Gleanings of the Week Ending August 22, 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.

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.

2020 08 IMG_1477.jpg

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

30 Years Ago – August 1990

/

30 years ago – in August 1990 – my daughter and her cousin were getting close to being a year old. My sister’s family traveled from Texas to Maryland so that the girls could spend time together. Both babies were cruising…but not walking yet. We planned outings that they seemed to enjoy. At the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum the babies interacted with each other as well as their surroundings. They were wheeled around in strollers.

1990 08 img093.jpg

At Brookside, they rode in back packs – taking in the sights and sounds of the gardens.

They enjoyed homemade elephant shaped cookies for a special treat.

After our company left, it was still a busy month with me getting ready to go back to full time work. We bought a new car for me – a Honda Accord – that we owned for long enough that my daughter remembers it.

My parents in Texas were in the process of moving to a new house…trying to get it done before my mother started the school year (teaching middle school).

As I looked at the pictures and read my notes about the month – it was obvious that we were adjusting…getting more acclimated to what it was going to be like with me putting in more hours at work. It still was not easy. I was missing spending as much time with my daughter and my husband was figuring out ways he could help more. We were both experimenting with new routines…but realizing that we’d made positive changes since July.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Sweet Potato Sprout. I found a sweet potato sprouting in my pantry…and broke off the sprout before cooking the potato. The first picture is the way it looked on the day I put it in water….2 days later it has roots! I am going to wait until it has a green leaf before planting it out in a cleared place in the front flower bed. It won’t have enough time to make sweet potatoes before frost, but I should get some tender salad greens (leaves and soft stems)!

“to be continued” Zentangle® Tiles

/

My new Zentangle project is a challenge to myself – to stop partway through creating a tile….then wait a few days before finishing. I have created 18 partially completed tiles (see below). I will ‘complete’ them over the next week or so using a different color ink….so I can distinguish the two parts.

I tried for variety in the types of patterns and they are not all ‘half’ done…some are more and some or less. It’s feels good to try something different!

--

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.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Registering for the (virtual) Hawai'i Island Festival of Birds. I registered for the festival that will be held October 15-19 with virtual explorations and presentations from the Big Island. It’s free! My husband and I weren’t birders when we made our trip to Hawai’i in 2015, so this is an opportunity to learn a little bit about the birds there…and think about another trip to the island…maybe to attend some future year of this festival.

Dryer repair. Our dryer stopped working a week ago. The repair person came and determined the correct part to order. The part should come and the repair completed in another week. We did a load of clothes that we normally hang up to dry; there is no problem with having enough clean clothes. We are starting to use old and guest towels. So we are not desperate….yet – and likely it will be repaired before we have any big inconvenience.

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.

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.

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.

20200807_100249.jpg

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.

gina_part-2000000000041291_.jpg

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):

01z9a 20 08.jpg
86 20 07 (9).jpg
92 20 07 (4).jpg

London (1913 and 1916)

94 20 07 (1).jpg

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.

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.

2020 07 IMG_0551 (26).jpg

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

2020 07 IMG_0551 (15).jpg

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

2020 07 IMG_0777 (6).jpg

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

2020 07 IMG_0875 (37).jpg

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.

2020 07 IMG_0688 (4).jpg

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:

45 20 07 (26).jpg
51 20 07 (80).jpg

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!

2020 07 IMG_1113 (9).jpg

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:

2020 07 img001 (12).jpg

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.

20200728_060551.jpg

Walk at Mt Pleasant – Part 2

/

Continuing from yesterday’s post…..

2020 07 IMG_0875 (36).jpg

I took the wide path across the meadow toward the rock wall. I wanted to photograph the tree within a tree – a maple that has roots halfway up the trunk. I came to the shady side first. What a difference the sun makes! I think the early morning sun on the other side made for the best picture I’ve ever taken of the tree.

I also took pictures up and down the stone wall from that point…uphill (the way I was heading) and downhill (where  I had come from….the path I’d used to cross the meadow being the break in the vegetation on the upper right side of the second picture.

The rock wall is always an opportunity to talk about local geology…and lichens and mosses…and what might live in a rock wall. Of all the places at Mt. Pleasant, the rock wall was where I missed the field trips with children the most.

