Gleanings of the Week Ending August 15, 2020

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Top 25 birds of the week: #Spectacular - Wild Bird Revolution and Top 25 birds of the week: #August - Wild Bird Revolution – A double dose of bird pictures for this week!

A New Look at Ancient Nubia - Archaeology Magazine – South of Egypt….evidence of sophisticated culture centuries before the pharaohs extended their rule to the area.

New fabric could help keep you cool in the summer, even without A/C -- ScienceDaily – Interesting. But are there some negatives to ‘nanofibrous membranes’? Could they be worse pollutants than microplastics if we aren’t careful with them?

Photography in The National Parks: Gearing Up, Staying Safe, And Getting Back Out There with My Cameras at Crater Lake National Park  - I’m still not confident enough to try a road trip to a national park when I am still carefully timing my trips to the grocery store! I’d have to purchase a lot more masks than I have now --- and develop a strategy for ‘rest’ stops along the way.   

Older adults coped with pandemic best, study reveals -- ScienceDaily – This study seems intuitive to me. My husband and I are in the over 65 crowd and post-career. We miss volunteering and traveling…but we are not anxious about a job or childcare or facing financial catastrophe. 2020 is a going to be an odd year for us…but not a bad one. It’s not hard to laugh about not knowing when we’ll get a haircut!

Activities Discovered for Some Inactive Drug Ingredients | The Scientist Magazine® - There is more than the drug in the capsule….and it’s hard to know how many ‘side effects’ to drugs are actually a reaction to something that was supposed to be inert – but isn’t for everyone.

The Weird, Wondrous and Vulnerable American Horseshoe Crab – Cool Green Science – Blue bloods…and ancient…. Can they survive their interaction with humans?

Forty percent of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by targeting 12 risk factors throughout life -- ScienceDaily – There 9 risk factors identified in 2017 (less education in early life; mid-life hearing loss/hypertension/obesity; later life smoking/depression/social isolation/physical inactivity/diabetes) and now there are 3 being added: excessive alcohol intake, head injury in mid-life, and air pollution in later life.

Forest Photos Captured in Different Seasons Shows the Beauty of Change – Interesting idea of a long-term photography project. I’ll have to start scouting some places easy for me to get to.

Childhood connection to nature has many benefits but is not universally positive, finds review: A connection to nature is complex, as well as positive emotions, it can generate negative emotions linked to issues like climate change -- ScienceDaily – But those negative emotions can lead to actions toward a more livable world….which would net to a positive in the long run.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Cicada on the Screen. There don’t seem to be as many cicadas around this year. I hear one occasionally…but no answering song. I hope they are finding mates but would be more confident if there were the usual overlapping songs. There was one on the screen of our covered deck in the early morning. It must have spent the night there and it was not quite warm enough for it to be singing. Later in the day it was gone.

CSA Bounty – August 2020

We are certainly in the thick of summer bounty from our Community Supported Agriculture. This past week there were three kinds of tomatoes (cherry, heirloom, slicers) and two kinds of peppers (bell and hot…and there were 3 different kinds of hot ones to choose from).  I liked the choices for onions and cabbage too – I always get the more colorful ones. There is just enough leafy green for a salad or two. The zucchini squashes are still coming…and the carrots are large and wonderful. I got some huge beets as my choice from the ‘extra’ crates. I was glad that the bins of watermelons were near the parking since they were 30-35 pounds!

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I got some snippets of basil from the cutting garden

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Along with some flowers. One of the vases I am using for flowers this week is a glass bottle from store-bought kombucha. The label peeled off easily enough and it is a great size for 1-3 flowers. I’m going to save the bottles from now on…line them up on windowsills or group then together on a table…filled with flowers.

Milkweed Bugs

I am waiting for the milkweed bugs to mature and fly away from one of the last milkweed plants standing in the flowerbed. They have been transitioning to adult form over the past few days. I’ve been taking pictures when I first start my hour of working in the flowerbeds. On the 8th I noticed a few adults – but still a lot of nymphs.

On the 9th there were fewer nymphs and it appeared that some had just made the last molt to become adults.

On the 10th…more were making the transition – shedding for the last time. The blobs of clear ‘skin’ with black squiggles are the sheds.

By the 11th it appeared that they had all become adults. They’ll fly away to look for fresh milkweed and I hope they find it at the pond where the milkweed looks great – unlike the stalks that I am now cutting down when I don’t see any caterpillars or milkweed bugs on them!

After photographing the milkweed bugs, I get busy cleaning out flower beds (and trimming bushes. I takes me about an hour to fill the wheelbarrow, take the load back to the edge of the forest, and plan the work I want to do the next morning.

On the 11th I took a few pictures after I was done with the gardening of small things in our yard…a bit a nature before I went inside to stay cool the rest of the day.

Neighborhood Pond – August 2020

My goal was to get to the neighborhood pond before sunrise so I left the house shortly after 6 AM and walked briskly down the street taking only one picture along the way and walking through a spider web that bridged the sidewalk between a mailbox and a small tree. I never saw the web but was brushing off the spider silk for the rest of the walk to the pond and hoping the spider had made it to a side of the web and wasn’t crawling around on me!

