Snow Day

Last Sunday was a snow day for us. It had snowed all night and was still snowing when I got up. Our neighbor had a spotlight on and it illuminated the back of our house enough that my camera’s ‘hand held night scene’ setting was enough to capture the snow draped over pots and chairs on our deck. In the front of our house there was less light – but the oak near our driveway was visible in the darkness.

There was no sunrise color – the clouds were too thick – but the day brightened a little. Snow was accumulating on the bushes.

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I went out to measure the depth of the snow about 9 AM; it was about 5 inches and snow was still coming down.

The day was brightening a little more.

We shoveled the driveway. The snow was heavy enough to stick together but not too heavy to shovel easily. I took a before and after picture.

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I took a picture of the kokopelli metal sculptures dancing in a low pot on the deck from my office window

When we came inside my husband started a fire in the fireplace and I went out to skim the top inch of snow off a portion of our deck and into a big pan. I left it outside to stay frozen while I gathered the other ingredients for snow ice cream. I had purchased some French vanilla coconut creamer (sweetened) that substituted for the usual milk, sugar, and vanilla; I added the last of the peppermint candy chips I had bought before Christmas. The snow went into the biggest bowl I have and then the milk and peppermint candy mixture. My handheld mixer does a great job mixing everything fast enough that the snow doesn’t have time to melt. The color from the candy was my indicator that the ice cream was becoming thoroughly mixed. I had to add a bit more creamer because the snow was so icy; it looked crumbly instead of creamy.

Yummy! It was the best snow ice cream I’ve ever made! My husband and I had two servings each – ate the whole batch in one sitting.

Treks to the Landfill

We’ve made two treks to the county landfill/recyling this month – getting a jump on ‘spring cleaning’ while we’ve had some days at home. The county has a drop-off area for both recycling and trash – easy to drive up to the appropriate area and unload. Our focus has been on things that can’t go in the weekly trash or recycling curbside pickup because of size or what they are. Many of them are so irregularly shaped that the car can’t be loaded all that effectively.

Electronics have been part of both loads: computer monitors and keyboards…an old (not working) television (predated flat screens!). They have big bins for smaller items and pallets for the large ones.

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Then there was trash: broken lawn chairs, deteriorating badminton stuff, and broken miniblinds. The drop off area has a long row of Jersey walls with big containers behind them at a lower lever – easy to drop items into the bins.

We also noted that that they have a reusable bicycle drop off – we’ll bring my daughter’s 15-year-old bike on our next trek to the landfill!

We thought there might be a bin for donations of household goods but there wasn’t. We stopped by Goodwill on the way home and dropped of 6 boxes of stuff.

It’s good to be making progress on our ‘clean up and out’!

Winter Walk in the Neighborhood - 2

I noticed a lot of mud as I walked in our neighborhood. Some of it was on the sidewalks – not something I’d noticed in previous years. 2018 was a record rain year for us…and we’ve continued to get rain in the first part of 2019.

There is mud where grass used to grow under many of the trees.

Sometimes the trees would have made the area very shady before the leaves fell but most of the branches of trees along the street are trimmed high by the county so emergency vehicles can get down the street without being damaged. There is still a lot of bare soil under them.

I am already thinking about what alternatives I have for the area under our plum tree; since we have a challenge with deer eating tender plants, my first idea is to simply mulch out to the dripline of the tree.

A squirrel was rooting in a raised bed in one yard. He noticed me, but I was far enough away (using the zoom on my camera) that he continued his investigation.

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Winter Walk in the Neighborhood - 1

I took a walk in our neighborhood on the warmest day last week. It was a blustery day – felt more like March than January. I walked down to the storm water retention pond first. It still looks relatively barren but there is vegetation on all the slopes.

The cattails are beginning to repopulate the shallows. I wondered if there were enough for the red winged blackbirds to come back to the pond. Maybe more cattails will come up next spring from the roots already in the mud…if they aren’t drowned from all the rain we’ve gotten.

The wind was blowing oak leaves onto the water.

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Younger oak trees often keep their leaves well into winter. Or course – every breeze takes a few more leaves away but there were enough left on some of the trees in our neighborhood to still use the leaf shape to say definitively – it’s an oak. The tree in front of our house retained it leaves did years ago but is now old enough that its leaves drop in the fall.

As I looked back along our street, I realized that the general way to tell the maples from the oaks planted along the street by the builder is to look at the height. The taller ones are oaks.

There used to be hemlocks

We’ve lived in our current house for almost 25 years. The forest behind the house was one of the reasons we bought it in the first place; my office is the best room in the house because of the view from the window. Over the years the trees have grown – the maple in our yard acting as a foreground to the taller tulip poplars behind. There is a holly that is the only tree that keeps its green in the forest.