2020 07 IMG_0875 (41).jpg

I got back to the gravel drive and walked toward the Honors Garden. I stopped to photograph the flowerpot people in summer garb and remembered hand made ‘hook’ on the black smith shop.

The witch hazel that was blooming back in December (yellow petals like streamers) now has green immature seed pods. I’d never though to look closely at the small tree in front of the main building this time of year…so it was the first time to photograph the seed pods at this stage.

I got to the Honors Garden. The small pond near the entrance almost always has frogs. This time of year, they are green frogs. They were visible in and near the water. I walked around and then started hearing them – a rubber band chorus of 2 or 3 frogs. I went back for more photos.

There were lots of flowers, of course. I was somewhat disappointed that there were not a lot of butterflies. Maybe it was not quite warm enough for them to be active. The Joe Pye Weed was not quite blooming yet. The light was still great for photography. I liked a backlit fern; the stems contrast dramatically with the fronds.

2020 07 IMG_0875 (51).jpg

And then I spent time trying to photograph an orb weaver spider web! It was a good finale to my morning walk.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Air quality alert. I’m glad I enjoyed some extra time outdoors yesterday because today there is an air quality alert and I will stay indoors. It turns out that the alert is  not about ground level Ozone….it’s particulates (PM2.5) based on the Maryland Department of the Environment site. Our alerts come from Maryland now rather than the EPA because of Maryland’s higher standard of air quality – the desire to warn groups that are susceptible to air quality health issues. It seems like during the pandemic, everyone would need this type of information.

Walk at Mt Pleasant – Part 1

/

I got up at my regular time and was out of the house a few minutes before 6; the sun was up but it was still very much the ‘magic hour’ for photography when I got to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant Farm. There were only two other cars and I didn’t see any other people around before I headed out on my walk. I hadn’t been there to walk around since back in January….completely missed the spring which I usually get to observe many times as I volunteer for school field trips that come there…but not this spring. I noted a sign about social distancing and no large groups. The picnic tables looked so pristine and lonely. There would be plenty of space of a group of 10ish to eat lunch far enough apart; it would look odd to me since I am used to the school groups that often ate there after a field trip and were almost always more than 100 people.

2020 07 IMG_0875 (1).jpg
2020 07 IMG_0875 (2).jpg

On a positive note – the orchard has fruit this year. In 2019 a late frost caused all the blossoms/newly forming fruit to fail. I thought it might have happened this year too but there are fruits on both the pear and apple trees. The pear might not have edible fruit (I think they are usually bigger by this time)

But the apples have a lot of green fruit that will be begin turning red soon.

The door to Montjoy bar seemed to not fit as well as they did at one time…they sag a little. I wondered how long ago they were painted.

2020 07 IMG_0875 (5).jpg

The trumpet vine was growing profusely over the arbor near the children’s garden. Insects were enjoying the flowers. I made the mistake of walking under it and a bee flew around my head for some distance beyond. Not sure why I was attractive to the bee.

There were lots of meadow plants in bloom – horse nettle, thistles, Queen Anne’s lace, bindweed, a pleated mushroom. Something to photograph at every turn.

I’m not usually keen on landscape pictures but there was mist coming off the ground and it added dimension to the contours of the land. The sun had been up for about 45 minutes. I could already tell that the mist was burning off as I walked…could feel the high humidity.

The bird houses have been refreshed and painted. The background paint is a light blue and then natural things are painted over the blue. It’s a nice change in the meadow even though I also appreciated the old natural wood houses with occasional patches of lichen and moss. There is a sign on the pole cautioning to stay away because they are tree swallow homes. I wonder if they put the signs on after they knew it was a tree swallow using the house rather than a bluebird.

The meadows looked very lush and growing wild. The place looks more overgrown than most summers…and I think it is more than not mowing as much. There are not as many people around. There are even ripe blackberries in the meadow than haven’t been picked. During previous summers, the campers ate blackberries as soon as they were ripe!

The stream seemed to be running more in the channel closest to the beach area rather than the one we used to think was the deeper one. It was running slowly…the last rainstorm already mostly drained off.  It felt a cooler down at the stream in the deep shade.

Most of the milkweed was past blooming with tiny seed pods forming although I did find two flowers– one in the meadow and one in the garden area near the flowerpot people. Both had interesting insects:

Milkweed beetles meeting each other – moving around quite a lot….another insect further down that didn’t move during my picture taking.