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The pond was quieter than expected. The red-winged blackbirds are no longer defending their territory. There were some crows nearby.

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The grasses are making seeds

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And so are the milkweed. The meadow behind the pond has a good stand of healthy-looking plants…but no evidence of Monarch caterpillars that I could see without wading into the taller vegetation.

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The cattails are maturing. They are expanding all around the pond…still a lot of young plants that haven’t made seed pods this year but provide plenty of cover for frogs and birds.

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I heard the calls of green frogs and saw a few in the water…lumps with bulging eyes.

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There was a green heron that was difficult to photograph through the vapor coming up from the surface of the pond. I saw one last month at the pond as well…maybe the same one. It would be great to have a resident green heron at the pond. There was one several years ago as well.

I didn’t see the painted turtle…hope it is still around.

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I experimented with different settings as the sun came up….getting reflections and silhouettes. The silhouette image with the color in the sky is probably my favorite image of the morning.

There were more sounds on my way back to the house…the neighborhood waking up. I looked at the oaks in our neighborhood. Some don’t look so good. Our oak tree seems OK even though it has a rough time with the cold weather in late spring.

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The morning sunlight shows off the fall color already developing in its leaves…although they aren’t falling yet like some of the other trees are….and it doesn’t have a lot of dead branches either…a sign that it is a healthy tree.

5 Months in COVID-19 Pandemic

August 12th will be the 5th month since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic. I started a monthly post taking stock of the impact on day to day life last month (see July post here). In this month we had 2 household maintenance appointments which we handled by requiring masks and then wiping down surfaces after the maintenance person left. The first one was seasonal check of the air conditioning/heating that we had delayed from late May. The equipment was inspected, and we got a new filter installed.  The second one was the repair of the clothes dryer…which will be next Saturday. If it is the heater element is should be a quick repair.

Maryland has a relatively low rate of infections…but not enough to open schools (they are virtual…hopefully the prep that has happened this summer pays off)…there is still a mask mandate too. I am glad that when I go to the grocery store and the Community Supported Agriculture pick up – everyone is wearing a mask. It is concerning that the state has had a slight uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations recently.

Every time there is an opportunity in the community or for volunteering (and there have not been very many of them) – my husband and I talk about it and have – so far – decided against. Our social interactions on limited to each other and virtual.

During this 5th month, I enjoyed quite a few webinars on a variety of topics (regenerative landscaping, moths, bats, pandemic and climate change, NOAA sanctuaries, microplastics, the power of individual choice) and watching the recently released 2nd season of The Umbrella Academy.

I’ve recently increased my outdoor time from 1 hour per day to 2 hours….generally from 6:30 – 8:30 AM. We’ll see how long that continues. There is a lot to do around the yard; maybe I’ll finally get it in shape during the 6th month of the pandemic!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Escher prints on Internet Archive. There is a collection of 279 images by Maurits Cornelis Escher on Internet Archive. I’ve been intrigued by his work for a long time; this is the largest number of prints I’ve seen in one place! It includes one that I bought as a poster and framed: a fish in a flooded forest. The butterflies/moths were new to me….a clever geometric shape with natural forms.

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Office bouquet. The flowers I cut at the CSA this week are holding up well. I am noticing that they are using a lot of water. I’ve already put more water in the vase twice.

eBotanical Prints – July 2020

22 botanical eBooks found in July 2020! The volumes are all freely available on the Internet. The whole list of 1,942 books can be accessed here. Sample images and links for the 22 new ones are provided below. (click on the sample image to see a larger view). Enjoy!

Icones selectae plantarum quas in systemate universali ex herbariis parisiensibus, praesertim ex Lessertiano V4 * Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de; Turpin, PJF; Delessert, Benjamin * sample image * 1839

Icones selectae plantarum quas in systemate universali ex herbariis parisiensibus, praesertim ex Lessertiano V5 * Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de; Turpin, PJF; Delessert, Benjamin * sample image * 1846

Drawing of Plants collected at Cape Town * Wehdemann, Clemenz Heinrich * sample image * 1817

Iconographie des orchidées du Brésil : dessings originaux * Rodrigues, Joao Barbosa * sample image * 1869

Our South African flora = Ons Suid-Afrikaanse plantegroei * Compton, R. H. * sample image * 1900

Plantae mattogrossenses, ou, relação de plantas novas : colhidas, classificadas e desengadas * Rodrigues, Joao Barbosa * sample image * 1898

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1966 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1966

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1947 (June-December) * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1947

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1969 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1969

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1981 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1981

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1975 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1975

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1964 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1964

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1974 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1974

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1971 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1971

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1980 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1980

Saguaroland Bulletin - 1967 * Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society; Desert Botanical Garden * sample image * 1967

Iconographie descriptive des cactees * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1841

Les plantes grasses autre que les cactees * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1819

