Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/23/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Receiving a grocery delivery. This was our 4th delivery and the best so far. The shopper was very experienced…finish accumulating the items on my list in 30 minutes with efficient interaction when an item on my list wasn’t in stock…but an alternative was. For example, the brand of almond milk I usually buy was not available so she asked if another brand would do….exactly what I would have bought if I were shopping. The groceries were delivered to the front porch while I looked on through the front window…the eggs placed right under the window so they would stay safe.

After the shopper drove away, we collected the non-perishables to put in the back of my car to sit a few days (let any coronavirus die) and took the refrigerator items in to put away. I bundled the plastic bags from the floor to take out to store in the car. We washed our hand thoroughly. And my husband wiped the handles on the refrigerator and all the doorknobs with disinfectant.

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It wasn’t a total success. There are still no disinfecting wipes to be found…and the type of barbeque sauce my husband likes is not available. Both of those were somewhat anticipated. I’d given up on Formula 409. It surprised me that there was no mozzarella cheese! Overall – we will eat well for another week or so when I will get another delivery…and I’ve already started a short list of items that includes what we didn’t get this week.

Savoring leftovers for lunch. There was a little stir-fried chicken, onions and bell peppers left from a previous meal. To make it enough for a meal I simply warmed it in a skillet then added an egg…..stirred until the egg was thoroughly cooked…then put it into a bowl and added some Fried onions on top for crunch. It was a quick lunch…very tasty too. One thing I’ve been pleased about as we’ve gone to grocery delivery is that we’ve never been short of food…and we are still just as good about letting none of it go to waste once we buy it!

Cutting Zentangle tiles. A pile of light weight cardboard from cat food boxes, canned soft drinks, and the backing to pads of paper had accumulated; it was time to cut them into tiles for Zentangles. My sister gave me an old paper cutter that is probably close to being an antique….with the green paint worn through on parts of the base board and the grid marked by hand because the ruler at the top no longer visible.

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The 3.5 x 3.5 squares are the most frequent size I cut, although sometimes I cut different sizes to use the cardboard more effectively. There is always material to make tiles….I’ll never run out!

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Celebrating an iris bud. The past few years our irises have not done well. My theory is that we had a chipmunk home in the flower bed that disturbed or destroyed the rhizomes and it’s taken a few years for them to recover enough to do more than sprout a few leaves. Hopefully, this bud will produce a flower (if the deer leave it alone).

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.


Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/22/2020 – First Birds

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Looking at our birdfeeder camera videos and clipping a picture of the first bird recorded at the birdfeeder for each day of the month (so far). Can you identify each one? The clips from the video are not always clear. It’s easier to make IDs from watching the video – seeing how the bird moves. I put the list underneath the gallery.

  1. Carolina Wren

  2. Chipping sparrow

  3. Dark-eyed junco

  4. Tufted Titmouse (with a chipping sparrow flying in)

  5. Red-bellied woodpecker (male)

  6. Chipping sparrow with mourning doves below

  7. House finch (male and female)

  8. Northern Cardinal (female) and house finch (male)

  9. Carolina wren

  10. Northern Cardinal (female)

  11. Carolina Wren

  12. Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  13. In the rain – Brown headed Cowbird (female) with Northern Cardinal pair below

  14. Red-bellied Woodpecker (male)

  15. Red-bellied Woodpecker (male) and Brown-headed Cowbird (female) with Northern Cardinal (male) below. The cowbird left first leaving the woodpecker to enjoy breakfast.

  16. Brown-headed Cowbirds (male and female)

  17. Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  18. House finch (male) and Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  19. Carolina Wren

  20. Carolina Wren

  21. House Finch (male)

  22. Carolina Wren with peanut

I noticed when I was listening to the first videos for each morning that there is often a phoebe in our yard greeting the day (they are insect eaters so don’t come to our deck).

The cowbirds are around a lot more this year, but they don’t seem to be deterring the other birds at the feeder. The woodpeckers and finches are aggressive enough to drive them away and the cardinals wait until they leave.

Refilling the birdfeeder and bath. I let the feeder be emptied by the birds. The little ones like the chickadees do a thorough job. The bigger birds like the woodpeckers are more interested in peanuts and sunflower seeds…very frustrated when the supply is low. The morning was so cold (in the low 40s) that I put my coat on for the chore.

Perfecting the grocery list. I have settled into a grocery delivery pattern: selecting a morning delivery time slot 3-4 days in advance then building up the list in the interim, marking my calendar for the 2-hour interaction with the shopper/delivery person. Thursday is the big day this week – and I got a morning time slot! There are 36 items on the list.

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Browsing Life Magazine from 1946. The March 25th edition included an article about Bikini Atoll… a topical paradise before the atomic bomb testing started just a short time after the pictures for the article were taken.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/20/2020 – Walk in the Forest

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

The unique activity for yesterday was a very pleasant walk in the forest behind our house all the way down to the river (a winding path of at least 1/3 mile down…and then back up the same way.

We entered the forest at the back of our yard on a path made by deer between a black walnut – just beginning to leaf out - and a large tuple poplar. There were many violets on both sides of the narrow path. I had tucked my pants into my socks to make a barrier to ticks.

The forest floor seemed to be covered with garlic mustard (invasive) with a few spring beauties where it wasn’t so dense. A large tree had fallen recently with dirt still clinging to the roots. The red maple in our yard keeps me from seeing the area from my office window.

There were several dogwoods just beginning to bloom.

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We joined a trail used by horses from a nearby stable…wider than the deer trail. Spice bush is the most prevalent understory tree.

Flowers were blooming, there were sounds of moving water, and a few bugs were around too. We heard two different woodpecker sounds.

There were several different kinds of ferns. I always like to photograph fiddleheads!

And then the small stream we had been following joined the river. It was quite different from the last time we had been there more than a decade ago. Two trees had fallen recently (one still had green leaves on it). The trunks spanned the river. The trees had made what had been a riverside path into a cliff. There were some alternative places down to the water level but not in the immediate vicinity. We took a few pictures of flowers and headed back up the hill.