There was a bee on the flower in the other garden. I watched it as it went to several small flowers – trying to avoid bee butt pictures!

The rest of my hike report in tomorrow’s post…

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.

20200723_095520.jpg

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.

2020 07 IMG_0818 (2).jpg

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.

2020 07 IMG_0818 (1).jpg

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!

2020 07 IMG_0818 (3).jpg

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!

2020 07 IMG_0818 (11).jpg
2020 07 IMG_0818 (13).jpg

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

2020 07 IMG_0818 (12).jpg

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:

20200723_130423.jpg

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.

30 Years Ago – July 1990

/

30 years ago, in July 1990, we made our first trip to Watkins Glen State Park in New York. Our daughter was the perfect size to enjoy the Gorge Trail in a back carrier. My husband and I traded off climbing up the stairs. She enjoyed putting her hands in the water falling from overhead ledges and was excited with the larger amount of water when the trail went behind a waterfall.

1990 07 img967 (3).jpg

Staying in a hotel was exciting for her too. She was not walking yet but pulling up frequently. Being in a strange bed for the night made it hard for her to fall asleep…but she still woke up at her regular early time (6 AM).

I was working three days a week and beginning to realize how hectic things were going to be working full time in the fall. I felt pulled in a lot of directions and exhausted on some days. It helped to have the house cleaners come every week rather than every other week and have my husband help clean up after dinner….but I was still somewhat anxious about the transition.

My daughter was easier and harder to feed all at the same time. She liked peanut butter and rice cake ‘sandwiches’ and finger foods….but also was being very clear about the things she didn’t like. We were trying to encourage more solid foods, but she was a baby that liked her formula/milk.

1990 07 img967 (4).jpg

She was getting more coordinated at more than eating. She liked to drop things over the side of her play pen…and then indicate that she wanted them back.

1990 07 img967 (6).jpg

Overlaid on everything was the evidence that my rearranging in May and June to make the house safe for the baby was paying off…even though I was still making tweaks…discovering some areas I hadn’t thought about before. She found the cat door to the basement stairs very quickly; I opted to block the opening since it appeared that she would be able to wiggle through it.

1990 07 img967 (5).jpg

The muffin/cake pans, the skillets and plasticware were perfect height for her inspection. I hadn’t thought about the scattering of items on the kitchen floor….and having to always clean them right before use. I decided to put some baby latches on some of the cabinets but the drawer under the stove was always available for her to open.

I padded the brick hearth with an old area run and some cushions. The cat liked the arrangement as much as the baby did.

1990 07 img967 (7).jpg

I was preparing for my sister’s family to visit in August; her daughter is a week older than mine and they were both coming up on the 1 year mark.

My parents were in the process of buying a new house…a local move in the Dallas area. And they are still living in that house today!

Overall – a month that our family rolled with the changes of developing child and my going back to work…building our resilience to cope with the anticipated challenge of me going to full time work in the fall.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 4, 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.

Utah’s arches continue to whisper their secrets - GeoSpace - AGU Blogosphere – A study to measure arches to hone 3-D models from the Geohazards Research Group at Universe of Utah. The 30 second video of the model showing how Moonshine Arch moves is worth viewing.

Will the world be quieter after the pandemic? - BBC Future – I know I appreciate having a quieter environment; it’s an aspect of the pandemic that has been positive. The quiet is one of the things I like about my Prius Prime when it is in EV mode. Maybe some of the new norm will involve choices to maintain, as much as we can, the quiet.

Exposure to air pollution impairs cellular energy metabolism -- ScienceDaily – A study from Finland – exploring how particulates impact the olfactory mucosa (a neural tissue located at the upper part of the nasal cavity…the first line of defense against inhaled agents). As I read the article, I wondered if this is the tissue impacted my COVID-19 in people that lose their sense of smell when infected….and also, does wearing a mask filter enough particles to give the tissue a break from other air pollutants.

Renovations Reveal Rare Maya Murals Hidden in Guatemalan Home | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – From a colonial home in a mountain village.

Bird feeding helps females more than males -- ScienceDaily – The female cardinals are at my bird feeder much more frequently that the males in both winter and summer. This study doesn’t really point to a reason for that. I’ve always thought that other than the males dominance getting food first….the females might need more food at certain times….when they are laying eggs, for example.