L'Amérique Centrale. Recherches sur sa flora et sa géographie physique * Orsted, Anders Sandoe * sample image * 1863

Frilands-traevaexten i Danmark : veiledning til kundskab om de traeer og buske, som kunne dyrkes i friland in Danmark  * Orsted, Anders Sanoe * sample image * 1864

Le jardin du Roy tres chrestien, Loys XIII, Roy de France et de Navare * Vallet, Pierre * sample image * 1623

Useful knowledge: or a familiar account of the various productions of nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, which are chiefly employed for the use of man Vol II Vegetables * Bingley, William * sample image * 1821

Some of the Saguaroland Bulletins are included in this group; they are not strictly botanical but do have some good images (and I was savoring memories of visiting the Desert Botanical Garden in recent year when my daughter was doing her graduate work in Tucson). There is also a very early botanical book in this group: Pierre Vallet’s Le jardin du Roy tres chrestien, Loys XIII, Roy de France et de Navare published in 1623.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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2 tiles. I created to Zentangle tiles during my early morning hour on the deck as usual. For some reason they both appealed to me more than usual…and for different reasons. I was thinking ‘solar prominence’ as I finished up the first one.

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The second one only took 9 minutes to make but I’m already thinking of making more tiles with the same string.

Clean Birdbath. I saved the scrubbing of the bird bath until the end of my hour cutting day lily leaves in the front flower bed. The glass held the grunge (biofilm?) when I dumped the accumulated rain water.

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The spray got some off and then the scrubbing with an old dishrag got the rest.  There is something very satisfying about a clean birdbath…with and without water…but of course the water is what it’s all about! I’ve always liked this birdbath – carefully taking it indoors before the first frost and not bringing it out again until after the frosts are over. I bought it during a sale of seasonal things at the grocery store years ago. The stand stays out and has gradually become more buried in the mulch of the flowerbed.

Dryer broken. Aargh! Our dryer stopped working. It’s probably the heating element since we’ve had the problem before, and the tumbler part of the dryer is still functioning. My husband keeps excellent records and discovered that the element was replaced in 2006. We were able to get an appointment for a maintenance person to replace it in 7 days. Fortunately – it was sheets and not the load of towels that was in the washer when we discovered the problem. I draped plastic table clothes over the loft railing….and draped the sheets over that (and the shower rod). The house looks odd but we’re the only ones here and are relieved that we don’t have to find a laundry place or figure out how to create a clothesline on the covered deck! We were only discombobulated for about 10 minutes and now we are back to our regular Saturday activities. It’s a good indication of how resilient we are at this point!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 8, 2020

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.

Performance of the Year | The Prairie Ecologist – Video of an Eastern Hognose Snake pretending to be dangerous.

Millennia-Old Rock Art in Israel Offers Window into Lost Culture | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Monuments 4,000 years old…dolmens. There are more than 400 in the same area. A survey of them started 2012 after the first rock art engravings were discovered (14 trident-like shapes on the ceiling of a large dolmen).

Backyard Birding in Central India to Beat Lockdown – Backyard birding - something that is happening around the world during the pandemic!

Granite tors evidence of ice-free Alaska - The Field - AGU Blogosphere – Tors mark the Pleistocene pathway that was free of glaciers for plants and animals during the ice age.

Great, Warm Lakes – This is an article from a month ago…I’m just getting around to reading it. The surface temperatures were warmer than usual as of July…in some of the lakes there are areas warmer by more than 4 degrees C (including most of Lake Michigan)!

Restoration of Sicily’s Temple of Zeus Continues - Archaeology Magazine  - A 26-foot-tall sculpture of Atlas dated to the 5th century BC…and there might have been as many as 40 such statues.

Winners of International Photo Contest Celebrate the Art of Movement – Capturing a moment…freezing motion.

Blood-thinner with no bleeding side-effects is here – Still work to be done….the current formulation is filtered out by the kidneys very quickly. It has applicability in artificial lungs (used to bridge the time between lung failure and lung transplantation) currently.

Poor Everglades Nesting Season A Result of Climate Change and Untimely Storms – It appears that 2020 isn’t a good year for roseate spoonbills and wood storks in Florida.

This Medieval Potion Kills Stubborn Bacteria – “Bald’s eyesalve” – garlic, onion, wine, cow bile. It appears to be effective at combating antibiotic resistant bacterial strains…biofilms that are particularly challenging to kill…including diabetic foot infections.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

3 racoons. Our birdfeeder camera made a video of some visitors to our deck just before 2 AM on Wednesday, 8/5: three racoons! They looked smaller than the female that came several times earlier in the summer. Perhaps they were her young….out foraging on their own (maybe she was nearby). They were no more successful than she was getting seed from our squirrel proof birdfeeder! The action started with one up on the deck railing under the feeder and another 2 directly below on the deck floor. The one on the railing comes down almost on top of one that was on the deck floor. The one that was on the deck railing stayed in the video the longest…thoroughly searching under the feeder after going down to the deck floor.

