eBotanical Prints – April 2022

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20 additional botanical print books browsed in April and added to the list. The list has quite a variety this month; the last two books on the list (about orchids) are part of a series of books; the rest will be on the May list. The publication dates have quite a range (1776 - 1926)….more drawings than color.

The whole list of 2,370 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the April 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

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

Voyage a la nouvelle Guinée * Sonnerate, Pierre * sample image * 1776

Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine * Sonnerate, Pierre * sample image * 1806

Jagttagelser over vextriget i Marokko. Observations sur le règne végétal au Maroc * Schousboe, Peder Kofod Anker; Betherand, Emile Louis; Lang, Joh * sample image * 1874

Le grand jardin de l'univers V1 (1785) * Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph * sample image * 1785

Herbier colorié de l'Amerique * Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph * sample image * 1783

Illustrations of Himalayan plants * Cathcart, John Fergusson; Fitch, W.H.; Hoooker, Joseph Dalton * sample image * 1855

A second century of ferns * Hooker, William Jackson; Fitch, W.H. * sample image * 1861

Illustrations of the forest flora of North-West and central India * Stewart, J. Lindsay; Fitch, W.H. * sample image * 1874

Illustrations of the British flora: a series of wood engravings, with dissections, of British plants  * Fitch, Walter Hood * sample image * 1908

Illustrations of the principal natural orders of the vegetable kingdom * Oliver, Daniel; Fitch, Walter Hood * sample image * 1874

A handbook of flowering trees and shrubs for gardeners * Notcutt, R.C.; Dykes, William Ricatson * sample image * 1926

Our ferns in their haunts, a guide to all the native species * Clute, Willard Nelson * sample image * 1901

The fern allies of North America north of Mexico * Clute, Willard Nelson; Clute, Ida Martin * sample image * 1905

The romance of our trees * Wilson, Ernest Henry * sample image * 1920

Aristocrats of the Garden * Wilson, Ernest Henry * sample image * 1917

Root and stem vegetables * Dean, Alexander * sample image * 1910

Roses, their history, development and cultivation * Pemberton, Joseph Hardwick * sample image * 1908

The Rose in America * McFarland, John Horace * sample image * 1923

Orchidaceae: illustrations and studies of the family Orchidaceae - fascicle 1 * Ames, Oakes * sample image * 1905

Orchidaceae: illustrations and studies of the family Orchidaceae - fascicle 2 * Ames, Oakes * sample image * 1905

Preparing to move (1) – May 2022

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The pace of our preparation to move to Springfield, MO has increased since my last post about our move a little over a week ago.

The most physical activity has been toward packing since the date for the movers to arrive at our house in Maryland has been set for early June:

I started out with a goal of packing 20 boxes a day for 5 days…only succeeded because many of them were already packed and all I had to do was add them to the inventory and tape them up. Then the goal became 10 boxes for 5 days…not as easy because I was packing more boxes. Now my goal is 5 plus until they are all packed. I had to buy more boxes.

There are some items we have packed in the original boxes they came in….much easier for them to be safe going on the truck.

I watched a video on packing glass/ceramic items and have now packed most of those items that will go on the truck. I used a lot of packing paper, bubble wrap and squiggles – extra carboard inside the boxes if they were not double thickness boxes. The cardboard, bubble wrap and squiggles were reuse items from packages we’ve received over the years and stored in the basement.

We’ve identified an issue with the piano moving…determining how to remove the humidifier box that makes a bump on the underside of the piano.

We cleared a corner of the basement to put items that will remain with the house after the movers leave since we will be here off and on until the house is sold. I am also clearing all the closets and those too will contain items that will stay with the house.

My daughter is coming for a few days before the movers to help with last minute packing and will take a carload of items back to Springfield.