Along the way, I noticed that there was a stand of hemlock that appeared to be healthy – no wooly adelgid. The hemlocks that we had been able to see from our house when we first moved to the area 25 years ago died years ago.

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I also stopped for every jack-in-the-pulpit I noticed on the hike uphill. There didn’t seem to be as many of them as there should be. Probably the overgrowth of invasives like garlic mustard makes it harder for them to propagate.

We got back to our yard and I took a picture of the samaras on our red maple…closer to being ripe.

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I saw what I thought was a spider web in the grass but when I took a closer look, I realized it was dandelion seeds! My husband probably mowed it yesterday….dispersing the seeds.

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I’m glad we took advantage of the great weather since rainy days are forecast….but we’ll take more hikes into the forest as the weather warms. I’ll use insect repellent next time since there were a few flying/biting insects even at the relatively pleasant 60 degrees. It’s great to have a forest to hike into from our own back yard!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/19/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Looking for sunrise. I am always up before sunrise, but I often get busy with other things in my office (which is on the west side of the house) and miss the sunrise. Yesterday was not a spectacular sunrise because it was clear….but I did like the bit of color and the silhouettes on the horizon.

Frost warning. We had a frost warning until 9 AM yesterday. Even with the heat keeping us warm enough, both my husband and I opted for a hot breakfast. I had oatmeal cooked with cinnamon and pecans…and then a bit of honey added for flavor and sweetness.

Being fast enough to photograph a pileated woodpecker and a phoebe. Birds are often very active in the morning. Yesterday I was fast enough to photograph 2 birds that are often elusive.

The pileated woodpecker flew in silently to the trunk of the black walnut – I just happened to see the bird as it flew in.  By the time I got the camera turned on, it was searching the forest floor…almost out of the range of my camera.

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I heard the eastern phoebe and went to the window to see if I could see it. Yes! It was in the sycamore – saying its name over and over.

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Sycamore buds bursting (outside). The buds are beginning to open on the sycamore outside (following the pattern observed more than a week ago on the branch I brought inside to observe more closely). The buds on the tree are at varying stages right now…and there are some that look very round. Maybe those are going to be flowers rather than leaves?

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/17/2020 - Gleanings

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Browsing through some issues of Vogue. The Internet Archive has some issues of Vogue online. I particularly enjoyed the one labeled Vol 138: Vogue which includes issues from October - December 1961 (a bound reference volume); you’ll have to create a free-sign on to check it out – browse through. I was in 2nd grade when these issues were originally published and the designs appealing; maybe we all have a subconscious affinity for clothes that were worn as we were growing up. It was a time when natural fiber fabrics were being replaced with synthetic fibers. I can remember learning to iron my cotton shorts and tops during the summertime when I was in the later grades of elementary school!

Noticing filaments algae in the sycamore branch vase. How did it get here? Were there spores on the branch when I brought it in? The picture on the left below is looking down into the vase, the branch being the diagonal shape in the lower left corner. I pulled some algae out and put it on the top of my iPad (using the iPad as a light table) and took a picture through the jeweler’s loupe (picture on the right)…not enough magnification to see any internal detail, unfortunately.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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.

These Colored Micrographs Show the Incredible Intricacies of Plants – A different botanical perspective.

Can fashion ever be sustainable? - BBC Future – This article fit right in with the Fashion as Design Coursera course I am working my way through right now. I already buy more than half my wardrobe from thrift stores and don’t buy very often. My closet is still too full; one indication is recently finding a pair of jeans I had forgotten about! This article has prompted me to think about how often I wash my clothes. Maybe I don’t need to launder some of them as frequently.

Why This Rare, Huge Ozone Hole Over the Arctic Is Troubling Scientists | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – It probably will close soon – but it’s an interesting phenomenon that probably would have gotten more press if coronavirus wasn’t overwhelming all other news.

Blood test detects over 50 types of cancer, some before symptoms appear -- ScienceDaily – This type of test has been a goal for years. Are we getting closer to reality?

Covid-19: The history of pandemics - BBC Future – The impact of coronavirus on our day to day lives is a unique experience for most of the world’s population. This article is a short history of  other pandemics: Justinian plague (6th century…killed as many as 50 million which was half the global population), the Black Death (14th century…killed up to 200 million), smallpox killed as many as 300 million people in the 20th century alone even though there was an effective vaccine available since 1796, 1918 influenza (50-100 million died), and HIV (killed 32 million and infected 75 million with more added every day). Since 1980, the number of outbreaks of new infectious diseases per year has tripled.

19 Incredible Winning Photos from Nature Photography Contest – Lots of interesting nature photos.

Wearable device lets patients with type 2 diabetes safely use affordable insulin option -- ScienceDaily – Maybe technology can deliver less expensive drugs in news ways….making the drugs more effective.

Bioprospecting for Industrial Enzymes and Drug Compounds in an Ancient Submarine Forest: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research - An unusually large, biodiverse, and temporally stable wood-associated marine habitat off the coast of Alabama. Within 100-200 prepared culture plates, the team identified approximately 100 strains of bacteria, many of which are novel and 12 of which are already undergoing DNA sequencing for further study of their identity and their biosynthetic potential to make new drugs.

Photographer Immortalizes the Ice Waves of Picturesque Lake in Colorado – It must have been cold work capturing these images!

6 Creative Ways Wildlife Find Shelter • The National Wildlife Federation - A fun article…with some great photographs too.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/15/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Photographing ‘still lifes’ around the house. I decided to look for some photo opportunities around the house…and picked my 4 favorites to share here. The first one is the collection of windfall that I photographed a few days ago. The samaras are wilting and the pine needles are turning yellow. I liked them on the small blue glass plate.

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The second is a part of a macramé wall hanging my sister made as a gift for me at least 35 years ago. She incorporated a shell slice that I had bought and given to her as a stocking stuffer at Christmas.

The third is a portion of my earring drawer. They are organized with a small box for each state. Maryland, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are the ones with lots of earrings in them.   

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The fourth is a scarf drawer. I need to look for more opportunities to wear scarves I’ve collected over the years…some of them might work as face masks.