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Sycamore branch. Back on August 2nd I posted about a dead branch in our Sycamore tree (picture on the left). My husband discovered the branch on the ground near the base of the tree when he went out to use the weed eater and it took both of us to pulled it to our brush pile at the edge of the forest. It came down without bringing a lot of other branches with it….a little sooner than I expected but probably brought on by the thunderstorms that have been sweeping through the past few days.

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Yellow wooly bear. My sister sent me a picture of a caterpillar from her garden in Carrollton, Texas. It appears to be a yellow wooly bear that becomes a Virginian Tiger Moth. Evidently, they are common but neither one of us had seen one before.

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Flowers from the Field

Between the tropical storm and couple of days of thunderstorms/rain there was a sunny day. It was my usual day to pick up the Community Supported Agriculture share…so I felt lucky in the dry weather. The share was highlighted by three melons (cantaloupe, medium sized yellow watermelon, and large red watermelon) and heirloom tomatoes. I appreciated the bunch of basil in the share as well. I walked around to the cutting garden to get some flowers. It was in the 80s which feels hot wearing a mask…but I persevered. I looked for the flowers that were fresh enough for the butterflies to like – waiting for them to move to the next flower before I cut it. Can you find the two tiger swallowtail butterflies in the picture below?

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I had taken a jar with some water in it and the flowers survived the trip home well enough. I might switch to taking a wet paper towel to wrap around them next time. I trimmed off the lower leaves and put them in a vase….am enjoying them in my office this morning.

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They last for at least a week with the cut-flower powder added to the water. I have enjoyed the cut flowers from the CSA occasionally in previous years but this year there are flowers I bring home every week. During this time of spending a lot more time at home – I have honed habits that make that a joyous experience. Finding joy is something that helps me be more resilient to those aspects of the current situation in our country that are not going well.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Thunderstorms. We are having two days of thunderstorms. It was rumbling one morning during the time I usually spend out on the covered deck; I stayed inside and listened to the rain hitting the skylights of our den; the rest of the roof is well enough insulated that the sound is not as obvious in other rooms. It’s not windy so the only warning/watch is for flash flooding. The area was already soggy from the rain associated with Tropical Storm Isaias. On the plus side there are lulls that offer time to plug in my laptop, phone, and iPad to keep them charged.

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During one of the lulls in the early morning – the moisture around the forest was obvious from my office window. And the birds came to the feeder to get a later-than-usual breakfast; this male brought back his whole brood just after I took this picture…more house finches that there are roosts on the feeder and some of them were clearly just learning to fend for themselves.

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Flowers End

Cut flowers only last a week or two. Sometimes they dry and retain a more subtle beauty. They are fragile. I’m going to make up a dry vase of flowers that have made it to this state. They could last the rest of the season.

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Others collapsed when their stem stops transporting enough water to keep the flower upright.

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I decided to photograph the petals of this flower – in various configurations. The grid is the paper cutter base (I use it to cut Zentangle tiles from light weight cardboard or card stock); the markings are ½ inch.

I got more than I had bargained for when I discovered a small insect on the flower as I took the petals apart. The jeweler’s loupe was close, so I took some pictures of the insect using that magnification…also on the paper cutter base. It appears to be covered with pollen!

These flowers will never produce seeds – which might have been a possibility if they’d stayed on the plant. The ones that don’t dry will go in the compost now…the ones that go into the dry flower arrangement will be enjoyed a little longer.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Ohara Koson art. Internet Archive has a collection of 185 of his prints available here. I picked several of my favorites from the collection to include here as samples. He was a Japanese artist active in the late 1800s/early 1900s. A little art….every day.

The Umbrella Academy. My husband and I are enjoying the new season of the series. We limit ourselves to 2 episodes per day to make the activity last a little longer…add it to the variety of our days rather than binging on it all at once.

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Sunset. I finally looked at pictures taken recently in my camera…and found pictures I took of the sunset the day before the tropical storm came through. Noticing something beautiful toward the end of a day always makes the rest of my day seem better too. A good crescendo isn’t alone, it makes what comes before special too!

A Wanderer in…

I found a series of books with titles beginning “A Wanderer in…” by Edward Verrall Lucas published in the early 1900s and enjoyed the photos/ colored plates; Internet Archive has digitized versions of 6 books (5 places):

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London (1913 and 1916)

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Various artists produced the colored illustrations…sometimes with no attribution in the book. These were commercial books intended to capture the look and feel of the places – highlighting distinguishing features. Some of those features are still in views we associate with the cities today.

When I read books from the early 1900s, I always think about my grandparents growing up during those years. They were mostly in Oklahoma – far away from these places. Only one of them finished high school. I wondered how much world history/geography she learned in high school. How many books did they have? Did any of the books that saw have photos and colored prints like these?