About my inventory list….I have it as an Excel spreadsheet with the box number (I bought a roll of number labels from Amazon), contents, location in current house, destination in new house, date packed/taped, transport (which car/trip, movers, movers take apart before move). Then I do a Pivot Table to summarize my packing (date x transport). Obviously almost everything goes with the movers but I can easily click on the pivot table cell to produce a list of items I’ve slated to go in a particular car and trip. For example…I will probably make 3 trips to and from before Missouri between now and when we close the sale of our current house….and I have a list accumulating for each of those trips!

We are also making progress with items we don’t want to move:

We’ve taken a load to the landfill/recycling center and already accumulated another load which we will take today.

I took wire hangers back to the dry cleaners and old glasses to a optometrist office that is a collection point for them.

I’ve discovered that I don’t use plastic bags for packing and there were a lot of them in the packing materials we accumulated so I am taking a bag stuffed with them to the grocery store every time I got.

My husband is marking off maintenance items at our current house:

A plumber replaced the sump pump.

A new refrigerator was purchased, delivered and installed since replacing the ice maker in our old one was so expensive

The creak in floor outside my office is gone after much effort to find the joists

And finally, there is activity in Springfield on our behalf as well:

The appraisal came back higher than our offer…good news.

An agreement to the list from the house inspection was reached and radon remediation will be done before we close.

Overall – I think I see the light at the end of the packing tunnel…

Harriet Tubman Byway/Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

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The 2nd of 4 Delmarva Birding field trips was Birding the Harriet Tubman Byway. It was a mixture of cultural and natural history of the area around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and Cambridge, Maryland – an area Harriet Tubman knew well as she was growing up and returned to after she escaped slavery to help others make their way to freedom. There is a map of the byway available from the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (we stopped there before the field trip…great orientation for the cultural history portion of the field trip) of the sites along the byway; our field trip visited a handful of them with excellent guides. From a natural history perspective - two species that are gone for the scene that she would have known are the American Chestnut and Carolina Parakeet.

The birding at Blackwater NWR was spectacular – just as every time I visit the place; it is where I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild (in 1990 when my daughter was a baby). This year there were several Bald Eagle pairs that are nesting at the refuge. At one nest, the babies had evidently just been fed and were sleeping off their meal; the adult was still at the nest watching over them.

Osprey are making use of the nesting platforms and snags. There are more snags that ever because the water level is rising at the refuge…killing more trees that remain standing for a few years.

The muskrat mounds in the marsh were numerous. The color of the mounds is good camouflage for small birds. One of our guides commented that sometimes an eagle wll perch for a little while on a mound. If the muskrats are home…they probably go very still until the large bird leaves!

Rusty, the screech owl, is a well-known resident along the wildlife loop. The bird has a favorite perch in a pine with an hollow which provides protection for the bird’s back/sides. The hole where the bird might ‘live’ and raise young is in a nearby tree. The eyes moved while we watched but the bird was otherwise very still.

There are still parts of the refuge where the water level can be controlled; small fish swam in the shallow water….good snacks for some of the birds we were seeing.

Great Blue Herons are nesting at Blackwater. They like the tall pines just as the eagles do.

Great Egrets were also fishing in the shallows. I learned that they too were nesting at the refuge, but I didn’t see those nests.

Somehow moss and pine needles seemed an appealing mini-landscape on the spring day.

Redwing blackbirds were noisy….defending territory…finding mates.

The field trip group continued into Cambridge to the courthouse – a place where the laws governing slavery in Harriet Tubman’s time were administered. The short lecture and conversation were thought provoking and heartbreaking. Fortunately, the field trip ended on a happy note at the nearby Harriet Tubman mural in Cambridge.

Stay tuned for my posts about 2 more Delmarva Birding field trips!

Phillips Landing Park

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My husband signed up us for 4 Delmarva Birding field trips as a last excursion to the eastern shore before we move to Missouri. The first field trip was at Phillips Landing Park near Laurel DE. It was a weekday so most of the other participants were retirees like us; we had two guides that were very familiar with the area…so we saw more than we would if we’d gone on our own.