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Catching up on Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safari videos:

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/14/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Hearing the Carolina Wren in the early morning. It’s generally too dark for pictures when I first hear the Carolina Wren. It was singing again around 9 AM and I managed to follow the sound and get a picture.

Catching up on a Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Noting that it’s 3 days past the COVID-19 model’s projected peak for resource use in Maryland! The peak for ‘deaths per day’ is still 4 days away. So far the downward trend has been bumpy….hopefully it will look more definitive over the next few days. I also read a thought provoking article “This is what it will take to get us back outside” from MIT Technology Review.

Cooking sweet potato custard. I baked a sweet potato for dinner recently and had half of it leftover so I made a small custard with it….using the same recipe as for pumpkin custard. I used 2 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, and 1/4 teaspoon cloves. After that was thoroughly mixed, I added the milk to make it the right consistency. I decided to add chopped pecans once I got it into the baking dish for ‘crust on top.’ Then baking: 425 degrees for 15 minutes and 350 degrees until it was done. My husband and I each ate half as an afternoon snack. It was a big success using a leftover!

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Getting a 3rd grocery delivery. I scheduled the deliver for 3-4 in the afternoon so the shopping was done between 2 and 3…I made sure I was at my laptop so I could participate in the decisions when the item on my list was not in-stock. I am trying to go for a bit longer than a week between deliveries, so we had a porch full of stuff. We put the non-perishables in the back of my car for a few days and the refrigerator items were put away…followed by thorough hand washing and wipe down of surfaces. The unloaded plastic bags are bundled up in the back of my car to return for recycling next time I go to the grocery store – even though I have no idea when that will be.

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Participating in a Zoom session with other volunteers. A little virtual socializing.

Getting a request to present in a Facebook Live session in May. When they asked if I was available on a date, I realized that my calendar was completely empty! I didn’t have to look. It’s good to have a milestone like this; it isn’t a ‘back to normal’ because we are still maintaining social distance….but coming out a little from the ‘stay at  home as much as possible.’

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/13/2020 – 30 years ago

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Taking portraits of a Common Grackle. The grackles are little too big for our feeder but one flew to the sycamore and sat around for long enough to be photographed….picking up the nuances of color in the feathers. They are not an ordinary black bird! And the yellow eyes give an additional zip to their appearance.

Cooking barbeque chicken slowly. I decided to cook chicken breasts loaded up with barbeque sauce and a little extra olive oil…for 6 hours. I used two forks to pull apart the meat about 30 minutes before we ate to let the sauce get to every bite. Very yummy…and we have plenty leftover for another meal too. 

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

I started posting about what was happening to me 30 years ago beginning last November. And I’m continuing the monthly post now, looking back to April 1990….

My baby was old enough to be crawling, enjoying looking out the window at birds and her dad washing the car, intrigued watching herself be dressed in front of a mirror, sometimes cranky as her teeth appeared, and playing pat-a-cake. Her increased mobility gave her more opportunity to explore on her own – biting the play pen to see if it tasted good (or helped her gums feel better), checking out the cat’s favorite box (the cat looking on placidly), and striking a pose to rest or just look about.

We had company from out of town and visited some sights around Maryland and DC with her for the first time. Of course, she was too young to remember any of them: Mount Vernon, Catoctin, Arlington Cemetery, Jefferson Memorial, National Zoo, Brookside Gardens and the Aquarium in Baltimore.

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The Aquarium was her first time in a backpack (since they don’t allow strollers); it was an experience for me too.

I was getting ready go back to work part time in May – having a few interviews for the assignment I would have until I started back full time in the fall. While I was preparing myself, I was doing things to make the change for my daughter easy too. We transitioned from cloth to disposable diapers, dropping the diaper service. She had her first days in family day care during the last week of the month…and seemed to enjoy the interaction with the other young children. We were very fortunate to find a wonderful the provider right away; my daughter was with the same family day care until she started Montessori pre-school.

I was off from work from mid-August 1989 to early May 1990….the longest time period I was not working in my career. It was a time of huge transition and I realized at the time that I was extremely fortunate to not have to rush back to work juggling the changes at home with a career immediately after my daughter was born. The company I worked for was ahead of the times in terms of medical leave and then unpaid leave with a job to come back to.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/12/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Aargh! Brown-headed cowbirds. This is the first year I’ve noticed cowbirds coming regularly to our feeder. There is a pair that seems to be hanging around and I’m concerned that we’ll have baby cowbirds demanding food from the robins and sparrows and cardinals and maybe even the finches.

Making a new plan – then changing it. I had big plans for my front flower beds yesterday afternoon because it was so warm – mixing soil with compost and planting some seeds, placing the glass bird bath on its stand and filling it with water. Then I looked more carefully at the 10-day forecast and remembered that there had been ice in the birdbath cantilevered from our deck for the past 2 mornings. Planting seeds needs to wait until after danger cold temperatures…and I wasn’t keen on the glass bird bath having frozen water in it either. So - I picked up sticks that had fallen from several trees. The oak and sycamore always have small twigs around them after gusty days. But this spring I noticed our cherry does too. There are a couple of larger branches that aren’t getting leaves this year. I told my husband that he’d have to help me when I cut them – although I want to wait a little while to make sure they aren’t going to leaf out.

Photographing windfall. While I was making multiple trips to the brush pile with loads of twigs, I noted small bits of trees that had blown to the ground: a twig from a pine with very green needles still attached, groups of samaras blown from the red maple before they could fully ripen, and some seed pods formed last fall on the tulip poplar. I gathered up my treasures before going inside. Just after I put them on the kitchen table, I noticed that one of them had a hitchhiker.

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A tiny spider crawled around. I quickly tried to get a picture, but it was moving too fast and was very small. I decided to use the jeweler’s loupe to contain it…and get the picture with my cell phone The jewelers loupe is 22x magnification…it was a very small spider!

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I took a close look at the junction between the pine needles and the twig with the clip-on macro lens on my cell phone. The twig has wrinkles at the junction!

The samaras from the red maple have been a topic previously. They are drying out and losing their color…but still are quite beautiful with the green and muted pink.

