A 70th Wedding Anniversary

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My parents have been married 70 years this month. We’re celebrating on a smaller scale than their 50th in keeping with the types of gatherings they enjoy now. We’ll be having mini-celebrations spread over several days around one big meal with most of the immediate family. I’m thinking about various perspectives of their 70 years together.

There are contrasts between their growing up  years and personalities:

  • He was an only child of 1 generation US citizens and didn’t speak English until he started school; she had 8 brothers/sisters and many in her family had been in the US since the Revolutionary War (or before).

  • She was gregarious, he was more introverted. That aspect of their personalities has continued with her doing most of the talking!

  • He grew up on a farm and she grew up in town.

  • She had part time work at the drug store in town while she was in high school; at the same time, he was using farm profits to buy land, cars, and an airplane.

  • Going to Stillwater for college was the farthest she’d been from home; he had made road trips to Tennessee and other places.

But some aspects were similar:

  • They went to small town schools where there was only a small group of students at each grade level (she in northeastern Oklahoma and he in western Oklahoma).

  • Their parents had elementary educations, except for my maternal grandmother who had graduated from high school.

  • They were the first in their families to go to college.

  • They were close to their families and sustained relationships with them after marriage.

They spent their first few years of married life in Oklahoma: Stillwater for my dad to finish college, back to the farm in Willow where my dad had grown up, and then to Muskogee for my dad’s job. The following 67-68 years were in Texas: 15 years in Wichita Falls, 21 years in Dallas, and the rest in Carrollton. There were 7 houses during the Texas years. My mother returned to college and got her first degree when they were living in Wichita Falls…her masters after they moved to Dallas.

They started out their life together with a single income but by the 1970s they were a 2-income family to support their 4 daughters through K-12 and then undergraduate degrees.  They retired in their 60s – enjoying grandchildren and travel and participating in various home improvement/maintenance projects.

They are still living independently (with increasing support from their children and grandchildren) in the house they purchased shortly after they retired.

The whole family is benefiting from their example of aging gracefully together!

Finley Park Light Display

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My daughter recommended the drive-through light display at Ozark, MO’s Finley River Park. She had gone with a friend and then had dinner at the Ozark Mill Restaurant on the other side of the river.

The park was not crowded when we got there, and we enjoyed a leisurely drive through the lights – many of them animated.

Ozark is a suburban community south of Springfield…population of about 22,000. Kudos to the community for providing this display!

Our short drive from our home and the park was a good experience too – on curvy two-lane roads in the dark. It provided the ‘over the river and through the woods’ vibe for the evening!

A Different Kind of Vase

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I bought several of the MODGY Expandable Flower Vase back in October when I toured the Museum London (in London, Ontario). They are great gifts because they are flat and light (easy to wrap/ship) – made of heavy, reusable plastic that expands when it is filled with water. What a clever idea! Last week I finally picked the one I would keep – the Louis Comfort Tiffany Field of Lilies vase. When filled with water, it was stable on the windowsill; adding the bouquet was very easy and the cinching at the top makes it easy to position the flowers!

I’m giving away the others I bought…but maybe I’ll order some additional vases. There are so many to choose from on the MODGY site!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 17, 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 2022 Environmental Photographer of the Year Use Art to Tell Important Stories of Our Planet – Photography with a message

Rare good news from the Amazon: gigantic fish are thriving again – Pirarucu, an air-breathing fish that must rise to the surface every 15 minutes or so…can grow to be 10 feet long, weigh up to 450 pounds…are valued for their meat. The fish are making a comeback thanks to sustainable fishing programs in northern Brazil.

Stunning Winners of the 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest – Capturing a place…and a tiny amount of time.

Top 10 Discoveries of 2022 – from Archaeology Magazine

Remains of last surviving Tasmanian Tiger discovered in museum cabinet – Finding and following the trail of an older female thylacine that was trapped and sold to the Beaumaris Zoo in mid-May 1936. She died in September 1936. The zoo transferred her body to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery where taxidermist preserved the hide, and the skeleton was broken apart and positioned on 5 cards. Both hide and skeleton were used by the museum for educational purposes…and then forgotten. They were found recently in a cabinet in the museum’s education department.

Best of 2022: Top Astrophotography That Captured the Beauty of the Cosmos – Quite a few from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Volcanic activity increases worldwide – There are 47 volcanoes around the world that are in ‘continuing eruption status’…more than double the normal. The article includes short videos of several of them.

The rich marine life under frozen ice – Phytoplankton and organisms that eat it….discovered by geologists trying to get a mud core, hitting rock, then seeing organisms when they reviewed what the camera on their equipment recorded!

Top Websites for Urban Planning – 2022 – From Planetizen. This year they highlight an increased attention to the social and environmental outcomes of planning…enabling identification/resolution in the intersections between the built/natural environment and the lives of people.