Shortly after we started, my camera had a problem and I was challenged to work around it by using the eye piece rather than the screen for the rest of the morning….not what I usually do so my focusing/composition was not as good as usual even though the skew of pictures toward botanical rather than birds was probably about the same as it would have been with the camera working perfectly.

The plants are at the height of their variety in the spring with blossoms and unfurling leaves – the bright greens of mosses growing rapidly in the new warmth – unfurling ferns….good for photography although my eyes were itchy from the pollen laden air.

The high point of the botanical sightings: One of our guides pointed out a native orchid in bloom beside the path. They aren’t the large showy orchids of warmer climates; it takes a sharp eye to notice them!

There was an area near the path that looked like an egg laying site for a reptile….but something had found the eggs before they could hatch. There were eggshells among the acorns.

I did managed to photograph a few birds: courting cowbirds in the parking lot, a yellowlegs among the reeds, and a prothonotary warbler high in a tree.

The park was a good mix of habitat – watery area near the parking area (Broad Creek that flows into the Nanticoke River nearby) and a path through forest.

As we returned to our car, I saw a tiger swallowtail flit across the grassy area nearby. A good finale to a morning field trip!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 30, 2022

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

India’s fantastic freshwater fauna and where to find them – I was caught by the picture of the dancing frog at the top of the post. Other unusual animals featured in the rest of the post…some very different than what we see in North America.

Meat consumption must fall by at least 75% - And not just because of climate change. Health and economic effects also contribute to the rationale.

Top 25 birds of the week: birds communications – Pictures don’t impart sounds…so the post is really about bird body language.

Meet the Eastern Phoebe, the flycatchers that coexists with humans – It’s always easier to hear this bird than see it! We have one that visits our backyard almost every morning this spring.

A community of seed savers has a recipe to revive rare varieties of collard greens – I became a fan of collards in my CSA share…now I am thinking that I might try planting an heirloom variety! I like them better than kale because the big leaves are flatter – easier to roll and the cut to make slaw…or as a last ingredient into a stir fry.

U.S. has warmed by 2.6 degrees F since first Earth Day – This was my first look at this metric. Maryland is bright orange (3 degrees increase) and Missouri is white (1.5 degrees increase). Maybe another aspect of my move to Missouri could be climate related migration!

The US will phase out incandescent light bulbs – Ban takes effect in 2023…but lots of people have already made the transition to the more efficient bulbs.

Picturesque clouds of Greenland – Cloud streets and vortices.

22% of new cars in Europe have a plug! – Hurray! Hope the US will catch up sometime soon.

Spatial maps of melanoma – Diagnostics…enabling more precise medicine. Tissue samples must be supplemented with multiplexed imaging techniques to diagnose and treat melanoma more effectively.

Egyptian Mummies

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Sir Grafton Elliott Smith’s Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire N° 61051-61100 The Royal Mummies was published in 1912 and reflects the knowledge/assumptions from that time. I had never seen so many photographs of mummies presented in one book! Some of the mummies were very damaged – by looters or deliberate desecration in antiquity, poor quality of embalming, ravages of time, or damage occurring when the wrappings were removed. It’s awe inspiring to see remains that are so old…yet realize that they still are recognizably human. I selected 4 sample images from the book that is available on Internet Archive…enjoy more by following the link to the book directly.

Ancient Egypt has been a topic that has held my interest since my elementary school years – part of my first exposure to world history. So much has been explored and published…and yet there are still new finds in the country; I always scan the article that show up in my news feeds about ancient Egypt. This older publication demonstrated to me that there are nuggets in the documents that are over 100 years old!

Unique Aspects of Days – April 2022

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So much happened in April that was unique – or at least something we had not done in over 25 years! More that half the ‘days’ featured this month’s post are related to our move. I’ve listed then in the order they occurred and am surprised at the move milestones that occurred in April:

1st virtual house tour. This was not an option 25 years ago and both my husband and I were skeptical that such a tour would be ‘good enough’ to enable us to be comfortable bidding on a house. The first one convinced us that such tours were adequate to eliminate houses from consideration! Our realtor was very patient and good about highlighting aspects of houses as she walked through…and later in the month – after several experiences with virtual tours – we did indeed bid on a house before we saw in in-person.

