September 09, 2020

4 Monarch Caterpillars

September 09, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

2020 09 IMG_1811 (1).jpg — I swept acorns from the driveway and picked up sticks that had fallen off the oak; the wheelbarrow was not very full when I started toward the front flower beds to do some bush trimming. I looked down as I started and saw a medium sized monarch caterpillar on the edge of the wheelbarrow closest to the handles. It was a shock since I had not been anywhere near any milkweed plants. I took the picture after I moved the caterpillar to a milkweed plant.

The caterpillar moved from the leaf I’d encouraged it to crawl to (used to transport it) onto the milkweed leaf right away and then rested – made it easy to get some pictures.

I checked some of the other milkweed plants that I had left in the front flower bed and found 3 other caterpillars!

By the time I finished doing some bush trimming and filling the wheelbarrow, the caterpillar that I’d found on the wheelbarrow was busy eating on the milkweed plant where I’d moved it.

The following morning, I went out early when the temperature was only about 60 degrees and saw 2 of the caterpillars actively eating. Hopefully, the others were still around too…just not actively feeding where I could see them.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Two woodpeckers on the birdfeeder. I was reviewing the videos from the camera we have on the bird feeder and found an interesting one from first thing in the morning back on the 6th….2 woodpeckers (red-bellied and downy) on the feeder at the same time! Both were females. The downy flew off without getting any seed but the red-bellied got something before she flew away.

September 05, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 5, 2020

September 05, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

Why cavemen needed no braces – Our diet and behavior have changed a lot since the stone and hunter/gather stages of our species….and those changes have impacted our jaw (and teeth and air way). There are more health consequences than just crooked teeth. I’ve bought the book (Kindle version) to learn more.

Characteristics that give viruses pandemic potential – An article from The Scientist that is more future oriented. What we are experiencing with COVID-19 is something that could happen again. The article talks about various types of viruses that pose the greatest threats.

Peer into the Past with Photorealistic Portraits of Roman Emperors – Taking historical sculptures and drawings to the next level. The Smithsonian Magazine summary has images of Augustus, Maximus Thrax, Caligula, and Nero….the rest can be viewed in Daniel Voshart’s site.

Amazing Macro Winners of the International Garden Photographer of the Year 2020 – Visual treats. This it the type post that gives me ideas about things to try with my own camera.

1,200-Year-Old Soap Factory Unearthed in Negev Desert – The soap was made from olive oil and the ashes of the saltwort plant. The factory produced enough for export to places like Egypt and other parts of the Arab world.

Low humidity increases COVID-19 risk: Another reason to wear a mask – This finding does not bode well for the winter when many homes and workplaces have much lower humidity because of furnaces.

Top 25 birds of the week: Birds in Pairs – Beautiful birds….I always enjoy looking at the 25 pictures each week.

Hawaiʻian Snails: A Tale of Discovery and Rediscovery – I remember seeing a snail in a planter box at the airport on the big island while I was waiting for my luggage a few years ago…and I dug up the picture I took when this article prompted the memory.

Wolverines Seen Roaming About Mount Rainier National Park – What a boon remotely triggered cameras can be….and then DNA testing of hair to determine relationships!

Meet the Squad of Mosquito-Eating Species – Birds, dragonflies, newts, aquatic turtles, and bats. We haven’t noticed very many mosquitoes around this year, but we try to replace the water in our bird baths frequently and make sure our gutters are draining properly. Having the birds around our house probably helps…and the turtles at the neighborhood pond do their part.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Going to the basement during a storm. Our phones went off with tornado warnings – which is rare in Maryland. We went to the basement. It turned out to be only heavy rain for us (not very windy either); to the east and south of where we live there was a lot of damage with trees/big branches falling and shingles flying.

Cleaning the leaves off the deck. Over the past week we’ve had several fronts come through that have blown leaves and branches onto our deck. They were still wet when I went out to clean up. I dumped the sediment that had accumulated in the bird bath too.

Finding Witches’ Butter. I photographed the fruiting bodies of Witches’ Butter on our deck railing. The deck is over 25 years old and even regular treatment can’t keep it clear for fungus; it is only visible during times when the wood is wet for several days.