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The pods from the tulip poplar are thoroughly dry. One still contained some seeds. I pulled a seed out to photograph. I’m always in awe that such a tiny seed grows to be such a big tree!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.  

I am opting to continue this series of blog post to emphasis how different this time is. This is the longest time I’ve stayed home that I can remember. While I am here, I am choosing things I enjoy doing and documenting some of them in this series….and following recommendations to keep myself and others healthy. Overall – the emotional roller coaster from the early days has become more subdued. Every day I become more confident that the way I am living now is sustainable for as long as it takes. My wish for everyone is to

Stay well and help others to be well too.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/11/2020 – Found Mirror

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Noticing the big buds on the sycamore. The buds outside on the tree are finally getting big Soon they will have small leaves…and those leaves will continue to grow all summer until some get to be as big as dinner plates.

Witnessing quite a bit of bird drama: Our backyard was an active place yesterday.

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Surprise! We have juncos again! There are at least 2 of them around still. In years past, they were gone by now. Maybe the very windy weather has caused them to not make it to their summer nesting areas so they came back to refuel.

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A red-bellied woodpecker drives away cowbirds from the bird feeder. The cowbirds generally seem aggressive, but the red-bellied woodpecker made short work of about 6 cowbirds on the deck around the feeder. It flew in the cowbirds scattered

A piliated woodpecker inspects our forest. We see a few every year but they don’t seem to stick around our area of the forest. I saw it fly into the tulip poplar at the edge of the forest. It was hidden by leaves at first then came out and was preening. I looked more rounded than usual with its feathers fluffed out.

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A red-bellied woodpecker found edibles in the sycamore. Usually they come to the feeder and ignore the nearby trees. Yesterday there was an exception. There was pecking going on!

Filling the bird bath. The wind and low humidity of the day before had caused it to dry out. I had a little surprise when I went out with the pitcher of water in the morning just after breakfast – there was a thin layer of ice in the bowl! It popped out easily, falling to the ground below the deck - and I filled the bird bath with the water from the pitcher – hurrying back inside to get warm. Yesterday was a low humidity day as well – but not quite as windy.

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Enjoying spaghetti sauce tomato soup. I wasn’t hungry enough for pasta so I simply added some celery to the spice tomato meat sauce….added fried onions on top. It was a great light meal.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

In the early day of our ‘stay at home as much as possible,’ I cleaned out some boxes that had been in our basement since we moved to the house 25 years ago. One was a box of framed prints and other larger flat things that I’d boxed up after my mother-in-law died 4 years before that. I didn’t remember the mirror at all. It had been protected inside the frame of a larger picture, held in place by padding. There was a bit of tarnish along one side. Perhaps she bought it a few months before she died, and I hadn’t noticed it – I simply put it in the box with other things that it could be packed with. Once found - I hung it in the entry hall of our house.

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Now I notice it every time I go downstairs – which I do many times a day on the way from the upstairs bedroom/my office and the kitchen/doors to outside. It’s probably not something I would have purchased but I like it more as the days go by. It’s part of our family history simply because she chose to buy it. And so – the mirror on the wall, hung by another generation as a reminder of the past and reflecting the present. Perhaps it becomes an heirloom in our future.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/9/2020– Macro Luna

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Baking a carrot cake. There is plenty of time to cook these days – a special dessert is always welcome. I opted for a variation of a recipe I found online…with some modifications:

  • Whole wheat flour rather than white

  • Heaping teaspoon of cinnamon

  • ½ cup less sugar since I was using applesauce and sweetened coconut

  • No pineapple and since I didn’t have the juice I used a tablespoon on lemon juice and then added water to make 1/2 cup liquid

  • No nuts

  • No frosting

  • Made cupcakes rather than a larger cake (We enjoyed cupcakes right out of the oven with butter, later with orange marmalade or ginger preserves…or reheated with butter). I had enough batter left to make a small sheet cake we will probably freeze for later.

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Noticing that the Dark Eyed Juncos are gone. I looked back at our birdfeeder camera and the last day they were recorded at the feeder was 4/6. Last year they left around the same time. In 2018 they were still around on 4/7 but were gone by the 9th.The birds are only in our area for the winter. They may go north for the rest of the year…or just a little west to the higher elevations of the Appalachians.

Blooming azaleas.  Several buds have opened since yesterday. I took pictures between the rain showers.

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Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now for the second installment of macro photography with our mail-order bugs. Today I am featuring the Luna Moth. It’s the one pictured in the upper right of this picture – our order from The Butterfly Co.

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I saw one at a Missouri rest stop last summer; they can be found in the US east of the Great Plains. So - Luna moths are native to Maryland – like the Cecropia Moth. It’s smaller and not as brightly colored. The antennae of the male Luna Moth are tan colored rather than deep brown of the Cecropia’s. But the antennae are arranged similarly in pairs along the rib.

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The wings have eye spots that are very different than the Cecropia. The Luna’s have a clear membrane in the center! The bit of color seen is the color of the Styrofoam that The Butterfly Co. used to pen the specimens. Also notice that the ‘scales’ on the Luna wing look more hair-like.

The wings are a pale green outlined in brown and with a few brown marks.  The shape of the wing looks like an exaggerated swallowtail.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/8/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Hearing the phoebe first thing in the morning. I am hearing a phoebe outside my office window every morning as I begin my day. Maybe it’s in the sycamore. Maybe its nest is nearby. I know from the time that the sun has just come up this morning but the clouds are hiding it; it’s too dark too look for the bird and try to get a picture.

Cleaning off the covered deck furniture. With the temperature forecast to get into the 70s in the afternoon, I cleaned off the table and chairs on the covered deck in the morning so I could spend time there in the afternoon. Everything was very dusty since it hadn’t been used over the winter. The furniture is over 20 years old and had been on the covered deck since we got it. It is undercover but ‘outdoors’ and I noticed there are some bubbles in the paint on the metal parts. It probably needs to be sanded down, primed, and repainted…which I am not enthusiastic about attempting.

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Walking the neighborhood. The forecast here is for cooler/wetter/windier after today so I wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine…look around the neighborhood. Things change fast in the spring. Our cherry tree lost most of its petals overnight when thunderstorms rolled through. Most of the petals were on the ground. At another house the driveway was polka dotted with petals.