Finding no houses available in Springfield that we liked. What a depressing day. Both my husband and I were primed to buy a house but there was a day that we had eliminated all the houses on the market.

Bid on house. And then a house came on the market. It wasn’t perfect but we had honed our idea of what we wanted enough to know that it was as close as we were going to get, and we could live with its imperfections. We scheduled a virtual tour and bid on the house the same day.

Contract signed. After one round of negotiations the contract was signed….and we were on the path to buying a house!

Seeing our house. Within 4 days we were in Springfield and walking through our house for the first time. It had a surreal quality after seeing it so thoroughly in the virtual tour.

Accepting a mover’s bid. Long distance moves are expensive and the last one we had done was paid for by our employers. The process has changed somewhat…the biggest one being the virtual way of creating the inventory of what is being moved!

There were some other unique experiences/sights in April:

1st long road trip with my husband post-pandemic.

74 black crowned night herons roosting.

A policeman – lights flashing - removing a deer carcass from a narrow roadway. I was thankful that he was taking care of it before the morning rush hour.

Several bald eagle and great blue heron nests…close together.

Zooming - April 2022

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I am featuring 12 pictures this month using the zoom feature of 3 different cameras (my phone which is digital zoom, my point and shot with optical zoom, and my bridge camera with even more optical zoom).

The point and shoot provided more than half the images: Sidling Hill, the Japanese garden and some of the spring flowers. The bridge camera was used for the spring looks at redbud and tulip poplar. The phone was used for the peacock horse sculpture (at a Kentucky rest stop) and the morning light picture. Using all three of my cameras in ‘zoom’ mode was a first!

Enjoy the slide show!

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2022

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April was a whirlwind month---with more than the usual amount of drama because of our plan to move to Springfield, Missouri. More than half the little celebrations I selected for the month have to do with the move:

Finding a house we liked and getting it under contract. It was new (and high anxiety) to do the contract with only seeing it virtually…thrilling to do the walkthrough to confirm that it was THE HOUSE for us.

A good driving day is always welcome, but we particularly celebrated one of the days heading home; perhaps a sunny, spring day is balm to the stress of the drive and the anticipated events of the next few months.

Home again is always something I celebrate. This time I savored the house that has been home since October 1994…realizing that soon I would be transferring the joy of homecoming to a new place.

Initiating contact then selecting movers. This was not a single day event, but I was pleasantly surprised at virtual inventories and other options. There are some things that have changed for the better since my last long distance move in 1983.

22 boxes packed in one day. I set a goal for myself to pack 20 boxes a day for a week and I achieved that goal! I celebrated the most on the highest day (22 boxes).

There were other things to celebrate in April…

Early morning at the grocery store. I love the quiet at the store before 7 AM with spring far enough along that it is light at that time…but still full of morning color.

A medical test that found nothing. Sometimes finding nothing is worth celebrating…particularly as we get older.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

A wealth of birds. There were 4 field trips over 2 days…and we celebrated that we saw so many birds – some species in larger numbers than we had ever seen before. Stay tuned for blog posts coming next week.

Japanese Garden. I enjoyed our visit the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield MO although the celebration came afterward as I looked at my pictures (too noisy from the mowers while I was in the garden).

Our New House – April 2022

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A lot has happened in April toward our move to Springfield, Missouri:

  • Found a house to buy (via realtor.com, our realtor in Springfield and then a virtual tour). Contract was made with a sight unseen rider until we could see the house in person.

  • Made a trip to Springfield for a walk through, the inspection, initial contact with HOA re small astronomical observatory in back yard.

  • Negative experience with HOA although they were open to more ‘house shaped’ structures; we decided to continue our purchase of the house.

  • Contacted Shyft (discovered via AARP) to find moving company (virtual session to draft inventory, verified inventory, received 2 quotes). We have a grand piano…that complicates the move.