I’m more concerned about a window frame that has the same fungus growing. I’m not keen about replacing the window but we might have to consider it.

September 04, 2020

More Butterflies at the CSA

September 04, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

There seemed to be even more butterflies at the Community Supported Agriculture cutting garden when I went to cut my flowers and stevia this week. I’d remembered to take my better camera so got some reasonably good pictures. I managed to identify all of them using the Maryland Butterflies web page when I looked at the images on my big monitor.

I’ve seen the Common Buckeye many times but they seemed to be a lot more of them in close proximity than I had seen before.

The Pink-edged Sulphur was a new one for me. I knew it was a ‘sulphur’ when it photographed it but didn’t see the edges clearly until it was on the big screen.

The Red Admiral on the cone flower was one I don’t remember seeing before but it is evidently found through most of Maryland.

I’d seen the Palamedes Swallowtails in previous year’s Wings of Fancy exhibits inside the conservatory. This was the first one I’ve seen in the wild. I realized it was a swallowtail when I photographed it and that it looked a little different than the dark morphs of tiger swallowtails that often are more common in this area.

What a thrill to see three new-to-me butterflies this week!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Car service. We took my husband’s car to the dealership for a gear shift button repair (it popped off!!!). It turned out to be a recall item and they had the replacement part. Now the service is up to date on the car as well. My car will get serviced next week. We haven’t been driving much this year….but the cars do have a maintenance schedule.

Yampa Valley Festival of the Cranes. I started making my way through the videos. They are well done. It is positive story as well because Northwest Colorado’s Greater Sandhill Cranes have gone from endangered to threatened (1993) to special concern (1998). I’d like to go to the festival held just before their fall migration south some year….see the young cranes leaving the nesting grounds. Some of them end up in Bosque del Apache where we’ve been twice to the festival in November (cancelled this year).

Fledgling chipping sparrow. This is the time for fledging chipping sparrows (probably second brood). There was one that was trying to come to the feeder while I was out with my morning caffeine. It couldn’t quite manage getting on the perch so would flutter down to the deck railing and an adult bird would bring some seed. Hopefully, it will become coordinated enough to get its own seed soon.

September 01, 2020

Grasshopper

September 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Our weather is getting a little cooler. We are back to mornings in the 60s. It’s a good time to see some insects before they warm up enough to be more active. On a recent morning, the temperature was key to my photographing a grasshopper. It was still the entire time I watched it; I walked around trying to get a better angle.

2020 08 IMG_1620 (5).jpg — It is a Differential Grasshopper – note the patterns on the hind legs. It’s common throughout most of Maryland and evidently does very well in urban/suburban environments. It can cause crop damage but also has the redeeming characteristic (for allergy suffers) of eating ragweed.

The rest of my walk provided some other photographic subjects – plants around the pond and reflections of park benches/trees/fire hydrant in the pond. The light was good from certain angles but almost too bright otherwise.

2020 08 IMG_1620 (1).jpg — I noted that there was a Bradford Pear hanging over the fence of one of the backyards that border the neighborhood water retention pond and a lot of small Callery Pear (the escaped and invasive form of the Bradford Pear) youngsters coming up milkweed meadow. Maybe the meadow will be mowed to keep the pear trees in check.

I didn’t see any sign that the milkweed plants have been eaten by Monarch caterpillars this season. The pods are not covered with milkweed bugs either. Overall – the area looks too free of insects and I wonder if it was treated with something – which destroys the value of having a milkweed meadow.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Yellow leaves in morning light. The morning sun hit the tops of the tulip poplars while I was outside, and the foliage looked very yellow. The leaves still look green in daytime light….but it won’t be long before they will turn yellow and swirl away from the tree.

August 31, 2020

Zooming – August 2020

August 31, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The images this month come from around my house and neighborhood…from the CSA. I didn’t get out and about to other places because it was too hot on so many days rather than any heightened risk relative to the pandemic (it declined a bit in Maryland during August compared to July). More than half the pictures were taken in my office, either through the window or of the flowers on the windowsill. The zoomed images of flowers are probably the ones I fined the most appealing. Photography is a key component to my enjoyment of having flowers around. Enjoy the August 2020 slideshow!

