. I noticed one of the larger ones had a hole in its shell; was this tortoise shot at some point in its long life?

The Reptile House was one of our early stops beginning a big loop around the zoo (starting up hill first). The lizard peeking out of a tree in its habitat was one of my favorites.

At one of our first breaks, there were large catalpa trees with the long seed pods still green. It was good to see healthy catalpa trees again; my maternal grandparents had catalpas around their home and business in the 1960s --- seeing the trees triggered fond memories.

The Flight Cage is the oldest part of the zoo; it was built for the 1904 World’s Fair. There were quite a few birds in the large mesh-enclosed area.

One of my favorites was a wood duck. Was the eye injured or is that just the way a wood duck eye looks when it is closed/half open?

Leaving the flight cage – there are mosaics of natural areas.

Cranes were in habitats with other animals. I enjoyed getting different views of the one bird as it was feeding.

In the big apes area, my camera’s zoom managed to get a gorilla in the back of the habitat…looking serious and scratching his brow.

Flamingos and other water birds enjoy lakes with islands at the zoo…visible but able to get further away from noisy crowds. The pelicans are rescued birds (i.e. are birds that have a significant enough injury that they couldn’t survive in the wild).

I enjoyed the ways the zoo uses nature themes in their structures….and that they have solar panels too!

There is a carousel. It looked to be well-maintained but not busy when we were there (hence the pictures).

Of course – there is also ‘wildlife’ in the zoo that just finds the zoo a good place to be!

We enjoyed the people watching as much as the animals at the zoo. Some children obviously were locals familiar with the zoo and enthusiastically making their way to their favorite exhibits…couples with babies in strollers (with visions of the time their child would be old enough to make requests)…families clearly on vacation…older people – sometimes with grandchildren, sometimes as couples or small groups using the zoo as an interesting (and safe) place to walk.

It was a hot day and by about 3 PM we were ready for a cool down. We retreated to our hotel for a few hours before walking to a Lebanese restaurant for an early dinner. It was a day well spent.

St. Louis Jewel Box

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The Jewel Box is a 1930s vintage greenhouse in St. Louis’ Forest Park. There was a major renovation in 2002 so the building is in excellent condition. The plants are primarily around the edges of the interior leaving space for weddings and other events. Our visit was on a Monday morning – the only other people we saw were people outside working on the water lily pond and the flowerbeds around it.

From the outside, the Jewel Box has the glass walls stairstep up to a flat roof. The framing of the glass panels has a blue patina. There are trees and grassy areas on the sides of the building…the water lily pond in the front.

Inside there were glass panels that divided the entrance area from the larger open area.

The fiddleheads of tree ferns always get my attention. The interior space was appealing – full of light…lush plants around the edges.

Getting to the Jewel Box required a short walk. There is no parking area close so we parked on Macklind Dr. and followed the sidewalk past a naturalized pond,

A nearby magnolia blooming profusely,

And plantings, including a columbine, in a shady mulched area.

Then we came to the lily pond in front of the Jewel Box. It was an opportunity to photograph them in the morning sun.

We took a different route back to the car after seeing the Jewel Box: past the Colonial Daughter Fountain

Then over to the Korean War Memorial that includes a sundial. We puzzled over the flag on the far left…realized later in the day that it was the St. Louis flag!

The short visit was well worth it – for the architecture, water lilies, learning about a part of Forest Park!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 15, 2023

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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.

See the Rancid, Blooming Corpse Flowers Attracting Hundreds in California – Seeing pictures is good enough for me!

Global diet study challenges advice to limit high-fat dairy foods – Some dietary advice is more impactful that others. New studies show that dairy, particularly whole fat, may protect against high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome.

Dust From the Drying Great Salt Lake Is Wreaking Havoc on Utah’s Snow – Dust makes the snow less white…which means it warms more quickly and melts!

Early Medieval Ivory Pocket Ring Analyzed – The ring was found in the grave of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon woman near Sheffield, England…and it was made from the tusk of an African elephant!

Parts of a Munich synagogue demolished by Nazis are found in a river 85 years later – The site of the synagogue is a parking lot and department store now. About 150 tons of stone columns and a tablet bearing the Ten Commandments were found about 7-8 miles from the site in a river. The synagogue had been built in the late 1800s and had more than 1,500 seats. It was destroyed in 1938.

Cosmetic chemical concerns – Not an exhaustive list/explanation, but worth browsing…there are others that seem to be concerning too (such as sulfates) that manufacturers are saying their products are eliminating.

Astro-tourism – chasing eclipses, meteor showers and elusive dark skies from Earth – We did a trek to Nebraska for the 2017 eclipse…have enjoyed Staunton River State Park Chaos Star Parties. My husband has been to Greenbank and Cherry Springs State Park for similar amateur astronomer events. It would be great if there were more such events but there are fewer people interested (and able to afford the equipment) than birders. Hopefully some of the dark sky sites will enlarge their offerings beyond outreach events for individuals that would like places to set up their own equipment. On the plus side – there are solar eclipses come up!