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Tropical Storm Isaias. Lots of rain but not as much thunder as originally forecast. I spent my usual early morning hour on the covered deck. It was raining the whole time with birds and frogs making noises in the still dim light. The rain became music…getting quiet…then louder. Complex. The forest sounds of water on leaves and branches different than the sound of rain on the roof of the deck. For most of the hour, there was no breeze at all. Then just a flutter for a few seconds that caused as cascade of droplets from tree leaves and the long-tubed wind chime to move. Here are the two Zentangle tiles I made…along with enjoying my morning caffeine and doing some reading.

Yard Work

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The yard work seems to never be finished. My goal is to spend a morning hour every other day catching up. The front flowed beds are the first phase. The milkweed is looking awful and the day lily leaves need to be cut since they are turning yellow. I learned last year that trimming the day lily leaves back causes the plant to grow fresh leaves that last until frost. It probably reduces the bulb growth underground, but the deer take so many of the flowers that producing more bulbs is not my priority.

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On the first morning, I cut or trimmed the most aphid infested milkweed and about 1/3 of the day lily leaves. I discovered it was slower going since I wanted to leave the black eyed susans (the deer eat them but maybe not quite as much as the day lily flowers).

The second morning, I continued working on the rest of the bed. There were still a lot of day lily leaves to go.

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I use a wheelbarrow as my measure for each day – my goal it to fill it up. It wasn’t that difficult although it was only another 1/3 of the flower bed! I took the load back to the compost pile; it covered the kitchen scraps I had taken out before I started.

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On the way back up the hill, I stopped to photograph some tiny orange fungus in the grass (I’ll check on them in the next few days…see if they become mushrooms) and a moth which I though was a leaf at first.

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And then there were the milkweed bugs on one of the plants that I chose to leave up in the flower bed.

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Now to find a third morning to finish off the work in the flower bed…and move on to the next flowerbed/bush trimming on my list. It won’t be tomorrow since the forecast is for all day rain from Tropical Storm Isaias.

I’m getting more accomplished on the flower beds now that I’ve settled on the wheelbarrow metric and planning to be out for only an hour. I am not an enthusiastic gardener, but I do want the flower beds to look a lot better than they do right now and am psyched to get there an hour at a time. I am hopeful that I’ll get to a point that I can take off an occasional day (or not get too far behind if the weather does not cooperate) in the next few weeks. The other change I’ve made is to wear my river (field trip) boots; they take away my excuse that the foliage it too wet!

We are at home so much right now that there is no excuse to not have the yard it great shape.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Watermelon. We ate our first watermelon from the CSA this season. It was small enough to eat in one sitting for my husband and I. It was yellow (rather than red) and had seeds….but we both enjoyed it tremendously. I’d love to get one of the big red melon with seeds that I remember from my childhood but it seems like they aren’t grown very much anymore.

Sycamore Leaves

I took a pictures of sycamore leaves with holes through the window of my office. They are easy to find on the tree; I estimate that 25-30% of the leaves have noticeable holes. I looked at the pictures enlarged on my computer screen…searching for caterpillars…but didn’t find any. There are probably several different insects making the holes. Notice that sometimes the hole leaves the vein intact….other times the hole crosses a vein. Sycamore leaves are tougher than tulip polar and maple so it takes a caterpillar with stronger mouthparts to eat the leaves.

The tree seems to be mostly recovered from the damage of last spring (cold weather late in the spring) but there are still some dead branches and brown leaves from that time. They are increasingly covered with green leaves getting larger and larger as the summer progresses and new leaves are still forming on all the branch tips. Every time a thunderstorm comes through, we have some leaves on the ground. I walked around the deck and took pictures of some leaves that fell recently….and found holes in every one!

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I also noticed that a branch broke in the upper part of the tree. It is too high to get down without a tree crew. It’s in our back yard so I am leaving it for the time being. I’ll watch it during the next storm. It appears to be firmly wedged in the other branches (i.e. going no where soon). If it falls, it will go on the yard or chaos garden….and it appears to be mostly leaves.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Interrupted lawn mowing. My husband tried to mow the grass between rainy days even though the ground was still very wet. He did the front and sides…then started on the back. It stays wet longer than other areas of our yard since water drains in that direction. He stopped about halfway through. Hopefully, he’ll be able to get it mowed before the rains from Isaias get to the Maryland area.

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Zentangle® - July 2020

31 days in July – 31 Zentangle tiles. The square tiles are card stock (light blue and ecru) and the rectangular ones are lightweight cardboard from cat food boxes. There were some series this month – where I made several tiles with a similar aspect – strings made three lines thick, circular voids (bubbles), and amoeba voids. I am continuing the last one into August. I tried to group the series in the same area in the display below.

I had a lot of tiles to choose from this month and I think the series is driving that increased production. It’s fun to have a theme to start the tile off.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 1, 2020

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.

Identifying sources of deadly air pollution in the United States -- ScienceDaily – Focusing on fine particulates associated with heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, and other diseases…about half comes from burning fossil fuels; the other half is from animal agriculture, dust from construction and roads, and burning wood for heating/cooking. Ammonia is one pollutant that is not regulated as much as the others and yet it causes a 5th of all deaths caused by fine particulates. It could be reduced with targeted manure management and improving formulations of cleaning supplies, paints, and inks, etc.