August 30, 2020

Ten Little Celebrations – August 2020

August 30, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Celebrating that everyone in my family is healthy….staying vigilant with masks and distancing. And then there are 10 little celebrations for August.

There were three celebrations associated with melons which are always a big part of August **– a sweet cantaloupe, a yellow watermelon, and the 6-part symmetry** **in a red watermelon.**

2020 08 IMG_1318 (9).jpg — **Sunrise at the neighborhood pond.** It was a celebration to begin the day.

**Photographing a cicada.** I always celebrate a cicada that I manage to see…and that remains still long enough for me to photograph!

The (clean) glass birdbath. The glass birdbath is always pretty….but when it’s sparkly clean it’s even better.

Sweet potato sprouts. Finding new life in the pantry….letting the roots start growing…planting them outside. I celebrated that it happened…would have been eve better if it were earlier in the season.

Best picture of our cat. The cat is 18 years old and I finally managed a picture of him in motion that captures his overall personality.

Dryer fix. My husband I celebrated that our dryer is fixed (that we didn’t have to buy a new one).

Kombucha bottles with flowers. I celebrate the flowers on my windowsill every time I look out the window. It’s a mood brightener every time.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Smartphone replacement. I noticed that the side of my phone has spilt….the case was holding it together; otherwise it might split the rest of the way. It’s over 3 years old (I posted about it here back in 2017). My husband ordered a new phone for me and I found a case that I like…ordered a screen protector at the same time. More about the adventure of getting a new phone in a contactless way over the next week….

August 29, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 29, 2020

August 29, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

Ancient Artisans in Arabia, the Americas Invented Same Technology Independently | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Stone fluting… and the fluting is not the same so it may have had a different purpose.

Baby boomers show concerning decline in cognitive functioning: Trend reverses progress over several generations, study finds -- ScienceDaily – The impact of modern life in the long term?

Ramesses II Statue Unearthed in Egypt - Archaeology Magazine – Multiple statues have been found…made of black and pink granite.

Top 25 birds of the week: #Waterbirds – Beautiful birds…not as many from North America as I expected.

Stone Sculptures of ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ Characters to Adorn Medieval Church – Replacing weathered carvings. There are 14 limestone carvings that will be displayed at ground level for visitors to see before being installed on the church’s exterior.

On the Delaware, A Promising New Era in Cleanup of an Urban River – Like many urban rivers in the US – a lot of progress has been made since the mid-20th century….but there is still a ways to go. Many of the urban rivers are clean enough in some stretches for recreational use….but often not after storms when sewage systems and extra industrial waste might be in the water along with the storm water.

Are you being served? A short history of waiters and servers in restaurants – Many of us are still in the mode of only getting carry out!

Examining the Chemistry of Yellowstone National Park's Thermal Waters – A little chemistry lesson in this post. Many of the hot springs and geysers are basic…mud pots and steam-driven fumaroles are acidic.

U.S. Commercial Rooftops Hold 145 Gigawatts of Untapped Solar Potential – The big challenge is logistical and financial. It seems that a partnership between commercial properties and community/utility solar would be worthwhile. It would be much better to use commercial rooftops than farmland for solar panels and many of the rooftops are in areas that consume a lot of electricity as well.

Record-Breaking 60,000 Flamingos Flock to Southern France -The picture of an adult flamingo surrounded by babies/juveniles caught my attention. I didn’t know that young flamingos are gray!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Flu shot. I got to my grocery store’s pharmacy just after they opened at 8:30 AM – got a flu shot. The store was busier than when I do my grocery shopping staring around 6:30….but it was still mostly possible to social distance…and everyone was wearing masks. I’ll stick with the earlier time for my grocery shopping.

August 28, 2020

Butterflies in the Cutting Garden

August 28, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

I took a few minutes when I was in the CSA’s cutting garden this week to photograph some butterflies. The first one is a battered Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (dark morph) on a sunflower. I always try to check to make sure it’s not a Spicebush or Black Swallowtail. This one has dashes on the edge of the forewing (instead of spots)….which distinguished it as the dark morph of the Tiger Swallowtail.

There were skippers all over the cone flowers.