Native Bees Yield Hardier Flowers Than Honey Bees, Research Finds – When pollinated by native bees, plants produce more diverse offspring….and diversity is increasingly important as our climate changes.

Frogs as pollinators – A previously undocumented interaction…and an example that there are still aspects of the natural world to be discovered.

Older adults who remain more active have a better quality of life, study finds – Not really a new idea…but a study that tried to quantify the impact.

Missouri Botanical Garden – June 2023 (2)

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There are aspects of the Missouri Botanical Garden that are not plants….but are part of the garden experience.

There are benches at handy intervals; it always seemed easy to find one in the shade! Maybe I will make a project of photographing more of the benches during some future visit.

The ceiling in the Sachs Museum is worth the few steps inside…check out whatever is being exhibited there too.

There is a statue of Henry Shaw, founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden near his mausoleum. He set out to create a major and lasting institution more than 150 years ago. He died in 1889 and the garden has continued to thrive in all the directions he initiated…has expanded in ways he could not have imagined. My first experience with the garden was via their Botanicus site where the Missouri Botanical Garden has been digitizing botanical books and making them available since 1995; I found the site in 2009 and have been browsing their books (mostly via the Internet Archive interface). Visiting the garden is something I have wanted to do for a long time.

The Japanese Rock Garden areas around the water feature have smooth curves created with a rake…and there are Japanese lanterns too. A Great Blue Heron flew to a large rock in the center of the water feature and began to preen; the Canada goose in the background is doing the same.

In the Chinese Garden there are mosaics made with small stones as well as the traditional lions at the entrance.

I liked the bench around a tree. It reminded me of the one at Longwood Gardens when my daughter was young; we used it as a resting place where she could easily get up to run into the mists when the big fountains came on (it was a warm day); and then it was gone as part of the fountain renovation. I savored that memory sitting on this bench half the country away from Longwood (near Philadelphia).

There are small sculptures of wildlife too: wood ducks in the forest, butterflies in the butterfly garden….

Geese and racoons as part of fountains.

A purple martin house looked almost full.

One of the green areas had a ‘Mowbot’ to keep it trimmed.

At the end – I took pictures of the floor in the visitor center…familiar leaf shapes: horse chestnut, tulip poplar, sweet gum.

Looking back, it was a good ‘first visit’ – but I already want to go again!

Missouri Botanical Garden – June 2023 (1)

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So much to see at the Missouri Botanical Garden…

The Climatron is full of lush tropical plantings. Intimate landscapes of ferns and bromeliads…

Flowers (including orchids) and seeds tucked into the greenery….

Cycads….

Flowers and stems different than we see in temperature parts of the world.

Out in the summer sunshine…cone flowers and sunflowers thrive.

Daylilies are blooming profusely.

There was a very odd plant in Linnean House. I took several views of it…and should have taken a picture of the tag too!

I found myself interested in objects where the light was not overly bright or overhead.

And there were some places/plants that became immediately special: a large puffball under a bald cypress that was growing before the garden was started, button bush (one of my favorite native plants), and a woodland area with a gurgling stream (artificial but made to look natural, I enjoyed a short rest on a bench).

I appreciated the Stumpery garden….learning a bit about the history too.

And a few more plants I enjoyed photographing….before we went into the restaurant for lunch (and air conditioning) before we headed home.

Chihuly (glass) in the Missouri Botanical Garden

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My daughter and I made big plans to see the Chihuly pieces in the Missouri Botanical Garden in late June. We made reservations a week in advance to see the gardens (and glass) at night on our first evening in St. Louis…and then planned a daytime walkabout on our last morning. We got to the gardens a little after 6 PM to have dinner in the garden restaurant (Sassafras) and the enjoyed the gardens until about 9:30 PM…from dust to dark. For our morning visit we arrived shortly after the gardens opened. I took pictures frequently…managed to photograph all the Chihuly works listed in the brochure plus 3 more. It was well worth the effort to see the glass several times…in varying light. Enjoy the images….and plan a visit to the gardens if you can! (Note: To see larger images click on any of the images in this post)

Vivid Lime Icicle Tower

Chromatic Neon

River and Cobalt Fiori

Black and Green Striped Herons with Green Grass (one of my favorites)

Red Bulbous Reeds

Ikebana

Macchia Forest

Ethereal Spring Persians (one of my favorites)

Vermilion and Canary Yellow Tower

Turquois Marlins and Floats

White Tower

Float boat and Niijima Floats

Red Reeds

Fiddlehead Ferns (one of my favorites)

Neodymium Reeds on Logs

Individual works (in the Sacs Museum South Gallery)

Summer Sun

Fiori boat and Fiori de Primavera

Cattails and Copper Birch Reeds

Burnished Amber, Citron, and Teal Chandeliers

Three that were not in the brochure:

Sun Gate (although I’m not sure what the official title is)

Cobalt Chandelier

Sunset Herons (one of my favorites)

I am already contemplating going again. The special Chihuly Nights go until late August…the exhibit itself continues until October 15.