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The azalea still just has buds (and the deer have browsed the bush so there are not very many buds left).

A neighbor has a deciduous magnolia in bloom and it held its flowers in the storm.

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There is another tree blooming nearby. A fruit tree?

I recognized the redbud. ‘Cauliflory’ is a recent vocabulary word I learned from a tree tutorial; it means that the flowers are on branches and trunk…not where the leaf buds are…and that is how redbuds bloom!

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There were several kinds of maples in various stages of producing seeds.

When I got to the pond, I noticed several flowers nearby (dandelions being everywhere but not always so thick as near the pond).

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And then I looked more closely at the water retention pond itself. There were turtles! There were two large ones and one small. They were all Eastern Painted Turtles. The two big ones slipped into the water and then came back. The smaller one didn’t move except for the head and I noticed the scutes looked like they were peeling. Maybe they do that more when the turtle is growing up?

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And there were robins just about everywhere.

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Enjoying some outdoors-with-the-laptop-time. I tried standing at the table on the deck…that lasted for about 10 minutes…then I spent about an hour in one of the chairs. It was a great way to savor the spring day…listening to the birds (they came to the nearby bird feeder while I was there) and windchimes and breeze through the forest.

Catching up with the Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safaris:

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.







Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/7/2020 – Macro Cecropia

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Taking pity on the red-bellied woodpecker’s contortions…..refilling the bird feeder. I noticed the woodpecker late in the day on Monday…waited for it to dry out a little yesterday morning before I refilled the feeder. The pictures are clips from our birdfeeder cam videos.

Putting away groceries. The non-perishable groceries had been sitting in the back of my car since Saturday evening. We had put them there after they were delivered….to give any coronavirus time to dry up and die before we put them away.

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Washing the plastic table covering – making a Zentangle mosaic. I’ve had the covering for over 20 years and have generally just wiped it down thoroughly. It was time it seemed grubbier than usual, so I put it in the washer with a few towels. I hung it over some deck chairs to let it dry thoroughly afterward. Then I made a mosaic of Zentangle tiles under it when I put it back on the table. Now we have new art to look at while we’re eating…during the pauses in conversation.

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Creating some face mask variations. My husband discovered that his favorite pizza place does not deliver to our area….so he will pick it up as he has done in the past. He’ll wear a face mask as recommended by the CDC. I got some hair ties (covered rubber bands) in our last grocery delivery and I have coffee filters on hand. He had some old handkerchiefs to make his. If I must go out, I’ll make mine from a bandana or washable silk scarf. We are not going out very often so it will be easy enough to launder the cloth part of the mask after each use.

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Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Noticing a Northern Flicker in the yard – next to a robin. I saw the robin first through my office window then noticed the other bird when it moved. I had on my computer glasses, so my distance vision was not great. Then I used the zoom on my camera to id the bird…and take the picture in the next second.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now for the first installment of macro photography with our mail-order bugs. Today I am featuring the Cecropia Moth. It’s the one pictured in the lower part of this picture – our order from The Butterfly Co.

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I used my smartphone with a clip-on macro lens for this session. The Cecropia is the largest moth in Maryland. This one is a male based on the antennae. They are somewhat feather-like in that they have a central rib…but the stems off the rib are different. The Cecropia stems seems to be in pairs and there might be tiny fibers connecting each pair. I’ll have to get more magnification with a loupe next time (and be very careful not to break the antennae off).  

A few years ago, we had the caterpillars at the Wings of Fancy exhibit at Brookside Gardens, so I am more familiar with the caterpillar than the adult moth. I didn’t unpin the specimen for this round of photographs but I know that it doesn’t have mouth parts….all the calories for the life of these moths are eaten when they are caterpillars. The adult form is only mating and laying eggs!

The wings have scales – sometimes looking like scales on butterfly wings…other times looking fur or hair-like. Another opportunity for my next round (using the loupe rather than the clip-on lens).

The downside of the loupe is that it works best sitting on the specimen…and inevitably some of the scales will come off. I am giving my husband the opportunity to photograph the bugs before I do anything that might damage them. Tomorrow’s post will be about the Luna Moth.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/6/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Perusing the updated IHME model. It was updated on April 5th (prior release was April 1st). In the new model, Maryland peaks earlier on April 18th rather than April 29th…and the peak deaths are higher too (138 rather than 53). The number of ventilators needed has increased to 1,040 from 659. There have been cases in nursing homes and a psychiatric hospital reported recently – even with the increased precautions that had been taken at those facilities….a vulnerable population that are at higher risk…leading to a cluster of deaths. As I looked at the results for Maryland and other states, I noticed that the error bars on the projections are quite high….still a lot of uncertainty out there. The model predicts New York’s peak in will be on 4/8th.

Creating a botanical print inspired Zentangle® tile. I am working my way through the 11 volumes of Flora fluminensis available on Internet Archive….found inspiration for a Zentangle today in vol 7. After I made the 4 botanical-like shapes, I couldn’t resist added auras to fill in all the blank space! The tile itself is from a yellow folder that I cut into 3.5-inch squares. The Ultra Fine Point Sharpie was a light green.

Replacing a screen on the screened deck. We have a few screens with holes and one that seems to attract Carolina Wrens to enter…and then have trouble finding a way out. My husband put new screening material in the frame this morning and reinstalled it yesterday. There are at least 3 others that need to be replaced and he thinks he may only have enough material on hand to do one more. He’s planning to use all the material he has over the next few days (one screen a day). One of our strategies is to do projects over multiple days and enjoy the tasks multiple times.

Noticing the sycamore branch beginning to wilt. The water is probably not getting up the stems as efficiently as would be the case if the branch was still attached to the tree. I took a picture of a group of leaves near the center of the branch…miniature sycamore leaves. The branch will probably go into the brush pile tomorrow.

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Finishing the second module of the Fashion as Design Coursera course…Heroes. I should have probably done the module over 2 days…but I got caught up in the topic. I still have 5 modules of the class to go.