Exploring a forgotten Jewish Land – The Beta Israel in northern Ethiopia. The 100,000 strong population fled to Israel in the 1980s to escape war and famine.

Maya and US Southwest Archeology eBooks by Earl H. Morris

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A little archaeology from the early 1900s…books available from Internet Archive with great illustrations made immediately after excavations:

Preliminary account of the antiquities of the region between the Mancos and La Plata rivers in southwestern Colorado  (1919)

The Temple of the warriors at Chichen Itzá, Yucatan (plates) (1930)

Earl H. Morris did archaeological field work from 1912 to 1940….contributing artifacts to institutions that supported his work and a myriad of publications until his death in 1956. Both books are well worth the time to browse.

The first book’s pictures of pottery from the southwest reminded me of a visit to the Arizona State Museum’s The Pottery Project room….it was a place to savor shapes and patterns…I spent more time in that room than any other at the museum.

Gardens Aglow

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We walked through the Gardens Aglow event at the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield, MO last Friday. It was a wonderful way to celebrate our first winter holidays in Missouri…will become an annual tradition from now on.

We got there shortly after the opening at 5 PM. There were a steady stream of cars arriving but there were people directing parking which eliminated confusion; it was a short walk from where we parked to the entrance and there was no line although next year I will plan to buy tickets in advance.

My husband and I had enjoyed the Brookside Gardens lights during the many years we lived in Maryland and found ourselves comparing the two displays. The lights in both places used the gardens as a theme and the trees as scaffolding. The lights at Mizumoto seemed brighter (maybe slightly larger LEDs?) and they had more water to use for reflections/dark areas of the display.

In some ways it was easier to photograph the lights this year because the animations were changes in light color within a fixed grid rather than across a space. I liked the wall of color…watching as it moved through a cycle of colors.

There was a weeping cherry in lights; the tree underneath was probably a weeping cherry too!

The arched bridge over a water feature became magical with all the lights and a shed looked like a gingerbread house.

I managed to notice two Japanese lanterns and maybe next year I will try to photograph more of them. They don’t have lights themselves but offer a link to the place that is not as obvious looking at the lights.

There were several butterflies along the way that were photo opportunities…a person could become the body of the butterfly! This was something new to us…lots of fun; I was glad they had a small butterfly too (but didn’t see any children getting their picture taken).

We spent about an hour strolling the loop through the garden…enjoying the lights and happy noises of people around us.

Intentions – What will I do different in 2023?

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At the end of 2021, I wrote down 4 intentions – things I wanted to be different in 2022:

  • Releasing myself from some of my daily ‘metrics’

  • Look for the unique

  • Reverting to a cleaner/neater house

  • Moving to life closer to my daughter

The last one was the most finite and the only one to be marked ‘done in 2022.’ The others are continuing. I was least successful in releasing myself from the daily ‘metrics.’ It worked well for me to do a mid-year assessment of my intentions…so I’ll do the same in 2023. My intentions for 2023 are:

Reliably spend a week of each month supporting my parents in their home (Carrollton TX). My sisters and I are determined to keep them as comfortable and independent as possible…honoring their wishes.

Restart volunteering. The pandemic caused a pause in my volunteer activities. At this point, I have tentatively identified where I want to volunteer…am hopeful it will be as rewarding as my previous volunteer gigs.

Update and maintain my yard. Our first summer in Missouri we hired a yard service. In 2023 I will use my (new) electric mower and mow it myself. I will also begin my project to reduce the amount of grass by planting several native bushes (I am thinking Beautyberry, Oakleaf Hydrangea, and maybe Ninebark). I also will start some perennial beds…maybe a ruff of day lilies around the base of maples in the front of the house.

Make some birding/hiking road trips. We were so busy moving in 2022 that we didn’t do the usual ‘vacation’ travel that we did pre-pandemic. We probably won’t do any airplane travel…but our location in the Missouri is a great starting point for road trips. There is a lot of Missouri that is ‘new to us’ too. The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis will probably be part of one of the road trips.

Attain and maintain ‘normal’ weight. I am close…but a few pounds too heavy. I’ve got into the normal range during 2022 but didn’t maintain it.

Springfield Conservation Nature Center - December 2022

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It was a foggy morning at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center; I opted to do macro and zoomed images rather than landscape compositions…and am relatively pleased with the way they turned out. There are remnants of the native plants in the area around the nature center: berries providing splashes of color along with the subtle colors but interesting shapes of dried plant parts and seeds…

The Beautyberry near the main entrance has wrinkled berries now that there has been more wintery weather.

I took a short walk down one of the trails. Some desiccated fungus on a downed limb was close enough to the trail to photograph.

Another branch had some interesting lichen that seemed to be growing more upward that usual. I regretted that I didn’t have a better camera with me to photograph it.