But it wasn’t like that in the beginning. The forest is growing on a slope…down to the Middle Patuxent River. You can see the sky through the trees because of that slope and because the hemlocks that used to grow in the forest are all gone. I remember seeing them in the early years; the trees seemed to have crows at the top frequently; I always thought there must have been crows’ nests in the hemlocks. But then West Nile Virus killed almost all the crows and wooly adelgid – I am assuming - killed the hemlocks.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but the hemlocks are gone, and they won’t be coming back. The crows, on the other hand, seem to be rebounding. I have seen more each year for the past several years. Today I am missing the hemlocks.

January Composting

Egg shells, apple cores, popcorn (the kernels that didn’t pop), a potato and collard stems…not a lot to go back to the pile these early weeks of the year. I picked a sunny day earlier this week to take what I had collected from the kitchen. I put on my boots since we’d had enough rain, I expected it still might be muddy in places. As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad, but I tried to stay on the grass as much as possible.

After dumping the fresh stuff, I used a pitchfork to turn the pile the best I could. There are a lot of pine needles and leaves…no need to add ‘browns’ right now. I can add all the food waste I generate until spring and just turn it under. In the spring, I’ll move the bin to a new place and put the parts that haven’t totally decomposed yet to it while distributing the compost around the yard.

Squirrels and our Bird Feeder

Back in December I hung some garlands of suet and seeds on our deck for the birds; the birds didn’t find them fast enough. We fed squirrels. Within a few days, all that was left of the suet and seeds were the twine garland, straw bows, and hulls.

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We’ve always had squirrels in our yard but now – in January - they seem fatter than I remember. They like to explore our deck from the railing – probably hoping for more suet and seeds. I’m not providing more.

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I have put out the bird feeder with seeds. It’s several years old and I only fill it in the winter. It is supposed to be squirrel resistant and it has proved to be effective in past seasons. I finally caught a squirrel in the act…and the feeder with its seeds won the round! It has springs that are pulled downward by the squirrel’s weight (not birds) and there are metal ‘flowers’ that cover the holes where the seeds are available. Note the top flange of the feeder is below cap on the top…that indicates that the metal mesh with roosts and flowers is pushed downward. No holes uncovered to the squirrel.

After the squirrel thoroughly explored all sides of the feeder, it jumped down and the springs returned to normal uncovering the holes to give birds access to the seeds. Good design!

YE Thinking: Favorite Images

Looking for a way to summarize my year in pictures for this last post of 2019, I selected 3 favorite photos from each month – not an easy task for me. Many of them are from at home…some from other places close to home…then Socorro NM and Carrolton Tx. It’s been a good year! Enjoy the slide show….celebrating 2018!

YE Thinking: Reducing Plastic

It’s impossible to stop using plastic completely – but I am reducing in every way that I can. Plastic on our land or in our water is not a good thing and it is a totally man-made problem that is becoming more apparent every year. Here are my strategies for reducing my plastic footprint at the end of 2018:

Buy products in containers that are not plastic (i.e. milk in cartons rather that plastic jugs, lemon juice in glass jar, peanut butter/preserves in glass jars).

Always have reusable shopping bags handy. This was probably the first strategy I implemented, and it’s been over 10 years ago now. It was very easy for the weekly grocery shopping. Doing it for the quick trips of one or two items - and to stores other than the grocery store – happened over time. I now carry a small bag in a stuff pocket attached to my purse.

Put produce in reusable produce bags. The challenge is that the labels spewed out by the scales don’t stick to the fabric…so I have a pad of paper to stick them too and the checker easily scans them when I am checking out.

Avoid single use plastic utensils. Go with plastic that can withstand many passes through the dishwasher or stainless flatware. My husband and I have travel sporks that we use for picnics on road trips.

Make your own body wash with slivers of soap with water in a plastic bottle (I have a bottle from purchased body wash that I like for it’s shape….it will last for several years replenished from time to time with bar soap slivers!)

Stop buying soft drinks and bottled water. I have been surprised at how easy this is to do for me. My husband is still working at it. It’s a healthy choice too. I carry my travel mug almost all the time – usually with just ice water. Another plus – it can reduce ‘grocery’ costs.

In the end – plastic is unavoidable. I try to choose plastics that are easier to recycle in our community.

• Our recycling does not take clamshells like salad comes in so I rarely buy salad in that form. I buy the bundled organic full leaves (or plant) and put it in one of my reusable bags….or in a container that I can recycle (like a plastic bag).

• I buy popcorn in a plastic bag rather than plastic container since I am more confident that the grocery store where I return clean plastic bags gets them recycled than the vendor that processes the multi-stream recycling picked up at our curb.