I took a series that shows the proboscis in different positions…and why they stay for such a long time on one cone flower (there are a lot of places to find nectar)!

Aside from cutting some flowers, I also cut stevia. I chop it up to steep in tea….a nice light sweetness for the whole pot. I don’t think very many others know where it is because the plants don’t look like they’ve been snipped much. Their loss…my gain!

By the time I finished the bit of cutting and photography in the mid-afternoon sun, my mask was becoming decidedly uncomfortable. I appreciated the air conditioner in my car for the short trip home.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Grocery day. Every time I shop, I realize I am becoming more accustomed to shopping every other week rather than weekly as I have for my whole life until this pandemic. I’m now beginning to think that I’ll stick with the less frequent shopping from now on. It takes a little more planning, but the benefits are reduced time for shopping and I seem to be spending a bit less (maybe because I am planning better). My grocery store is not that far from where I live – so halving the gas/electricity for the commute is not saving much – although it could add up over time. Overall – this may be a pandemic habit worth keeping!

August 27, 2020

Through my Office Window – August 2020

August 27, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The usual birds kept coming to our deck for the water or seed (or both) this month: Mourning Doves

2020 08 IMG_1236 (2).jpg — White-breasted Nuthatch

2020 08 IMG_1236 (14).jpg — Carolina Chickadees

2020 08 IMG_1236 (15).jpg — Tufted Titmouse

Carolina Wren

2020 08 IMG_1236 (12).jpg — With **occasional** visits from American Goldfinches

2020 08 IMG_1236 (20).jpg — Downy Woodpecker

The House Finches seemed to be the most frequent visitors to the feeder. Near the beginning of the month we were seeing parents bringing fledglings to the feeder.

And then in recent days there were birds that seemed to be getting adult plumage.

Also - near the end of the month a Chipping Sparrow brought its fledgling to the seed under the feeder. The young bird was still in the mode of waiting to be fed rather than finding its own seed.

And it was voracious – here is the “I’m still hungry” stance!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

20200826_072355(0).jpg — **More sweet potato sprouts**. I found more sprouts on the sweet potatoes in the pantry a couple of days ago and put them in water. And this morning they had roots and tiny leaves! I planted them outside in two places near the other sprout and watered all three. The day lily leaves are beginning to grow rapidly again, and I hope the small sweet potato vines will grow fast enough to not be down in the shade.

August 26, 2020

3 Free eBooks – August 2020

August 26, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The Internet Archive is such a great resource. I’ve been thinking recently about how frustrating it was when I was growing up – getting to the library…finding something in the card catalog then discovering that it wasn’t available. Or going to the ‘Books in Print’ reference and finding a reference to a book that I wanted to get…but then finding the library didn’t have it and didn’t have an easy way to get it. Periodicals were in thick bound volumes….if the library had the publication. Somehow my hours at the library were more frustrating than enlightening. I became aware early on that ‘research’ in the library was not as productive as I wanted it to be. Now we have access to so much via a simple search on the internet; the more challenging problem is checking the validity of the references found.

The items I find on Internet Archive are general books that are dated…but reflect a perspective of the time they were written/created. I tend to look more at the images than read the text….but what a rich experience that level of browsing can be!

Grindon, Leo H. Lancashire – brief historical and descriptive notes. London: Seeley and Co. 1892. Available from Internet Archive here. I gleaned images from the book that depict children…an immigrant mother hunched over her baby, children out and about in wet or cold weather, a dinner hour where a younger girl appears to be barefoot and without a shawl/scarf, and then children working in a cotton factory and glass-blowing. The late 1800s were a time when some children started working early in their teens and worked long hours….enough that it impacted their health (i.e. rickets, lung problems).

Holland, Clive. Things seen in Japan. London: Seeley and Co. 1911. Available from Internet Archive here. Again – I selected pictures that include children. In the first one I noticed the shoes – placed on the ground under the bench…and what about the other child on the bench a little further away. The ‘big sisters’ in the other picture look a little tired…and how did the photographer know that the babies were all ‘little brothers’?

Sakai Hoitsu (Japanese, 1761-1828). The slideshow of this artist’s work is available from Internet Archive here. Do you recognize the deciduous magnolia?