Free Technology for Teachers: 500+ Icebreaker Questions – These could also be used as writing prompts…they are good for a bit of self-exploration…useful even if you are not in as many groups right now.

Aztec Palace and House Built by Hernán Cortés Unearthed in Mexico City | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – History through layers of stone floors.

Biosignatures may reveal a wealth of new data locked inside old fossils -- ScienceDaily – Not DNA…chemical analysis (using non-destructive Raman spectral analysis) of products of degraded proteins, lipids, and sugars in fossils. Results group into 3 types of biosignatures: biomineralization, tissue, and phylogenic.

Infographic: What Social Isolation Can Mean for the Brain | The Scientist Magazine® - I wondered if the brain structural observations were a cause or effect (or neither). Does the observation that people who are lonely have smaller amygdalae because that are isolated or because they were born that way and it wouldn’t matter if there were a lot of people interacting with them…they would always feel lonely/isolated.

Top 25 birds of the week: July 2020 - Wild Bird Revolution – Always beautiful birds.

Innovative Birds Face a Lower Risk of Extinction | The Scientist Magazine® - Birds that are dropping nuts on roads, stealing burning candles to eat the wick, using bread to lure fish, and pecking open sugar packets…..coming up with new behaviors to cope with new aspects of their environment.

A Silk Road Renaissance - Archaeology Magazine – Many more commodities than silk on the ‘silk’ road: jade, glass, spices, metalwork, ceramic….and missionaries. And the Sogdians were the people that made it work from the 5th to 8th centuries. Panjakent, in modern Tajikistan, has been excavated since the 1940s; many murals have been found depicting myths, fables and everyday life of the Sogdians. In 755 a failed Sogdian coup against the Chinese emperor and thereafter incursion of Arabs from their west caused the culture to fade.

New Research Reveals Surprising Origins of Egypt's Hyksos Dynasty | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Based on chemical analysis of skeletons from the Hyksos capital, the dynasty was likely the result of an immigrant uprising rather than a hostile outside invasion!

Weird and Unbelievable Facts About Earwigs – Entomological trivia…always fun.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Blue Jay Behavior.  There was a blue jay on the deck railing making noise….fluttering its wings…making eye contact with 3 or 4 other blue jays around at the time. Those other jays seemed to ignore the ruckus and flew away. Then the bird flew down to the floor of the deck to look for seeds. Maybe it was a fledgling wanting to be fed by the adults…but the adults were forcing the young bird to find its own food? I’m not sure…but I enjoyed witnessing the minute or so of action…whatever it was about. Maybe it was the same jay that tried to get seed from our bird feeder a few days ago (and failed).

Ten Little Celebrations – July 2020

I’m celebrating that everyone in my family is healthy and staying vigilant. We’re all in states that have a growing number of cases, though. As usual – I am looking back of the month and highlighting 10 little celebrations.

Large Monarch caterpillar. Toward the end of the month, there were caterpillars on the milkweed in our front flowerbed. One morning I walked out and saw a large one almost immediately.

It was eating way…probably getting close to the size to pupate. I’ll look around for the chrysalis in the bushes nearby in a few days.

Cantaloupe in the CSA share. Yummy melons…one of the best foods of summer.

Regenerative landscaping webinar. Sometimes a webinar just comes at the right time. This one had so many interesting ideas. The one that I’ll probably try first is over seeding with mini-clover instead of grass seed in the thin places of our yard.

Morning hour on the deck. I love the quiet time on the deck first thing in the morning. I enjoy my morning caffeine, create a Zentangle tile, read a little….usually with our cat as company.

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Neighborhood pond in the morning. Lots of interesting things at the pond --- different every time…birds, turtles, plants, insects.

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Milkweed. Blooms, pods, insects (milkweed bugs and beetles, aphids (aargh!), Monarch caterpillars). The plants are little worlds of activity.

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Summer sunrise. It’s getting easier to get up and out to catch the sunrise.

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Mt. Pleasant. Venturing out just a little…early enough that there are not very many other people around.

Western Regional Park (Howard County, Maryland). A place I hadn’t been before but worth discovering.

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Goldfinches. Looking out the window at the right time.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

NOAA Get into Your Sanctuary! Events. There was a post on the NOAA feed about this; relatively short notice but maybe ‘just is time’ is good enough. The events are live 7/31-8/2. I am planning to watch as many of them as I can. https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/visit/giys.html

Observations at the grocery store. When it got to the grocery store, the sun had only been up for about 10 minutes, so the short drive was scenic with the glow of morning light. As usual – there weren’t very many people in the parking area or in the store and everyone was wearing masks. I noticed that most masks were similar to mine but there two outliers: a woman that was wearing something that looked more like a gas mask and then a shield over that and a staff person that was wearing a mask that looked like it was very thin (had been through a lot of washings).