  • Accepted one of the quotes gotten via Shyft.

  • Appraisal of the house was done…results expected by the end of the month.

  • Began serious packing (set a goal for myself of 20 boxes/day until everything is packed).

  • Scheduling maintenance on our existing house (ice maker in the refrigerator, radon remediation).

  • Donated a porch full of ‘stuff’ (and realized there will probably be another donation in May)

There are a lot of things happening in parallel….making it hard to keep everything moving as quickly as possible. It is a time of upheaval that no one wants to prolong but it is sometimes a challenge to stay focused on everything. So much to do…and a limited time until we close and move into the new house.

It is important to maximize each trip we make to Springfield since it is a 2-day trek from where we live in Maryland. At least now the weather along that trek will not be the frozen variety! I am making an inventory as I pack – carefully indicating which boxes go with movers (the majority) and the items that we’ll take ourselves.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

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

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.

The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (eBook)

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Internet Archive has the 3 volumes of The Early Christian monuments of Scotland by John Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson published in 1903 presented in two volumes: The Early Christian monuments of Scotland V1-2 and The Early Christian monuments of Scotland V3.

I enjoyed browsing them (particularly volumes 1-2) from a Zentangle pattern perspective. The patterns looked familiar with many variations of several presented in the book. Now that I am looking at the book again as I write this post…if feel a Zentangle project calling…maybe several. First up – tiles prompted by the ‘spiral ornament’ pages!

Maryland to Missouri – a road trip as passenger

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I’ve been making road trips between my home in Maryland to Missouri on my own until recently when my husband went with me to see the house we are buying. It was so different to be a passenger rather than driving myself!

The route was familiar and there were no cold weather hazards this time. More daylight made it possible for us to start the drive before 7 in daylight – leaving behind the fading blooms on the cherry and plum tree in the front of our Maryland home.

The first day of the trek was the easiest; it was cloudy with mists and sprinkles…occasional sunshine.

The daffodils were still in full bloom at the South Mountain rest stop; the elevation makes a difference; the flowers have already faded at hour home closer to Washington DC/Baltimore.

I took a few extra minutes at Sidling Hill to photograph the road cut. It is awesome.

There were plenty of rest stops along the way – a quick walk to the facilities through the damp.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

And the bridges at Louisville KY.

We stopped for the night at a hotel in Corydon, IN that has a historical marker in its parking lot!

The next day was harder after we were about halfway through the drive – very heavy rain. The early rest stops still held some beauty – trees on ridges, violets and spring beauties and dandelions.

It was safe to take pictures of the arch at St. Louis because I wasn’t driving!

The pictures taken at the rest stops in Missouri were through the window because of the rain. For some reason the fire hydrant near a picnic table tickled me.

And then we were at our hotel…glad that the heavy rain did not include lots of thunder/lightning and high winds that had been part of the forecast.

Bidding on a House from Afar

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We bid on a house in Springfield MO from afar (at home in Maryland). It has been accepted and we are starting a road trip to see the house in person – remove the ‘sight unseen’ rider in the bid and get the earnest money to the title company. I am writing the post about how we got to this point. There is a lot that has changed since we bought our current house more than 25 years ago.

I have been looking at houses that came on the market in Springfield MO via realtor.com for more than a year – familiarizing myself with the neighborhoods and the types of housing that were available. When my daughter was looking for houses last spring, I honed my search with her criteria, and she found the house she wanted quickly.

I thought I had my own criteria well defined…but it is only in the past few weeks that I realized that I was getting enthusiastic about houses that really would not work well for us. It was too easy to overlook the number of steps going into the front of house (and from the garage); I knew I wanted as few steps as possible; with this move, my husband and I wanted a house where we could ‘age in place.’ My husband wanted to do astronomy from our back yard. That requirement often seemed to be in direct conflict with an easy-care yard and connection to city water/sewer. I found myself toying with the idea of a larger property with well/septic and hiring someone to keep the yard/field cut. There was about a month when I thought we wanted a house that was all on one floor; I quickly discovered there were not many that had enough square footage and my husband pushed the idea that we needed a basement as a storm shelter since Missouri is back into the part of the country that has violent storms.