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

**Watermelon symmetry**. I cut the watermelon crosswise and noticed the 6 spirals…3 sets of 2 back-to-back spirals. Even familiar foods can surprise us! Maybe this could be a prompt for a hexagonal Zentangle pattern. Some paintings of watermelons before modern plant breeding show the 6 segments more clearly.

August 25, 2020

Toad, Tiger Swallowtail and Puffballs

August 25, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

While my husband mowed the grass this past weekend – I took the compost bucket out to the pile and swept the deck (including the stairs down to ground level). The first surprise was at the compost pile: an American Toad. It blends in with the sticks around the bin.

It’s possible that the toad’s ‘house’ is a cavity under the compost bin since that is where it headed as I tried to get closer. It’s fun to think about the toad being under my daughter’s old turtle sandbox which is about 30 years old and has a great second act as a compost bin/ (maybe)toad home.

I found a tiger swallowtail carcass amongst the leaves on the deck as I was sweeping. It was missing some parts (like the abdomen), but I saved it for some later photography. I see these butterflies frequently in our yard. The tulip poplar tree is a food plant for their caterpillars, and we have a large one at the edge of the forest.

After I finished sweeping, I noticed a white object – about the side of a tennis ball in the grass my husband had just mowed. When I looked at I more closely I realized it was a puffball. There was a slash in the ‘ball’ and it was disconnected from the ground…damage from the lawnmower probably.

There was another tiny puffball nearby that was still attached to the ground and an older one that had been slashed earlier or may already released spores.

Back to the Tiger Swallowtail….

I took close-up picture then got out the jeweler’s loupe to look at the scales.

The wings were battered (missing pieces, some scales rubbed away) so this was not a newly emerged butterfly when it died. The scales that remain are still vibrant….tiny jewels even after death.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

**Two tiny leaves on the sweet potato.** The sweet potato sprout I planted in the front flowerbed now has two tiny leaves. It appears to be getting comfortable in its new place – set to grow rapidly. The trick will be to keep it moist enough during the hot days we have in the forecast for the rest of this week.

I was checking the plant when I went out to do another round in the yard using the ‘fill the wheelbarrow’ metric. It was a tough hour since my first task was sweeping the driveway. Acorns are hard to sweep into a pile because they roll! And the ones that have been run over by our cars are in pieces that don’t sweep up easily either; the little bit of curve they have seems to help them stick to the surface. I stopped before the wheelbarrow was full this morning…deciding that an hour was enough as the temperature climbed.

August 22, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 22, 2020

August 22, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

Scientists Awaken Deep Sea Bacteria After 100 Million Years | The Scientist Magazine® - Learning more about the durability of microbes in extreme conditions….and thinking about how we look for life elsewhere.

How Ancient Monsoons and Tectonic Shifts Shaped This Flowering Mountain Hotspot | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – China’s Hengduan Mountains….a lot of rhododendrons and delphiniums

Idol of the Painted Temple - Archaeology Magazine – Pachacamac in Southern Peru…a place venerated even before the Inca Empire

5,000 Pythons Reportedly Removed from Everglades Ecosystem – A lot of pythons…but still more need to be removed.

How lockdown may have changed your personality - BBC Future – It might not have changed very much or permanently for most people. Most of us are resiliently adapting to lockdown…we’ll bounce back or continue the aspects we developed during this ‘timeout’ that are positive.

Alaska’s Vegetation is Changing Dramatically – The impact is still to be determined but rapid changes are rarely good for ecosystems….they decline because they can’t adjust fast enough to the rate of change.

Bees' buzz is more powerful for pollination, than for defense or flight -- ScienceDaily – There is not just one kind of buzz! And some bees (like honey bees) don’t buzz flowers at all.

Top 25 Birds of the Week: Raptors - The birds of prey…some are powerful looking, some are cute, some a ugly…but that’s just overlaying our stereotyping onto birds like we do with other people.

Why Plastic Waste is an ideal building material – We need a strategy to upcycle all the waste plastic that is accumulating since we don’t seem to be able to wean ourselves from plastic packaging at all.