• If there is an option to buy something I use frequently in a larger container (both plastic), I buy the larger container. My rationale is that larger containers probably get through the recycling process and into the correct bin (i.e. plastic) to be recycled.

One strategy that has helped me reduce the amount of plastic we are using is to look at what we put in our trash or recycle bins. I am fast approaching the point that I’ve done what I can do until packaging changes and I have more choices – choices that don’t include plastic.

Travel Day

A week ago, I got up in Texas and got ready to fly home to Maryland. As I got my breakfast, I noticed that the sunrise was spectacular. I quickly grabbed my camera to take some pictures from the backyard. The colors were changing fast. There was a little breeze that caused me to notice the windchimes and I decided to take a silhouette of them with the colors of the sunrise in the background.

Looking back toward the house, there were some hazy clouds that reflected the color. What a great start to my last day in Texas!

My strategy for the trip was to pack small bags rather than large ones. I was flying on Southwest so there was no charge for checking two of them. I carried my back pack and tote on the plane. The tote was holding a red poncho that I wore on the plane (and is a good substitute for a blanket). The strategy worked well for this trip. It’s great to not have to lift heavy luggage.

It felt good to get home later that day. I always savor being ‘home again’ after being away for a week.

Foggy Morning

One morning recently, it was warmer (in the 40s and warming to the 50s) and the forest was full of fog.

The forest layers look different. The forest’s edge that is only a neighbor’s yard away disappears in the mists making it harder to determine distance. Rather than lemon light of just after sunrise, everything is shades of bluish gray.

The forest does not look as friendly in the fog. The birds were staying quiet even though it was their normal time to be active.

There is a coldness to the scene that belies the warmer temperature and is not comfortable – except from the warmth of my office – which is where I was standing to take both pictures through the window. It was a good morning to enjoy being indoors.

Zooming – November 2018

The last day of November. The month has been a busy one and I enjoyed selecting 13 images from when I enjoyed the zoom feature of my camera the most. The picks include fall leaves, a sunset, cranes grooming/snoozing/waking up, screwbean mesquite seeds, agave, a pruned prickly pear stem, barrel cactus thorns, cranes in the early morning, cranes in golden light with snow geese, northern mergansers in action, the moon, a snow goose feather, and some milkweed seeds.

And now we forge ahead into December and another month with a lot of the calendar.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2018

At the beginning of November, we had a short burst of color before the leaves fell off the trees. I celebrated a glorious fall day…wishing the season had not been so short this year.

HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) graduation was this month after accumulating enough volunteer hours since finishing the class last spring.

And then came the Festival of the Cranes with so many little celebrations:

Seeing sandhill cranes in flight – being close enough to their fly out to hear the first few high-power flaps of their wings.

Seeing two barn owls circle above the field where I was standing. It was a first for me….so beautiful and ghost-like.

Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. It was my first visit to the place and it’s hard to choose the high point maybe it was the screwbean mesquite the herd of pronghorn playing a running game with our caravan or seeing a shrike with a meal.

Hooded Mergansers. It was not the first time I had seen the birds (there were some on a local (Maryland) pond we visited during our 5th HoLLIE class). But they were not displaying like the birds we saw during the Festival of the Cranes.

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. What an amazing place….and great hosts to the Festival of the Cranes. I am already planning to go again! There are so many sights and sounds to celebrate here.

Home again. I celebrate returning every time I am away for longer than a couple days.

Bald Eagle seen from my office window. The morning we left to drive to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, a bald eagle flew over the forest behind our house while I was shutting down my laptop for the road trip. It continued over our house. Since I saw a pair of eagles soaring a nearby shopping center recently, I think perhaps their nest is somewhere in the forest along the Middle Patuxent River near us. What a way to start the Thanksgiving holiday!

Thanksgiving….celebrating the day…realizing how much I am thankful for.

Sunrise and Sunset

One day last week I had serendipity photo ops first thing in the morning and just as the day was ending. In the morning I looked out the front of the house and saw three deer munching on the day lily leaves around our oak. By the time I got my camera, there were only two left. I trimmed the leaves more than a month ago as they began to look ragged and was surprised that they grew back. They are probably some of the most tender green leaves around right now. The day was cloudy and wet so even though the sun had been ‘up’ for about an hour, it was still relatively dark.

Near sunset I noticed the color reflected on the clouds. They were moving rapidly so the shapes were changing. Our sycamore was already in silhouette with the vibrant color in the background.

A few minutes later the clouds still looked very orange. I zoomed to some distant tulip poplars that still had a few leaves.