I made a trip to Springfield and looked at some houses; a learning experience – nothing to bid on and we needed to get our ‘proof of funds’ letter from the bank organized anyway. Over the past couple of weeks, we kept thinking that more houses would come on the market; there were quite a few but they weren’t perfect matches and many sold very quickly. We did 3 virtual tours – discovering more problems with them than we expected: no good view of the sky, too many steps and sometimes they made the third garage unusable for a vehicle, sloping lots, small closets, etc.

Then one came on the market that looked near perfect. The problem was the only picture of a laundry room showed it in the basement…which meant stairs to do our laundry. We asked if there was a laundry on the main floor and there wasn’t. We rejected the house for about 24 hours. After going to sleep frustrated with the houses available, I woke up realizing that if everything else was right with that house, we’d put in a way to get the laundry between floors. We asked for a virtual tour. Everything else was right….AND there was a laundry chute already in the house which would make it relatively easy to put in a dumbwaiter type device for the laundry!

We worked with our realtor on an offer. They had a system where it could all be done electronically. Our agent sent our offer to the seller’s agent via email. And less that 24 hours later, the offer was accepted. Our focus now is on traveling to see the house, being there when the inspection is done…preparing to move.

The house hunting phase of the process is complete.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 16, 2022

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

Purple gallinule with chicks – I remember seeing an adult purple gallinule on a birding field trip in Florida. Aren’t the chicks cute? Little black fluffs.

Reproductive factors and dementia risk – Hurray! My life events skew toward reduced dementia risk…according to this study.

Macro photos reveal the often unseen beauty and diversity of slime molds – Hmmm…maybe I should hone my observational skills to find these on my next hike…attempt some macro photography of them.

As EV Sales Soar, Automakers Back Higher Fuel Standards – So glad that industry is finally onboard…projecting a ‘we can do it’ attitude. I’d rather society take action…build some optimism into our view about the future rather than being depressed by trends that seem dystopian.

Beginner’s Tips for Identifying Backyard Bird Nests – It’s the nesting time of year! Look…id…don’t disturb!

Ozone may be heating the plant more than we realize – We’ve been concerned about ozone in the upper atmosphere for years (hence the Montreal Protocol) but this study also points to ozone in the lower atmosphere (caused by chemical reactions between pollutants like vehicle exhaust fumes and other emissions) as contributing to climate change as well. Until now, we thought of lower atmosphere ozone as a health problem (I get headaches if I am outdoors on a high ozone day, for example). This research says that it also is contributing to climate change by affectioning ocean heat uptake.

American Lung Association Says EVs Save Lives – Good for our health….and also for the planet. I also noted that where I live now is in the American Lung Associations Tops 10 US urban areas at risk from airborne pollution…another reason to move away from this area!

New Technology Employed to Protect Pompeii – A four-legged robot used to gather data on structural and safety issues.

Flamingo that escaped from a zoo in Kansas is spotted once again in Texas 17 years later – The flamingo is a species from Tanzania….and must be a very lonely bird.

Brain charts for the human lifespan – Normative trajectories derived from over 100,000 MRI scans that allow quantification of individual variation. Figure 1 in the post can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.

25 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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The positivity rates and hospitalizations continued downward but in Maryland they are not down to the lows we go in the summer of 2021 before the Delta variant came along…and then the Omicron spike. Still – most of the mask mandates have been allowed to expire. My daughter reported that at her university there seemed to be a lot of strep and flu infections after the mask mandate was lifted; masks were protective for more than COVID-19! I have continued to wear my mask when I am indoors (at the grocery store and when I waited to get my car serviced, for example). All the doctor’s offices where we’ve had appointments are still requiring masks.