Laumeier Sculpture Park

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We walked around Laumeier Sculpture Park on our way to the hotel in St. Louis, MO. The park is convenient from I-44 which is the interstate we take from Springfield to St. Louis. The goal of the place (engaging the community through art and nature) is appealing and it was a good time of year to be outdoors. The first sculpture we saw was the cat near the parking lot….full of color and texture…welcoming form. The cat was a good start to our visit!

It was a warm (maybe hot) afternoon, so we carried a bottle of water and did a circuit that went uphill first, then down and shady on the way back as recommended when we picked up our map. We didn’t see every sculpture…but enough to enjoy the place.

I like sculptures in gardens. A few of the sculptures (the ones in the children’s area) are intended to be climbed on. My favorite was probably the large, connected balls (titled “Ball? Ball! Wall? Wall!) that made their way through a forested area. My imagination made it into a strand of beads for a giant.

Toward the end, there were urns of succulents that caught my attention. They were much more attuned to the hot weather than we were; I was glad to have the blast of the air conditioner going as we headed to the hotel less than 30 minutes away.

More about our touring in St. Louis, MO in upcoming days.

Alliums

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I planted allium bulbs last fall. They sprouted and bloomed in the spring. I enjoyed several photographic sessions with them over the past few months. In May they were blooming, and I tried various levels of zooming and lighting. The buds unfurl until they are an orb of color.

In early June, I cut them because the grass was getting too long where I had planted them – and it needed to be mowed. I did some high key images of the wilting flowers and seed formation.

In July, I noticed that the seeds were visible in the open husks. I took some macro images before I took them out and distributed the seeds into some flower beds where it would be great to have them sprout next year!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 8, 2023

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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.

Air Pollution Causes 1 In 6 Human Deaths – Deaths from modern pollution risk factors, which are the unintended consequence of industrialization and urbanization, have risen by 7% since 2015 and by over 66% since 2000. Unfortunately, little real progress against pollution can be identified overall, particularly in the low-income and middle-income countries, where pollution is most severe. It is increasingly clear that pollution is a planetary threat, and that its drivers, its dispersion, and its effects on health transcend local boundaries and demand a global response.

Opioids no more effective than placebo for acute back and neck pain – The study was done in Australia but, hopefully, will lead to stepping away from opioids for back/neck pain. How many became addicted to opioids via doctors writing prescriptions trying to relieve their patient’s back pain?

Antimicrobial Resistance: The Silent Pandemic – The first accounts of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurred 2 years after Alexander Fleming warned about it in his 1945 Nobel speech. AMR is now responsible for nearly 700,000 deaths worldwide each year, and it is projected to kill 10 million per year by 2050.

Early Women Were Hunters, Not Just Gatherers – My favorite statement from the article: “Grandmas were the best hunters in the village.”

Overdose deaths involving street xylazine surged years earlier than reported – Drug death data is gathered and analyzed slowly…not so long ago, it appeared that illicit xylazine use was still largely concentrated in the mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast….but it is not showing up in street samples all across the US and surging in the South and West. US drug deaths hit a new record last year with roughly 110,000 fatal overdoses nationwide from fentanyl and increasingly complex street drug cocktails.

U.S. Wind and Solar Overtake Coal for the First Time - In the first five months of 2023, wind and solar produced 252 terawatt-hours, while coal produced 249 terawatt-hours, according to preliminary government figures. The decline in coal is happening faster than anyone anticipated.

Largest-ever atlas of normal breast cells brings unprecedented insights into mammary biology – 12 major cell types, 58 biological states…differences based on ethnicity, age, and the menopause status of healthy women.

Why our voices change with age – Lots of reasons the sounds we make can change. One habit suggested from the article that I am considering: “Singing or reading out loud daily can give the vocal cords sufficient exercise to slow their decline.”

Cedar Breaks Wildflower Festival Starts Friday – Hmmm…maybe I should look for wildflower festivals (along with birding) when I plan our vacations.

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure - Earth’s remaining ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are far more vulnerable to climate warming than models predict, and that the ice sheets may be destabilizing from inside. Recent studies have shown that:

eBotanical Prints – June 2023

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Twenty-one more books were added to the botanical print collection this month. I took a break from the Australian Orchid Review in June…found a lot of variety. The earliest book is from 1736….the most recent from 2020. Seven of the books are ‘nature prints’ (a process in which an object as a leaf or flower) is pressed into a plane surface to make either a direct printing surface or a matrix); the image made via nature print this month were from the mid to late 1800s. I found more recent volumes for the publication from the Arnold Arboretum; I’d added the bulk of the volumes to my list of botanical eBooks back in 2021.