The other end of the branch must have broken recently…the shape reminded me of an open mouth or cave surrounded my lichen!

I long ago had ago had this stump be cut/exposed. The bark was gone from around the edges, but the rings were still easily visible. I didn’t take the time to count them.

The patches of missing back on a standing tree (probably dead) were probably the work of something looking for insects – maybe a woodpecker?

I started taking macro pictures of tree trunks…realized that it was more interesting if there was a patch of something rather than just the bark; lichen is the most common find…a bit of green and different shape among the crinkles of bark.

As I walked on the path, the floor of the forest was covered with small plants protruding from the thick layer of leaves. I realized that these small plants were an indicator that the area was not overly browsed by deer as so many places in Maryland had been…and a good indication that the native plantings I want to add around my house will survive!

Last but not least – I took one picture looking upward through the winter tree branches. Maybe next month I will do more landscape images from around the nature center….or maybe it will be cold enough to hike down to the water and take some ice pictures!

Kittens! – Month 4

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Month 4 with our 3 kittens…..they are still kittenish but beginning to make cat noises…and always trying something new. Here’s my notes for what’s happened with the kittens over the past month.

Two of the kittens (Sooty and Puma) like the cat hammock that we kept from our first cat. It’s been in storage for almost 20 years because our next cats didn’t like it!

We tried putting up our Christmas tree…gave them time to adjust to it without ornaments. They climbed it, knocked off branches…then got sick. We opted to forego a tree completely this year even though we think now they were sick from something contagious that they all got and then recovered.

When they were sick, my husband let the kittens have the run of the 1st floor (except for our bedroom) during the night rather than sequestering them in their suite….and we’ve continued now that they’ve recovered – keeping the main bedroom and bathroom a kitten-free zone at night. We hear them at the door occasionally. I am the first one out and about in the mornings. I got my camera and photographed the kittens right after I emerged earlier this week: Pooky as in the hallway near a scratching pad, Sooty was comfortable in a pile of jackets my husband had left in a chair after the kittens knocked over the coat rack (damaging it a bit), and Puma was already waiting for my husband at the bedroom door.

It didn’t take long before all three were at the door…Pooky got nervous and retreated to the scratching pad. As soon as the door opened, they all streamed into the bedroom as if they had never been there before.

Sooty is the only one that likes the bathroom sink…and he doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone needing the sink.

When I was in Texas, I noticed some ‘space cats’ catnip toys. The cats will be getting them as part of their Christmas.

Previous Kittens! Posts: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, week 1, week 2, month 1, month 2, month 3

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 3, 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.

Drought hit large portion of the globe in 2021, state of water report says – Bad news for water: the negative trends are stronger than the positive ones.

Bloating common among Americans – I am so glad I discovered that I was lactose intolerant; it’s been relatively easy to change my diet to avoid bloating completely!

Do students really eat that badly? – Yes and no…and alcohol plays a negative role.

Fungi that cause lung infections may be spreading across the US – Infection causing soil fungi Histoplasma, Coccidioides, and Blastomyces – evidently the diseases are more widespread now than in the 1950s!

White House unveils its holiday décor, including 77 trees and ‘We the People’ theme – Getting in the mood for December celebrations!

From Patches to Pies, Illinois Knows Pumpkins – A little pumpkin history…and a satellite image (NASA’s Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager) from after the pumpkins are harvested.

Cranberry bogs in Plymouth County – A satellite image of production of another seasonal food: cranberries! Massachusetts supplies about 25% of the cranberries grown in the US (outpaced only by Wisconsin). The cranberry bogs look pink/red in the natural-color image at the beginning of the article.

We’re told to ‘eat a rainbow’ of fruit and vegetables. Here’s what each colour does in our body – Love the colorful foods!

Effigy Mounds National Monument Becomes a Tribal Sister Park To Ioway Tribal National Park – A new type of agreement….hoping it is a good one for everyone.

How to be a sustainable parent – It’s hard since the most easily obtained products are obviously not and there are no pre-defined alternatives that are more sustainable…aside from buying second hand (i.e. reuse) whenever possible.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2022

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Ten little celebrations for November. Some of them weren’t so little: a 91st birthday, a grandnephew, and Thanksgiving. There was a lot of food involved too. Celebrating November foods is probably my favorite lead up to the crescendo in December and then the beginning of a new year.

A mini-pumpkin – perfect for 4 servings. My sister bought small pumpkins for a table centerpiece; we decided to cook one of them for lunch along with meatloaf. The oven was nicely full. I pricked the skin of the pumpkin before I put it in the oven since I was cooking it intact. After about an hour, I took it out of the oven, lifted the stem off, cut it into quarters, and took the seeds out from the center. Everyone sprinkled cinnamon and added butter to melt into the pulp. All that was left at the end of the meal was the skin! Yummy!