When I made my road trip from Maryland to Texas (via Missouri), I put on my mask at rest stops and when I registered at the hotel…when I went grocery shopping while I was in Texas. I took my air purifier with me too. I was traveling through areas that had higher positivity/hospitalization rates than Maryland and noticed that there were very few people wearing masks. There are some analyses of sewage around the country that have indicated the presence of the omicron sub-variant that is problematic in Europe in the US but, so far, there does not appear to be an uptick in COIVD-19 cases here.

I am masking when I look at houses – both to protect myself and to be considerate of owners of the houses I am viewing. I do as much as I can online before I see the house in person.

The one place I did not wear I mask indoors this past month was at a baby shower while I was in Texas; I’m far enough past the event to know that no one there was infectious!

I still feel vulnerable because of my surgery earlier this year and my recent illness while I was traveling; I am not as confident that my immune system is as robust as it was a year ago; I am continuing my strategy of masking. My husband and I got our second COVID-19 booster soon after the recommendation came out. As we both continue our search for a new house, the vaccine and indoor masking are our risk reduction strategy…at least for now.

Another observation - my husband had an outpatient procedure this past month, and the COVID-19 process was still in effect: they required that I wait in the car for 1.5 hours rather than a waiting room. I was fortunate that I could park in a sunny place since the temperature was in the 30s!

Overall – the pandemic appears to be waning. People are making individual decisions about masking and the amount of masking varies a lot from place to place. This is the new normal?

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 9, 2022

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

Winners of Wildlife Photography Competition Show the Power of Water – Starting out the gleanings list with some eye candy this week.

Personality traits are associated with well-being and satisfaction in life after work – My husband and I have transitioned to ‘life after work’ and seem to have easily established ‘new fulfilling life patterns.’ In an odd way, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped us focus on the most important aspects of those patterns.

A New Study of the Permian Basin – a US oil-drippling hotspot is kicking out far more methane that we thought – I keep thinking that the technology to reduce emissions in the fossil fuel extraction process has improved from the early days. Maybe it has…maybe the hasn’t. The industry may not be motivates. Is it all about maximizing profits for them and their stockholders…everyone else doesn’t matter?

Toad Wisdom – A story of webs of life from the Prairie Ecologist.

European earthworms reduce insect populations in North American forest – Even small invasive species can have a significant impact.

Mapping Inequality – Redlining in New Deal America – An introduction….then downloads and data for maps for urban areas across the US from the 1930s.

Top 25 birds of the week: birds on flowers – Enjoy some photographs of birds…flowers…springtime!

Scents help researchers identify contents of Egyptian vessels – The smells of ancient Egypt!

Norway at new record high 92% plugin EV share in March – Hopefully the EV share in the US will start climbing more rapidly.

“Flash droughts” coming on faster, global study shows – Extreme weather….not all on the wet side.

eBotanical Prints – March 2022

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20 botanical print books browsed in March and added to the list. The month continued the browsing of Refugium Botanicum volumes that I started in February. The publication dates are all from the mid-1800s (1851-1872)….and lots of color rather than drawings.

The whole list of 2,350 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the March 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

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

Refugium botanicum V3 * Saunders, William Wilson; Baker, John Gilbert; Fitch, W. H. * sample image * 1870

Refugium botanicum V4 * Saunders, William Wilson; Baker, John Gilbert; Fitch, W. H. * sample image * 1869

Refugium botanicum V5 * Saunders, William Wilson; Baker, John Gilbert; Fitch, W. H. * sample image * 1869

L'Horticulteur Francais 1851 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1851

L'Horticulteur Francais 1852 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1852

L'Horticulteur Francais 1854 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1854

L'Horticulteur Francais 1855 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1855

L'Horticulteur Francais 1856 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1856

L'Horticulteur Francais 1858 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1858

L'Horticulteur Francais 1860 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1860

L'Horticulteur Francais 1862 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1862

L'Horticulteur Francais 1865 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1865

L'Horticulteur Francais 1866 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1866

L'Horticulteur Francais 1867 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1867