My favorite image from the books this month is the nature print of Cucurbita Pepo from Carlo Perini’s Flora dell'Italia setentrionale e del Tirolo meridionale : rappresentata colla fisiotipia V3.

My favorite image from the books this month is the nature print of Cucurbita Pepo from Carlo Perini’s Flora dell'Italia setentrionale e del Tirolo meridionale : rappresentata colla fisiotipia V3.

The whole list of 2,654 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the June 2023 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the June 2023 eBotanical Prints!

Flowers from Nature * Everard, Anne * sample image * 1835

English wild flowers * Burgess, Joseph Tom * sample image * 1868

Backyard Foraging * Madigan, Carleen * sample image * 2009

Ectypa vegetabilium * Ludwig, Christian Gottlieb * sample image * 1760

Flora dell'Italia setentrionale e del Tirolo meridionale : rappresentata colla fisiotipia V1 * Perini, Carlo * sample image * 1854

Flora dell'Italia setentrionale e del Tirolo meridionale : rappresentata colla fisiotipia V2 * Perini, Carlo * sample image * 1854

Designing with wild flowers : a textbook of practical methods for teachers and students  * Smith, Nettie Sylvia * sample image * 1927

Flora dell'Italia setentrionale e del Tirolo meridionale : rappresentata colla fisiotipia V3 * Perini, Carlo * sample image * 1854

Plant analysis, distemper color, bookcover designing, carpet designing, oilcloth and linoleum designing, wallpaper designing, the American vignola, color harmony  * International Textbook Company * sample image * 1905

Arnoldia -  v.76:no.3 (2019) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2019

Arnoldia -  v.76:no.4 (2019) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2019

Arnoldia -  v.77:no.1 (2019) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2019

Arnoldia -  v.77:no.2 (2019) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2019

Arnoldia -  v.77:no.3 (2020) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2020

Arnoldia -  v.77:no.4 (2020) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2020

Arnoldia -  v.78:no.1 (2020) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2020

Arnoldia -  v.78:no.2 (2020) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2020

Vegetabilium omnium generum icones * H.W.S * sample image * 1736

Impressions of Seedlings V1 * Coulson, John * sample image * 1899

Impressions of Seedlings V2 * Coulson, John * sample image * 1899

Impressions of Seedlings V3 * Coulson, John * sample image * 1899

Carrollton Yard – June 2023

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June is the ‘getting hot’ month in Carrollton, Texas…leading into more frequent 100-degree-plus days in the following months. It is already obvious which yards in the neighborhood are getting watered. My parents have a sprinkler system that my sister keeps tuned to maximize the watering where it is needed most. In the backyard the Queen Anne’s Lace, cosmos, hibiscus, and day lilies are lush – flowers and lots of green. In the front yard there are dusty miller plants in bloom, the last of the daisies, and the red yuccas with blooms and lots of green seed pods. The red oak planted there is finally getting a lot of light and growing well since the ancient mulberry has been cut down.

There is still grass to mow and weed eating/edging – a continuing chore – even though the years of gardening have reduced the area maintained in that way. Pulling ‘trash trees’ that emerge in the flowerbeds requires more finesse by the person doing the work (distinguishing what needs to be pulled from the plants that should be in the flower beds) and is always on the ‘to do’ list for the yard!

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Wishing everyone an enjoyable 4th of July…Independence Day in the US…a day for fireworks, parades, and watermelon!

Josey Ranch Pocket Prairie – June 2023

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My original plan was to walk around the Pocket Prairie and take macro pictures with my phone. It was a good thing my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) since the morning was very breezy…too much for getting close shots with the phone. The optical zoom on the bridge camera was the only option.

The trash cans near the picnic table are Carrollton themed! Are they new this season? I don’t remember them from before.

The prairie area is full of May flowers setting seed and then the full summer flowers in bloom. I particularly enjoy the sunflowers (buds and flowers).

Across the pond from the Pocket Prairie – a Great Egret was looking for breakfast.

Maybe the morning I go in July will be less breezy and the macro plan will work….and there might be more insects too!

Zooming – June 2023

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So many photographic opportunities in June…close to home and in Texas. There were more biting insects around so staying on paths was all-the-more important; almost every image I took used the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS). Enjoy the slide show!

The pictures include:

  • A sunny day visit to the Springfield (Missouri) Botanical Gardens,

  • An afternoon and then (a week later) morning visit to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman, TX), and

  • A morning at Josey Ranch Pocket Prairie (in Carrollton, TX).