Back to our sycamore in silhouette – the cloud has the shape of some creature with two big eyes and a toothless mouth…maybe a little like Jabba the Hutt.

Then the color was down in the trees. We don’t have a clear few of the sunset since there is a forest to our west. It was a nice end-view for the day.

In the Fall Yard – November 2018

We finally got some vivid leaf colors in the trees behind our house. The usual vibrant yellows of the tulip poplars were almost missing since those leaves turned brown quickly before they even left the big trees this year.  The pines were shedding some needles too.

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A rain came, and a lot of leaves fell from the trees within a day or two of achieving good color. I let the leaves dry for a day or two then went out to rake. The temperature was in the 50s and the sky was clear. The trees still had a few leaves…but most were on the ground.

My plan was to rake leaves that were on grass into areas where deep shade prevented grass from growing. The area between the compost bin and the red maple and then back to the forest is a great location for piles of leaves from the rest of the yard.

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I didn’t put any more leaves in the compost bin because they were just raked…not shredded. I discovered that a lot of the pine needles had fallen with the rain, so I got a trash can full of them and put them into the compost. How nice to have pine scented compost!

Through the window….a flicker

With the leaves falling off the trees, it’s easier to see and photograph birds. Last weekend a female Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted) flew into our maple and I managed to get my camera fast enough to take two pictures through my office window. My computer glasses do work so well through the camera viewfinder, so I relied on the camera to focus. The bird turned slightly to show off the red blaze on the back of the head.

I don’t see these birds as frequently as our resident cardinals although the flickers might be here all year. They are hard to spot in foliage and grasses. I’m always thrilled to see them around.

Red Maple

Our red maple has not been as spectacular this fall as it usually is. The rains and temperatures in September and October kept it green for a very long time and when it did start to turn red most of the leaves looked muddy rather than the rich red they usually display. The leaves began to fall before they were fully red.

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The leaves on the tree at the very end of October finally changed to red…and then there was a lot of rain on November 2 and most leaves fell.

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Now I’m hoping for some dry days to make the leaves easier to rake into the forest….

At least the maple put on a short show. The tulip poplars seem to be going from green to brown rather than putting on a dazzling yellow show as they do most years.

Happy Halloween!

My husband and I remembered to put our Halloween decorations out yesterday….and we’ll take them back in tomorrow. Both the witch and the pumpkin are about 20 years old!

Bald Eagle

I made a quick stop at the Kings Contrivance shopping center after a training session for field trips last week and spotted some soaring birds over the parking lot. The birds we most frequently see soaring over our neighborhoods are turkey or black vultures. These 2 birds caught my attention immediately because they had white heads and tails. I put my purchases on the roof of the car and tried to get a picture.

The picture isn’t great…but it was good enough to identify that the bird was a bald eagle. A woman had noticed my hurry and picture attempt and looked to see too. She came over and watched the birds for a few minutes with me….as did some others. It was a ‘bald eagle moment’ of community.

When I got home, my husband said he had been reading about a pair of eagles in our area so maybe these two have made their home in the forested corridor of the Middle Patuxent River.

I’m always thrilled to see bald eagles because they were so rare when we moved to the east coast a little over 30 years ago. There are a lot more of them now. Hurray for the birds and our successful removal of environmental toxicity that had made it hard for them to reproduce successfully.

Composting at Home – October 2018

After 3+ months of use my compost bin no longer looks pristine.

I have started piling small sticks around it to cut down on the rain drop splatter from the bare soil under the red maple. The maple roots are very dense and close to the surface…the shade very deep…nothing grows very well there and the soil is eroding down to the maple roots. It has been a good place to put the bin and I’ll leave some of the compost in place with sticks to hold it ---- and hopefully encourage more vegetation to grow. The brush pile is having that effect further down the slope.

We are just beginning to have leaves on the ground – oak and sycamore mostly.

I’ve been using the leaf blower in reverse with a bag attached to catch the lightly shredded leaves. The process works best when the leaves are dry (a challenge recently with all the rain we’ve been getting) and on hard services like the driveway, street gutters, and deck. I’ve discovered that a little shredding goes a long way speeding decomposition.

I typically add the veggie scraps from the kitchen on top then turn some leaves over it. Recently I’ve had more because fall veggies tend to have seeds and skins compost. I’ve also admitted to myself that I don’t eat nearly as many potatoes as I used to.

Even though we’ve been getting rain, the compost probably needs to be watered to ‘cook’ as quickly as possible. The shredded leaves can absorb a lot of moisture, so my plan is to add water with every bag of leaves. The hose barely reaches from the faucet to the compost’s bin location. I’ll have to think about where else I might put it that would be easier to reach and not too close to the house.