Clearing off the accumulation on the kitchen table – cleaning it thoroughly. Magazines and mail had accumulated on our breakfast table. The magazines are now positioned between our chairs in the den and I have a pad of mall post-it notes to indicate that I’ve read a magazine…that it can be recycled when my husband gets around to reading it. I wiped down the plastic covering but it didn’t come entirely clean. It’s almost 20 years old!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

--

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.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/5/2020 – Our Yard

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Wearing Sherman TX earrings. I hadn’t worn them recently. I bought them in a boutique on the square after lunch at Fulbelli’s. Savoring the memory!

Seeing a Carolina Wren with nest material. The bird (probably a male) appeared to be looking around to see if a female was noticing his find. I didn’t see exactly where he went but it was in the general direction of our gas grill. We had a Carolina wren nest built in the grill a few years ago. I hope it isn’t happening again!

Loosening sense of the day of the week. It’s harder to remember which day of the week it is because the days are so much the same. I try to include some variety every day, but the activities are not pinned to a day of the week (except for laundry which, for some unknown reason, we still do on Saturdays). If the pandemic was not raging, I’d be volunteering 3-5 days a week with Howard County Conservancy’s outdoor field trips for school groups, guiding Robinson Nature Center visitors at the salt water Touch Tank, and (by mid-Month) morning shifts at the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy (butterfly) exhibit. None of those organizations are open now. The calendar for April is a big blank.

Mowing the grass…doing some yard work. It’s the first mowing of the year…not really grass, mostly weeds. My husband did the mowing after I picked up twigs and small branches under trees to make the mowing easier. I also started a new compost pile with kitchen scraps and paper shreds.

Photographing the best of our yard. The trees are pretty this time of year. The red maple samaras are ripening. Soon the squirrels and birds will enjoy them, and they’ll helicopter off the tree. From afar the tree looks golden brown…looking more closely the colors are more appealing.

The tulip poplar is full of new spring-green leaves. Soon the buds will open. Right now, the buds are surrounded by small leaves. The trees themselves are far from the ‘wall of green’ they will become.

There are a lot of violets blooming in the thin grass under the trees.

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The cherry tree is still full of blooms, but the petals are beginning to fly.

The plum has lost its flower petals, but the rest of the flower is still visible among the new leaves that are a red-purple color.

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I heard a cardinal high the oak tree. The buds are larger than they were a week ago…but there are no blooms or leaves yet.

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Trimming hair. My hair was short enough going into the ‘stay at home as much as possible’ mode but my husband needed to have the hair on the back of his neck trimmed. Fortunately, we have clippers and it was easy for me to do; it bothers him when he wears a shirt with a collar so wanted it gone. Otherwise, he’s letting his hair grow too.

Looking at the COVID-19 cases per 10K population map from the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. It goes down to the county level. There is also a social distancing activity map down to county. Interesting….and scary at the same time. I try not to spend too much time looking at them.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.







Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/4/2020 – March 2020 Contemplation

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Arriving bugs. We ordered them back on 3/18 and are letting it sit on the living room floor for a few days – let any viruses die. Then we’ll start our photography project!

Savoring favorite recipes of the past week. I’ve enjoyed experimenting with food a bit this week.  

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Kale‘n’eggs. I got a bag of kale pieces in my grocery order over a week ago. I’d been using them in smoothies but thought to do something different – maybe as a spinach substitute in scrambled eggs. I chopped the pieces in to small bits using my small food processor, sautéed them a bit before I added the beaten eggs. As little Mrs. Dash for seasoning. Tastey!

Sweet potato soup. I had baked a larger sweet potato than I could eat with the rest of a meal, so I had it left over in the refrigerator along with some chicken. I made a light broth with chicken bouillon and dried onion then added the mashed sweet potato and cut up chicken. Fried onions (the store brand like French’s Fried Onions) made a great topping…or I could have used black bean chips.

Whole wheat biscuits. I don’t eat breads very often. When I do – a batch of drop biscuits is probably my favorite thing to make. It’s a highly modified version of the recipe in my 1960s cookbook (the one I got about the time I became a teenager): Set the oven to 450 degrees. Combine in a bowl (2 cups whole wheat flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1 scant teaspoon salt). Combine in a measuring cup (1 cup milk (I used non-dairy), 6 tablespoons olive oil). Pour the milk and oil into the dry ingredients then blend with a fork to form the dough. Drop onto an oiled cookie sheet; I tend to like a heaping teaspoon size drop biscuit. Eat them hot with butter or orange marmalade or ginger preserves. I usually eat about 1/3 of the biscuits on the 1st day and freeze 2 packages for other days.

Getting a grocery delivery. The only time slot available when I first tried to do the order was for delivery between 8 and 9 on Saturday night! I took it. The order was left on the front porch and we brought it into the house…to the floor of the foyer. We put the refrigerator items away then put the non-perishables in the back of my car in the garage – with the intent of simply waiting 48 hours for any coronavirus contamination to dry up and die before the items were put away in the panty.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now a little contemplation of what happened to us in March 2020….

On the national level, there were 75 cases of COVID-19 at the beginning of March and 188,000+ at the end; 1 death to 4,000+ deaths in the same time period. Things have changed on a personal level too…and that is what I am thinking about today. Here is the timeline for me:

  • 3/1         Touch Tank and Discovery Cart at Robinson Nature Center

  • 3/5         Grocery store early. No crowd. Used hand sanitizer when I got in the car. Washed my hands with soap and water before and after putting the groceries away.

  • 3/7         Cancelled trip to Texas originally planned for later in the month; decided not to go to training or volunteer gigs after 3/8

  • 3/8         Touch Tank at Robinson Nature Center

  • 3/9         Carload of ‘stuff’ to landfill

  • 3/10       Following “stay at home as much as possible” guidance from CDC

  • 3/11       Grocery store early buying to keep 2 weeks of food in the house always in case we got sick. Store not crowded.

  • 3/15       Starting the daily “Filling a Day of Social Distance” series of blog posts

  • 3/16       Last trip to the dentist for me (finishing some prior work)

  • 3/17       Last trip to the doctor’s office for my husband

  • 3/18       Grocery store early…but they had changed their hours to open an hour later. More crowded. Carts outside. Wipes and hand sanitizer at the door to use before shopping.