Grand Canyon's Prehistoric Past Appears In 313-Million-Year-Old Tracks - Sandstone rockfalls….near the trail…first spotted by a Norwegian geology professor on a field trip to the Grand Canyon with his students.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Clothes dryer working. Our 20-year-old clothes dryer has a new heating element and the dust/lint has been cleaned out from around the innards. The first loads we did were towels!

Doe and 2 fawns in our back yard. My husband noticed the deer in our back yard in the afternoon. They stayed around long enough for me to get some pictures. In past years we’ve had a doe and 2 fawns in our yard more frequently. This year their main path back into the forest must be through another yard because we haven’t seen them as often…and so it is a special day when we do.

The fawns are good size now, but their spots are still noticeable…not quite as well defined as earlier in the season.

August 21, 2020

Sunrise – August 2020

August 21, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

It’s getting easier and easier to be up for sunrise. I was still a bit lazy this week and opted to photograph the sunrise from my front porch rather than getting in the car to find a place with a clearer view of the horizon. There are still plenty of leaves on the trees that block out any low view of the sun coming up in our neighborhood; a few clouds are required to see any color. It was a good view with the pink and orange wisps….and sky-blue background. Seeing a beautiful sunrise is always a good start to the day.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

3 glass jars of flowers in the window. I am enjoying the kombucha jars reused as vases for flowers cut at the CSA; each one is a good size to hold 2-3 flowers. I have three on the windowsill in my office. The flowers in the center vase are a week old…the other two are from this week’s walk in the cutting garden (I also snipped catnip, stevia, and basil).

In the afternoon I took pictures when the sun was shining on the flowers…a little artsy photography. I sat far back in the office, rested the camera on my knee and zoomed in to get the pictures I wanted. Using the zoom rather than getting close to the subject captures more depth of field…and often gives a ‘painterly’ blurring that I like.

Hibiscus. I couldn’t resist stopping to photograph some yellow hibiscus in one of the beds to the side of one of the CSA barns. There are lots of buds on the plants - so we have a few more weeks of these flowers to enjoy. I’ll have to remember to look every week when I get my CSA share.

August 18, 2020

Cicada!

August 18, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

I found a cicada on a sycamore leaf in our yard and carried it to the steps of our deck before continuing to trim the low branches of the tree. By the time I came back to photograph the insect it was walking around the steps…no longer on its ‘sit upon’ leaf. Fortunately, is stayed around long enough for a few pictures.

Comparing the pictures to various species of cicada’s in Maryland, I think it is probably a swamp/morning cicada. I’ve seen this type before in our area…and its supposedly widespread in the eastern US.

Hearing cicadas somehow reminds me of my childhood trips in the summer to my grandparents’ house where we spend a lot of time outdoors – under the shade of the big trees (elms mostly….that were dying or dead by the time I was in my late teens). I don’t remember seeing cicadas then but remember the sound. The sounds are still more evident so seeing one (and being able to photograph it) makes the day a special one.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Yard work…it never seems to be completely done. I’ve come to appreciate the wheelbarrow as a metric and a step (and back) saver. Tree trimming fills it up fast. I was focused on cutting branches that were growing low enough to be in our way we mow the grass. This was my first 2-wheelbarrows full yard work hours!

I took a few pictures in between loads. There seemed to be a lot of small mushrooms in the grass that were all in about the same stage of development.

I couldn’t resist photographing the sycamore leaves…the ones with holes and the ones that were still tiny enough to be unmarked. The tree is already beginning to show some signs of fall; it is late to leaf out in the spring and early to begin changing color…before ‘fall’ starts for other trees.

There are chives growing in the chaos garden! I’ll have to remember to cut some next time I want to add flavor to a salad.

August 15, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 15, 2020

August 15, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

August 12, 2020

Milkweed Bugs

August 12, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

August 11, 2020

Neighborhood Pond – August 2020

August 11, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

August 08, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 8, 2020

August 08, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

2020 08 IMG_1223 (2).jpg — **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.

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.

August 07, 2020

Flowers from the Field

August 07, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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?

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.

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.

2020 08 IMG_1260.jpg — 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.

August 06, 2020

Flowers End

August 06, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

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.

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

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.