L'Horticulteur Francais 1868 * Henricq, Francois * sample image * 1868

Flore médicale usuelle et industrielle du XIXe siècle T2 * Dupuis, Aristide; Reveil, Oscar; Baillon, Henri * sample image * 1872

Flore médicale usuelle et industrielle du XIXe siècle T1 * Dupuis, Aristide; Reveil, Oscar; Baillon, Henri * sample image * 1870

Flore médicale usuelle et industrielle du XIXe siècle T3 * Dupuis, Aristide; Reveil, Oscar; Baillon, Henri * sample image * 1872

Horticulture: végétaux d'ornement * Dupuis, Aristide; Henrincq, Francois * sample image * 1871

Horticulture: Jardin potager et jardin fruitier * Henricq, Francois; Gerard, Frederic * sample image * 1872

Cherry Blossoms

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Our cherry tree was blooming when I returned from Texas and retained enough blossoms through the rain and wind of my first days back to be worth photographing on the next sunny day. The temperatures were cool (almost cold) which probably slowed down the blooming.

I was most interested in getting macro pictures of the flowers and buds with the clip-on lens my husband got for me in December. There are a few leaves that are beginning to unfurl but the blossoms dominate.

The trees in our yard are progressing in the usual order. The red maple blooming first; that happened before I went to Texas; the seeds are forming now. Then the plum; there are still some battered blooms but there are more leaves than flowers at this point. Both the plum and cherry look better this year because they were professionally trimmed last fall.

The tulip poplar has green buds but will be a few weeks before the flowers open. The leaves are already more visible on the tulip poplars than any of our other trees.

Watching the trees emerge from winter is a rite of spring…always worth observing/photographing.

Coming Home from Texas

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The morning I left Texas, I was up early to treat my bug bites and the sensitive skin left from my round of hives. The bites were my main concern…lots of calamine lotion on them to stave off itching. I did the last bit of loading into the car; my parents woke up a little early to see me off. It was dark when I set out. There was about an hour when the sun was in my eyes after the sun came up, but the weather was crisp and clear - great for driving.

I stopped at a Pilot for a rest stop in Texas (and to get my morning caffeine). The upper part of the wall was decorated with ‘Texas tourist art’.

The part of my route in Arkansas was easy…just a little construction around the cities but didn’t slow me down.

The last rest stop in Arkansas had a tree with a fresh wound…a big branch must have come off recently. .

I crossed the Mississippi into Tennessee at Memphis heading toward Nashville. The drive was easy enough that I talked with my daughter on the phone (through my car) - noticing areas of recently downed trees along the highway and a kettle of birds (I think they were pelicans…certainly were not vultures…at 70 mph I didn’t take my eyes off the road for better identification).

I turned north at Nashville toward Bowling Green, KY which would be my stop for the first night. Overall – I made it to Bowling Green 20 minutes earlier than my car’s projected ETA first thing in the morning! It was a long day of trouble-free driving.

The next morning, I got up even earlier since I was trying to get myself back to east coast time. It was dark when I set out again even though I was on the eastern side of the central time zone. The driving was easy at first. It was a weekday but I managed to miss rush hours in the few cities along the way.

By late morning I was in West Virginia and enjoying the scenery….shortly after a long highway construction/special closure caused a 30 minute delay but the weather was good and the rest stops along the highway were frequent.

After a rest stop that included buying gas as I got close western Maryland – I got a rude surprise: snow and wind. I didn’t stop at the first rest stop in Maryland. It was white knuckle driving by then and continued for about an hour through Garrett and most of Allegany Counties. I was lucky that I68 did not have much traffic and few trucks. Everyone slowed. And we all made it through to Sidling Hill where it was cold but not snowing at all! My car was covered with salt, grit…and melting ice.

The sensor in my windshield gave an error that cleared after I use the wiper fluid/wipers so the adaptive cruise control functioned through it all. By the time I got home I had calmed down a little from the stress from that hour of hard driving. The exhaustion from the two days of driving (or maybe more the last afternoon) set in the next day. I took a long nap!