  • 3/19       Another grocery store early to find things we couldn’t at the previous store. Not crowded…found a few things

  • 3/20       Another grocery store during senior hours still looking for a few items. More crowded than I expected (all older people too).

  • 3/25       Scheduled 1st grocery delivery…deciding to make do with what we could get delivered

  • 3/27       Telemedicine appointment for my husband

  • 3/31       Gutter clearing – all arrangements made online

During March, we started changing in ways that are fast becoming habitual: more frequent hand washing, using a lot less toilet paper (water spray bottle and toweling), eating at home all the time, appreciating home and family more consciously. We are also paying attention to keeping ourselves mentally healthy…engaging in activities we enjoy and exercising rather than watching the news all the time. Yes – we are worried about family and friends near and far. But we’re all taking precautions to stay healthy. I try to accept that and move on to whatever activity is next in or around our home.  

What’s planned for April? The calendar is empty. We have arrangements to spend even more time at home than we did in March…keeping healthy.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/3/2020 - Gleanings

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Photographing the sunrise. I seem to get busy and miss the sunrise most mornings…but not yesterday!

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Noticing more sycamore leaves emerging. There are now three buds that have popped…lots of tiny leaves.

Making experimental face masks from materials I have at home….for when/if we need to go out. I made a mask with a paper napkin, small binder clips, the cut off top of a small gift bag (for the loops). The napkin would be replaced after each use…the rest sprayed with Lysol. It would probably fit better over the nose if I made some pleats. Even better using a scarf (or paper towels) and two hair ties/covered bands. (How to videos I watched). This is all about protecting others; I don’t want anyone to get sick if I happen to be an asymptomatic carrier.

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Started Fashion as Design course on Coursera. The week 1 optional 2-hour video of 4 speakers and then Q&A (Under Review and then Reading) on the topic was well worth it.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now for the normal weekly gleanings post….

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. 

25 Photos of Madeira's Dreamy Fanal Forest by Albert Dros – Calming nature. It is a quite different forest than the one I see from my office window. Both views are much appreciated.

Tips for how to stay happy in troubling times - BBC Future – Hopefully, some of these work for you. I find that limiting the time I spend catching up on ‘news’ is the one I need to keep reminding myself about; it’s so easy to get absorbed in all the pandemic news (none of it good). I want to be informed but not 24/7.

Monarchs Covered 53 Percent Less Area in Mexico this Winter | The Scientist Magazine® - The last paragraph of the article was the worst news: “The butterflies have already begun their journey north but there is not enough milkweed in Texas to support the butterflies’ reproductive cycle this spring.”

How your personality changes as you age - BBC Future – It seems like there are a lot of positive general trends in personality as we age: more altruistic and trusting individuals, willpower increases, a better sense of humor, more control over emotions. They’re calling it ‘personality maturation’ and it continues until at least the 8th decade of life! And its observed across all human cultures.

Top 25 birds of the week: Eagles - Wild Bird Revolution – Never can resist the birds….

On This Scorching-Hot Exoplanet, a Forecast of Molten Iron Rain | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – 640 light-years outside our solar system

Tour A National Park from The Comfort of Your Couch -  Hmmm….I’m going to start working my way through the virtual tours….Maybe one a day?

Unprecedented preservation of fossil feces from the La Brea Tar Pits: A 50,000-year-old Snapshot of Los Angeles trapped in asphalt -- ScienceDaily – The La Brea Tar Pits have been studied for more than a century….but apparently there are still things to learn from them. Fossilized rodent pellets found in context (so definitely not modern, they also were radiocarbon dated to ~50,000 years ago). They are preserved along with twigs, leaves and seeds….an intact woodrat nest!

Massive Mammoth-Bone Structure Found in Kostenki, Russia - Archaeology Magazine – A circular structure about 41 feet in diameter…made with bones from at least 60 mammoths.

Tree Tapping Isn’t Just for Maples – The 2020 season is over for getting sap from trees – this is still an interesting article about how it is done…and other trees that also have sweet sap. I was surprised to see sycamore on the list.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/2/2020

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Finishing the Coursera course: In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting from MoMA. The last module was about Yayoi Kusama – the only artist featured in the course that is still alive and the second woman.

Making a Yayoi Kusama inspired Zentangle tile. Kusama’s Accumulation 18a from 1962 is made with paper savers (circular adhesives to reinforce holes punched into paper) and charcoal on paper. My tile is smaller, lightweight cardboard instead of paper…and it was brown instead of white. I used some very old paper savers that were a woven material (I had saved them in the office supply cabinet even though I didn’t think I would ever have a use for them); I wondered if the adhesive would still work…was pleasantly surprised when it did. And I used a graphite pencil instead of charcoal. Once I had done the paper savers and pencil…..I diverged by coloring the holes green….and added a black circle on each paper saver (feeling the nubs of the weave). I took a series of pictures of the progression.

Tracking the changes in the COVID-19 Projections. The model gets a daily tweak as new data is available. I made some notes the night before so it could detect some of the changes between the 4/1 and 4/2 version of the model.

  • The peak for the US overall moved from 4/16 to 4/15…one less day to prepare.

  • For Maryland the peak moved from 4/28 to 4/29, the peak death day rose from 51 to 53 deaths, and the peak number of ventilators moved from 638 to 659.

Hearing about my daughter’s transition from in-classroom to virtual teaching (university level). My daughter has been calling when she takes her (almost) daily walk around her neighborhood in Missouri. A positive bit of news: her gen-ed class has transitioned to virtual mode. She thought the first class might have been a fluke because about the same number of people attended as were in her classroom before the pandemic; she thought that maybe the students were curious enough to make the effort to attend; but then they joined again for the second virtual lecture…so now she is realizing she and her students have made a successful transition.