There was a sign saying that the carts were sanitized when I approached the area to get my cart – so I didn’t wipe the cart down again but did use the hand sanitizer station for my hands.

Things seemed well stocked although some of the store brand products we bought previously have not been replenished; the more expensive ‘name’ products are available.

I am enjoying the SCAN app my store provides. My bags are loaded as I shop (in the way I want them) and the checkout is as close to contactless as one can get inside the store! I wonder if all grocery stores will develop this kind of app for their customers.

6 Free eBooks by Ludwig Borchardt – July 2020

Ludwig Borchardt was an Egyptologist in the early 1900s – best known for finding the bust of Nefertiti at Amarna. I browsed through 6 books published by Borchardt that are freely available on Internet Archive and decided to feature them for my July eBooks post.

Porträts der Königin Nofret-ete aus den Grabungen 1912/13 in Tell el-Amarna (1923) includes pictures of the famous bust

The others (with sample images for each) are:

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Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Northern Cardinal fledgling and Blue Jay at the feeder. Two events I noticed in passing on our deck:

1) A female cardinal bringing a fledgling to the deck for a snack. The young birds was still begging the mother for food and getting fed…but also finding a few seeds on its own.

2) Blue jays are frequent visitors to our deck but usually to the bird bath or deck railing. This time the bird went to the feeder. It was heavy enough that it closed off the seed holes partially. I don’t think it was able to get any seeds before it flew off.

Sunset. I was walking around as I talked to my daughter on the phone and noticed the wonderful color outside through a small opening in some drapes. I went to a better vantage point and discovered that the sunset was very colorful…and the timing was perfect. I managed to juggle my phone and a better camera to get a picture. A great finale to the day!

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Zooming – July 2020

I’m not taking as many pictures these days…but there are still plenty to choose from for the monthly zoom post. The locations this month are my yard, my neighborhood, Howard County’s Western Regional Park and Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm. Enjoy the slideshow for July 2020!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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More Zentangle tiles with circular voids. I’ve continued to make tiles with circular voids…. another name for bubbles. It’s interesting how many variations there are with the starting point of a few circles on a tile.

Coronavirus uptick. We are having an uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Maryland. Hopefully, it will stabilize and decline but that might be tough with the surges happening elsewhere in the country as well. The decisions the local school systems made to be virtual for the first half of the school year are looking better and better. In the early summer we though that maybe the community spread would be very low by the time school started….and then we’d worry about the increase in cases as the ‘flu season’ started…maybe have to go virtual then. But the level of cases never went a low as we thought they might this summer…and now we are seeing an upward trend.

Outside hour to start the day. After a day of poor air quality kept me inside, it was great to return to being outside for the beginning of my day. As I passed by the front door, I stopped to step out and take a picture of sunrise…about 2 minutes after sunrise. The cat did not join me on the deck – preferring to stay indoors and meow loudly.

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Surprise! Monarch Caterpillars

I’d planned to work in the front flower bed in the early morning – cutting down 1) the milkweed that was being overrun by aphids and something that caused the leaves to curl and 2) the day lily leaves that were beginning to turn yellow. I took a ‘before’ picture.

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Before starting – I checked the milkweed plants for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Aaargh! They were on almost every plant – even the plants that looked terrible and were full of aphids.

Change of plans. I opted to cut out the worst aphid infestation and move caterpillars to better plants if I couldn’t leave them where they were. It was slow going. After I finished with the milkweed pruning, I started on the day lily leaves and pulling weeds. I found a red maple seedling.

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There were 10 tulip poplar seedlings – and I probably didn’t find all of them since I only worked about a third of the bed. The sheer number of tree seedlings surprised me because I’d already pull quite a few from that flower bed already this year.

There was one black-eyed Susan flower that has been missed by the deer.

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I took an ‘after’ picture that wasn’t as dramatic as originally planned and still a lot of work to do…but I’m hopeful about having a small group of Monarch butterflies this year. I’ll continue monitoring the plants and moving the caterpillars to the healthier looking ones. There are plenty of places for the caterpillars to make their chrysalis; I’ll try to do all the clearing out of the day lily leaves before the caterpillars are big enough to leave the milkweed to find their spot to pupate.

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Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Assessing risk. My daughter told me about the model from Georgia Tech at  https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/. It has a zoomable map of the US showing counties and placing the cursor on a county provides the current risk level of attending an event (you can select the size of the event) that at least one person present will be positive for COVID-19. This is a good way to assess the risk for being with groups of people – ignoring the reduction in risk that social distancing, masks, environment can provide. With the increasing number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in so many areas across the country, this is a way to roll up all that data for where you live in a way that may be more actionable …something to look at before deciding on a particular activity away from home.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 25, 2020

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.

Native Americans Crossed the Pacific Long Before Europeans | The Scientist Magazine® - Using DNA to find more definitive answers.

Forest Surprise: A Wolf Story – West of Flagstaff ---- probably a Mexican grey wolf male…trying to find a new territory and exploring a restored forest appealing.