London Foxes Show Early Signs of Self-Domestication | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – “Domestication syndrome” – shorter snout and smaller brain.

Painted Vault Revealed at Villa Near Pompeii - Archaeology Magazine – There are new discoveries because they are excavating a part that has not been studied before.

Marine Biologist Braves Cold Water to Photograph Little Known Sea Creatures – Creatures of the ocean….many so delicate they can’t be studied in a lab. Alexander Semenov is a marine biologist and photographer working like a 19th century naturalist, but with 21st century technologies.

Plot Brewing To Blanket US In Solar Panels + Pollinator-Friendly Plants – A beginning…. building hope via steps in the right direction. This article coincided with the MACCEC conference earlier this week. I ended the week more optimistic that the ball is in motion for many ‘drawdown’ actions.

Fish Eggs Can Survive a Journey Through Both Ends of a Duck – The study in this article was done with common carp and Prussian carp…. but what about other invasive species. If most types of fish eggs can survive the duck’s gut - it is bad news for efforts to stop the spread of invasive fish species.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Thinking about the first women in my family that could have voted. Women have had the right to vote in the US since 1920 – we’re celebrating 100 years this year. My sister and I have been talking about our great-grandmothers (and maybe the great-great grandmothers too). It’s interesting to think about what it was like in 1920 in our family; they were all citizens by then…although one side of the family were immigrants or children of immigrants.

We wondered if their relationship to immigration and obtaining citizenship would have made it more likely that they would have voted. One of them was divorced with her children teenagers or older; she was educated in Europe before she immigrated. Did her oldest son go with her to vote? The other great-grandmother might have voted as well; she had 3 daughters in 1920 with the youngest being 8 years old (there would be one more after 1920) and they lived on a farm…but went into town often enough. My grandparents from that side of the family always voted, so there’s a reasonable chance that their mothers did to.

One of the things I learned during the recent conversations, is that the grandparents on the other side of the family hosted the local polling place in their garage in the 1940s! That’s an indication that voting was important to them and that could have been passed down from their parents.  One of those great-grandmothers ran a boarding house (around 1920) so she was aware of things going on in town and would have had easier access to the polling place. She insisted that her daughter finish high school a few years later which might indicate that she was attune to the changing role of women more broadly.

I like to think that maybe all 4 of my great-grandmothers voted in 1920…their first opportunity to do so.

Pinning the Day

/

Does it matter what day it is? During this time while we are still not leaving home very often – there are fewer things that prompt us to keep track of which day it is. Some are self-imposed:

  • We do the laundry on Saturday. It is a habit not a requirement at all.

  • I do the grocery shopping on Thursday. Since I retired, that has been the day most of the time. It’s changed slightly now to every other week rather than weekly.

  • I call my parents on Tuesdays. My calls used to be ad hoc and sporadic…but I opted to set an item on my calendar to remind me as the pandemic stretched on.

Then there are the calendar items that are externally determined. These are the ones that are so reduced at this time.

  • The time slot for our CSA share is Wednesday afternoon…every week until the end of October.

  • The two-day Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference virtual sessions are 2 days later this month.

  • The Climate and Sustainability Webinars are every other week through the end of August.

And that is all that is on my calendar! There are the recycle (Wednesday) and trash (Friday) that prompt us to remember the day of the week; they are not on the calendar and, so far, we have remembered them. I guess that is an indicator that we are still syncing with the calendar – pinning the day – even as we have less interactions that demand that we do so.

In general, I think we are more focused on the present…enjoying whatever we are doing now and for the next few hours…savoring our time today rather than thinking about the weeks ahead. There is an appeal I haven’t experienced all that often in my life.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Watched Stonehenge’s Summer Solstice Livestream. English Heritage had a Facebook Live event from Stonehenge. The summer solstice is a big event at the stones each year, but the pandemic has forced its closure…so this was a great opportunity to see the event without traveling! There was thunder and birdsong…and the stones. I clipped a couple of images from the sunset as I watched. Hopefully they’ll make the video available for playback from their Facebook page.

Gleanings for Week Ending June 20, 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. Note: I am skewing toward the visual with the collection this week. There seemed to be a lot of them as I was looking through my feeds.

Mesmerizing Video Shows Swimming Feather Star  - A short video of a beautiful organism…aptly named.