Photographing a minute at our birdfeeder. A lot can happen. The gold finches were there at the beginning of the minute – 3-4 of them. Then the female red-bellied woodpecker showed up and scattered the other birds. She ate some seeds at the feeder then got a peanut and flew away. I noticed a female cardinal below the feeder about that time. A second later, a chickadee arrived…quickly got some seed and flew back o the safety of the trees.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/1/2020 – eBotanical prints

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Weighing in at a new low for the year. 0.6 pounds lower than my last ‘new low.’ I am celebrated with 2 squares of dark chocolate for breakfast!

Hearing the recycle truck at 6:25 AM. That’s their usual time. It’s reassuring to know that they are still on the job making their rounds…that some things continue at a normal pace. I am thankful to the crews to hoping they stay well.

Catching up on Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safaris:

Making two Ad Rinehardt Black Painting inspired Zentangle® tiles. I didn’t make the whole tile black but I did make a black square. The technique was not the same either since I used Sharpies and layers rather than making the special matte low-oil paint that Rinehardt is known for. I finished the Rinehardt module in the Coursera course: In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting yesterday.

Taking breaks with nature cams. There are a lot of them out there! A post from the Nature Conservancy here (the spoonbills and alligators swamp cam can be very noisy in the morning – a great way to start the day – they are in the EDT zone). A list I collected from the Maryland Master Naturalist emails:

Clearing my calendar for April. I had left some volunteer gigs on my calendar in April – being overly optimistic. I took them off this morning. The organizations are closed. Everyone is preparing for the coronavirus peak in Maryland; as of today, the model is saying it will be around April 28th. Maryland has a stay at home order (since 3/30), all educational facilities are closed (since 3/16), and non-essential services were closed (since 3/23…and the definition of non-essential is not ‘loose’). It looks like the social distancing measures are flattening our curve but there have been some outbreaks that are troubling (nursing home and mental hospital) and sad.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now for the normal monthly post about botanical prints from eBooks.

There are 16 new books added to the list in March. There is quite a variety this month --- mostly from the 1800s although one book from the late 1700s and another from the early 1900s, some color others drawings, exotic places (Ceylon, India, Madagascar, and Australia), some traditional botanical prints and some textbooks of botanical traits.

The volumes are all freely available on the Internet by clicking on the hyperlinked title. The whole list of 1,864 books can be accessed here. Sample images and links for the 16 new ones are provided below. (click on the sample image to see a larger view). Enjoy!

A hand-book to the flora of Ceylon Plates I-XXV * Trimen, Henry * sample image * 1893

A hand-book to the flora of Ceylon Plates XXVI-L * Trimen, Henry * sample image * 1893

A hand-book to the flora of Ceylon Plates LI-LXXV * Trimen, Henry * sample image * 1893

A hand-book to the flora of Ceylon Plates LXXVI-C * Trimen, Henry * sample image * 1893

The British flora, or, Genera and species of British plants V1 * Thornton, Robert John * sample image * 1812

The British flora, or, Genera and species of British plants V3 * Thornton, Robert John * sample image * 1812

Indian medicinal plants : plates * Kirtikara, Kanhoba Ranachodadasa; Basu, Saman Das * sample image * 1918

Histoire naturelle des plantes (Madagascar) Atlas V3  * Baillon, H; Drake del Castillo, E. * sample image * 1903

Histoire naturelle des plantes (Madagascar) Atlas V4 * Baillon, H; Drake del Castillo, E. * sample image * 1890

Histoire naturelle des plantes (Madagascar) Atlas V1 * Baillon, H; Drake del Castillo, E. * sample image * 1902

Histoire naturelle des plantes (Madagascar) Atlas V2 * Baillon, H; Drake del Castillo, E. * sample image * 1904

Giftpflanzen-Buch, oder, Allgemeine und besondere Naturgeschichte sämmtlicher inländischen sowie der wichtigsten ausländischen phanerogamischen und cryptogamischen Giftgewächse - Atlas * Berge, Friedrich * sample image * 1845

Traité de botanique générale V1 * Herincq, Francois * sample image * 1860

Traité de botanique générale V2 * Herincq, Francois * sample image * 1860

A specimen of the Botany of New Holland Vol 1 * Smith, James Edward * sample image * 1793

A course in botany and pharmacognosy * Kraemer, Henry * sample image * 1902

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 3/31/2020 – Zentangle®

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Having the gutters on our house cleared. Our gutters were full of tulip poplar seeds – blown there all through the winter from the large trees in the forest behind our house. Fortunately, the company that clears them for us every spring is an ‘essential business’ and did the job yesterday. There normal mode of operation works for social distancing; everything is set up over the phone and they come at the appointed time (weather permitting) and do the job without any interaction with us. Now if we get some downpours of rain – which has happened more often in recent years – our gutters won’t overflow!

Confusing the red-bellied woodpecker. Prior to the gutters being cleared, I took our bird feeder into our covered deck so it wouldn’t be in the way for the workers. I noticed that the female red-bellied woodpecker came and looked thoroughly for it before flying away. The bird found it again later in the day after I filled it and put it back in the usual place.

Succeeding in getting a grocery delivery scheduled. I was dismayed when I couldn’t find any openings for grocery delivery. I’d been so pleased with what happened last Friday that I had planned to continue getting a delivery every week or so. But then there was an opening for delivery on Saturday evening. I’ll be tweaking the list until then…hoping that the stock in the store will begin to recover. At this point it seems like people should be stabilized with the groceries on hand…not still be stocking up.

Unfurling sycamore bud. The sycamore that I brought inside about 10 days ago is changing rapidly now. Day before yesterday I noticed that the buds were turning green. Yesterday morning, the largest one had begun to unfurl. By the evening a tiny leaf had sprung clear of the bud.

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Links to previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

And now for the normal monthly post featuring 31 Zentangle® tiles for the month of March. One theme for many of the tiles this month – borderless, stringless, and shadowless (i.e. no pencil required). For some reason, I am keen to only have the tile and a pen.

I did a few rectangular tiles this month. They are made with the lightweight cardboard between small cans of cat food so 5 inches side…cut every 3.5 inches.

Then there are a variety of square tiles cut from various types of boxes and folders. I am making tiles from recycled materials most of the time.

8 of the 31 were made on the iPad. I always prefer a black background when I create a tile on the iPad.

--

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.