See Archaeological Treasures Unearthed by U.K. Residents During Lockdown | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – The uptick in gardening and yard work leads to finding things in or on the ground…and then people having plenty of time to find out more about what the objects are. Something positive happening during the pandemic.

You Can Now Explore All 48,000 Panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Online | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – I was glad to see this online version of the quilt is available – complete with search and zoom. I found the square for a person that I’d worked with in the 1970s and saw him at IBM sponsored conferences in the 1980s. Our early career crowd was scattered all over the country by the time he died in 1993.

Eleven Awesome Owls from Around the World – Good pictures and a short summary characterizing each bird.

Turmeric could have antiviral properties -- ScienceDaily – It’s already one of the supplements I take…as an anti-inflammatory. This study points to it being anti-viral as well.

Stain Solutions | U of I Extension – A good reference although in recent years the laundry detergents and cold water often get stains out.

Top 25 birds of the week: Wild Birds - Wild Bird Revolution – Enjoy the beautiful birds!

Solar Will Kick Most of Texas's Remaining Coal Fleet Offline – Good news for air quality in Texas. Evidently the growth of utility-scale PV production is rapid changing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market.

Infographic: How Breastfeeding Protects Mothers | The Scientist Magazine® - Research about the mechanism behind the observation that women that breastfeed their children have reduced long term risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Circular voids. I am starting a series of Zentangle tiles that have circular voids in otherwise dense tangles. I got the idea from some Mordecai Ardon paintings (slideshow on Internet Archive here) like Fatal Eclipse shown at the right. My first two tiles are below.

Compost bin. Between rain showers – I put on the boots I have for river field trips and got all my containers of kitchen scraps and spent flower stalks (mostly day lilies) out to the compost bin. It took 4 trips! There have been more things recently that produced more kitchen scraps than usual: fresh corn on the cob, cantaloupe, cabbage cores, and tough onion/leek tops. I’ve learned to save cucumber skins for use in smoothies so those get eaten these days and veggies like beets and carrots just get a thorough scrubbing rather than being peeled. I put all the new scraps on one side of the bin and then turned the other side over on top of it. I should deteriorate very rapidly.

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Fresh flowers in the house. There are now small bouquets from the CSA cutting garden in my office and on the kitchen table. The one below is the one in my office. I like having flowers in my field of view! It’s a way I show kindness to myself.

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Scenic Drive 2

I headed out shortly after 9 AM --- late enough that the morning rush hour was over (even though traffic is still lighter than pre-pandemic). I had set my navigation system for Western Regional Park in Howard County, Maryland since the route would take me on some scenic roads I hadn’t traveled before and the park itself was new to me. The first bit of driving was at highway speeds (on MD-29 and 32) but then MD-32 narrowed to a 2-lane road and I turned off to curvy and narrower 2 lane roads toward the park. I had not anticipated as many bicyclists, but the morning was a pleasant temperature and there wasn’t much traffic. I slowed down to make sure I could go way around them and not meet another car coming from the opposite direction.

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There were few people at the park when I got there – lone individuals and a mother with a child in a stroller and 2 children beside her – one looking very tired. I parked and got out to take some pictures of the meadow. As I walked toward the meadow, I heard then spotted a catbird in a tree overhead; it was too fast for me to get its picture.

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There was a hillside dominated by milkweed. I wondered if the county had planted it as part of the overall effort in the schools and parks to help Monarch Butterflies. The plants are full of newly forming seed pods. A few weeks ago, the area would have been very fragrant with the flowers. Maybe I’ll return to the park in a few weeks to look for caterpillars.

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There were a few other flowers mixed in with the milkweed. I didn’t notice the insect until I got home and looked at my pictures on my computer screen!

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And then there was the Queen Anne’s Lace in every stage of seed production along the meadow’s edge.

There was a mockingbird getting a blackberry seconds before I took my picture…aargh!

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I looked down a slope to a swampy area…a froth of purple flowers with an occasional bit of yellow!

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I completed a loop back to home by putting the Howard County Conservatory’s Mt Pleasant location as a waypoint in my navigation system…to stay on scenic roads as much as possible.

My drive and short walk took about 1.5 hours and was very enjoyable. I enjoy getting out and finding natural places (that are new to me) near where I live – staying mostly in the car but getting out in places where there aren’t many other people around. I already have my 3rd scenic drive mapped out!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Kohlrabi fries. I had kohlrabi in the crisper and opted to cook it like oven fries. The seasoning I put on it (no-salt) browned well. This was the first time that I cooked kohlrabi this way; the fries tasted good with catsup, but they were almost too sweet. It occurred to me that maybe I should cook them as dessert fries with cinnamon, ginger and a little sugar.

CSA grounds. I took some pictures of the cutting garden and the flower beds near the barns on the way back to my car from the barn and the cutting gardens. Everything was looking very lush with just enough in bloom to add color.

My bags with the weekly share were heavy this week because they included a melon and cucumbers and squash and onions and beets.