Photographer Reveals the Beauty of Beetles Through Macro Photos – An intersection of science and art…a visual treat.

Woman Sets Up Backyard Bird Feeder Cam to Capture Feathered Friends – A more sophisticated bird cam that the one I have….it’s a kickstarter at this point.

Top 25 birds of the week: June 2020 - Wild Bird Revolution – Celebrating birds (there is another ‘top 25’ this week as well)!

Breathtaking Photos of the Milky Way Shining Above Bioluminescent Water – Awesome night landscapes.

Fisherman Finds Suspected Medieval Statue in Spanish Riverbed | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Maybe with the faces removed? The story behind the statue still TBD.

Top 25 birds of the week: Birds in Flowers! - Wild Bird Revolution – Birds and flowers…probably my favorite group of  the ‘top 25.’

Molecules that reduce 'bad' gut bacteria reverse narrowing of arteries in animal study: Promoting a healthy gut microbiome may be a powerful strategy for lowering cholesterol and other heart attack risk factors -- ScienceDaily – Eating differently could help…but eventually we might take ‘medication’ that helps us reduce or eliminate the unhealthy gut bacteria even if we are not as mindful about what we eat.

Study Suggests Human Relatives Were Genetically Compatible - Archaeology Magazine – Using genetic distance values to predict that hybrid offspring of Neanderthal and Denisovan would have been health and fertile…and thus explaining why modern humans have traces of their DNA.

Travelling for pleasure: a brief history of tourism – A little history lesson of travel…..more of a virtual experience right now rather than planning to travel anytime soon.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Still life. The petals are falling off the bouquet that I bought at the grocery store over 2 weeks ago. I like the curves of the petals against the pattern of the scarf I have on the tabletop.

Eggs with garlic scape. One of my favorite ways to have eggs….and only available during the early weeks of the CSA. This ‘first time for the year’ was for lunch with some left-over corn muffins I made a few days ago. Dessert…a few hours later was the last of the strawberries I got at the CSA.

Just being in the outdoors. I ate breakfast and lunch out on the deck. It felt a little cool for breakfast – made worst by the very cold breakfast smoothie - and then warmer and muggy by lunchtime. This month I have been intentionally spending more time outside and broadening what I am doing there…it is not just about lawn work or hiking or nature photography…I am reading and interacting with the cat and writing blog posts (i.e. making the covered part of the deck a ‘room’ of our house). The point of it all is to just be outdoors. The only negative would be if I was allergic to something, but it seems that most of the pollen that bothers me is not around right now. All I am experiencing is the positive.

30 years ago – June 1990

/
1990 06 img917.jpg

Thirty years ago – June was a busy month. I had rejoined the work force part time and my daughter was adjusting to day care very well. The high with her in June 1990 was her enjoyment of a small swimming pool. The first time was a little too cool for her, but she still liked being outdoors and in the water. The next time was warmer and even better.

The low with her was a trip to the hospital early one morning when she had croup. I held her in the vapor tent, and she got better…enough that they didn’t have to medicate her. There were evidently other children with the same problem that night. We were all very hungry for breakfast when we go home.

I picked 7 pounds of strawberries at a farm that is now a housing development. It only lasted a couple more years after 1990.

We had a chipmunk that came up to our deck. My mother-in-law put out seed for it. The baby and the cat were intrigued by the rodent’s antics.

We were on the wait-list for a senior living facility for my mother-in-law…hoping that she would get in before I went back to work full-time and she would be alone in the house too much of the time.

We were primed for a bit of travel in early July….a weekend away for a road trip.

Unique activities for yesterday:

More pictures from Texas. Since I had yard pictures from 2 of my 3 sisters, I asked the other sister for a picture and she sent more than one: sunflower, lantana, hibiscus….and a bunny!

Then she realized that there was more she wanted to share: lavender hibiscus, blue salvia, dusty miller, and red yucca.

Her yard probably has less grass as the years go by! She has quite a riot of color.

Grapevine Wreath

/
20200612_072333.jpg

When I was working in the front flower bed, I found a wild grapevine growing up through one of the bushes. It’s native but not growing in a place I could let it continue. I pulled it out but instead of carrying it back to the brush pile with the blackberry vines and grass and weeds….I kept it…thinking I would make a small wreath. I’d learned how in some class I had taken over 30 years ago; simply coil the vine and then twist until it holds the coil.

20200614_IMG_0208 (1).jpg

I got busy with other things and didn’t remember my plan until the next day. It occurred to me that it would be its most flexible before it dried. When I examined it more closely, I realized that it had some small branches of the bush I had pulled it from; its tendrils were stronger than the twigs’ attachment to the bush. I untangled the twigs and then began the wreath making. I opted to make the wreath with the leaves intact – knowing they would dry up and be easily crumbled off before I would add a red bow or a sprig of holly next December. Of course – I might decide to put a red, white, and blue bow on it for the 4th of July.


Unique activities for yesterday:

20200615x085442 clip.jpg

Pretty fly. It seems like every time I take a quick look at the front flower bed there are different bugs to photograph. This one was on the milkweed. I only got one picture before it flew away. The black lattice of the wings and the red of the eyes are quite striking. I used my usual technique: taking the picture with my cell phone as close as I could focus then clipping the part of the image I wanted to show with more magnification.

Fallen day lily. Sometimes the color deepens as the flower ages. The day lilies I brought inside are on the second round of flowers. The flowers start out a robust yellow and then are almost orange when they are ‘spent.’ This dried one is from the first round. It detached itself as the second round started.

2020 06 IMG_0208 (3).jpg

Cardinal nestlings. My sister sent me a picture from her house in Texas. The nest is in a boxwood by her front door! Now that we are all at home more, we have time to savor these natural events.

Glee 2020 baby cardinals.jpg

Magnolia blooming. I love to photograph the big white magnolia flowers, but we don’t have a tree in our yard. My sister in Texas has one…and took a picture!

tresa_104202821_10223724792246921_9098036963062871152_n.jpg

Gleanings for Week Ending 6/13/2020

/

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.

Why some older adults remember better than others -- ScienceDaily – The article seems to be more about the technology that enables these studies….hints at findings that may eventually be actionable.

The World’s Forests Are Getting Younger and Shorter, Research Finds - Yale E360 – This article is a little confusing. It says that ‘climate change is altering the age and structure of the world’s forests’….but it’s more than climate change. It’s also land use decisions (like logging , conversion to agriculture, introduction of invasive species) that have changed the forests. I was disappointed in the article although the last sentence seems obvious: “We as a human society are hitting these forests so rapidly with so many different changes that they can’t keep up.” Now the big question is – what are we going to do about it?

Remains of 60 Mammoths Discovered in Mexico | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – North of Mexico City.

Photographer Captures ISS Transiting the Sun in First Solar Photo Shoot – A challenge…requiring lots of planning, practice….and then success!

Top 25 birds of the week: LBBs - Wild Bird Revolution – Little brown birds…. they are everywhere.

Ancient Roman Mosaic Floor Unearthed Beneath Italian Vineyard | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Finally returning to a site first discovered in 1922 and making this find within a week of starting excavations. The mosaic floor is well preserved a few meters below the vineyards surface and is thought to date from the 3rd century AD.

The Infant Gut Microbiome and Probiotics that Work | The Scientist Magazine®  - Evidently the infant microbiome has changed in the past 100 years…even among breastfed babies. And maybe that explains some of the immunologic problems in young children. There are indications that the probiotic helps babies nutritionally and immunologically.

Two bacteria allow spittlebugs to thrive on low-nutrient meals -- ScienceDaily – One of the bacteria uses aerobic glycolysis to process glucose to synthesize 7 essential amino acids plus 2 biproducts that the other bacteria uses to create ATP to produce 3 additional essential amino acids. It’s a similar two cell type process used by cancer cells.

An Encounter with Mating Gopher Snakes – Springtime out in nature…. this article from Idaho.

The gilded mummy of Lady Isaious | Egypt at the Manchester Museum – A Graeco-Roman Period mummy from the 1st century CE.

Unique activities for yesterday:

45u 20 06.jpg

A large Zentangle tile. I printed a page (on card stock) from The genera of the plants of the United States illustrated by figures and analyses from nature by Asa Gray and Isaac Sprague published in 1848 available from Internet Archive.

2020 06 img910.jpg

Then I used the lotus as the ‘string’ for an 8.5x11 Zentangle tile. Like most strings….it mostly vanished. It took me about three days working for short periods of time to finish. Next time I’ll use more colors so that the botanical print ‘string’ remains more visible.

--

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.