Cranberries. I like cranberries in just about everything: stir fry, sauces for meatballs (combined with tomatillo salsa), chopping as an addition to stuffing, sauteed with apples + butter + cinnamon + honey for dessert. I used to make cranberry relish on the stovetop because I enjoyed watching the cranberries pop as they cooked, but I don’t like the relish as much anymore (too sweet) so now I enjoy cranberries pooping in stir fry or when they are sauteed. I celebrate both their flavor and their color!

Getting 141 bulbs planted. It took multiple sessions in the yard…and I celebrated when they were all finally in the ground. I hope most of them survive the squirrels and bloom next spring!

Leaves – raked, blown, shredded. Mowing is adequate for the leaves at our house but not my daughter’s. She has very large trees and the leaves were thick enough to kill grass. She and I spent an afternoon focused on leaves…and celebrated our accomplishment! The weather cool and crisp for a traditional fall activity …. always helps get me in the mood for the beginning of the holiday season.

A 91st birthday. Both of my parents are 91 years old as of November. Our family celebrates these milestones…enjoying that we still have them with us.

A grandnephew. Celebrating a baby in our family…the 1st one in over 20 years…adds a another facet to our joy during the holidays.

Walnuts. Not sure why…but walnuts have become a favorite this year. I am celebrating all the ways I’ve found to add them into food I am preparing!

Ritter Springs and Neighborhood Ponds. Celebrating the crisp air outdoors…the color of leaves…the frost on the grass.

Thanksgiving. Celebrating a day to appreciate all the recent events of our lives…a prelude to the family events/gatherings of December.

Leftovers. It’s a treat to have great food in short order… prolongs the celebration. I ate too much on Thanksgiving…did better on the subsequent days and maybe enjoyed the food more.

Zooming – November 2022

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18 images in the slide show for November – less skewed toward botanical subjects than recent months. Outings to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, Springfield Conservation Nature Center and Josey Ranch Lake increased my opportunity to photograph wildlife. It was good to see winter and migrating birds…more of those in coming months (probably).

Enjoy the November slide show!

Unique Aspects of Days – November 2022

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I had a hard time picking the top 10 unique aspects of my November days. There seemed to be a lot of firsts happening during the month!

New electric lawn mower. I made a few turns around the yard with my early Christmas present before our yard crew showed up. Next year I will be doing the yard. I will probably do some spot mowing on a warmer afternoon as soon as all the leaves are off the trees – mulch the leaves into the grass for the winter). What a luxury to have clean air (i.e. no gasoline motor fumes) while I mow!

Cooking a big pumpkin. I’ve always bought pumpkins small enough to fit in my oven previously but the one this year was a left over from my son-in-law’s pumpkin carving event and it was large. I had to cut it in half and then cook each piece separately! I baked and made soup with some of the puree but most of it went into the freezer.

A gaggle of Greater White-fronted Geese. The group was migrating through Hagerman on the day that I stopped on my way down to Carrollton. It was my first time seeing this species.

Pumpkin Custard Quiche. I used some of the pumpkin puree from the large pumpkin to experiment with a high protein dessert/breakfast. I used 2 cups of puree, 8 eggs, pumpkin pie spices, sugar, milk, 8 ounces of Swiss cheese and walnuts on top. Each of the 6 servings were about 21 grams of protein….and my parents ate their whole serving! This is an experiment that will likely become a favorite recipe.

1st snow at our Missouri home. It happened while I was in Carrollton, but I enjoyed it vicariously through pictures my husband sent.

2 Bald Eagles soaring above the highway in Oklahoma. What a great sight driving home from Texas. One was an adult and the other a juvenile. No fighting….just graceful flying back and forth above the highway.

Learning to use a blower to create a pile of leaves. I’m very adept making leaf piles with a rake…but was overwhelmed with the leaves in my daughter’s front yard. She had a new battery powered blower. There was a trial-and-error period but then I managed to move leaves around trees and under bushes…and into piles for her to vacuum up with the mulcher. I depleted 2 batteries (good thing she had 3 that worked with the blower).

Rice Pudding Quiche. After the success of the pumpkin custard quiche – my next experiment was with rice pudding. I used the small carton of rice left over after having Chinese takeout to make rice pudding (with milk, eggs, raisins, drizzle of molasses) with Swiss Cheese (making it more quiche like). Next time I will use a bit more milk since it was a little too dense…but it was still tasty (I drizzled some honey over it to make it sweeter). It’s a good way to use up rice!

Cranberry and tomatillo salsa sauce for Impossible Burger meatballs. Our appetizers for Thanksgiving were Impossible Burger meatballs (purchased frozen…heated in oven). I had barbeque sauce and marinara for dipping…then made a third sauce with chopped cranberries (heated in microwave) and tomatillo salsa. All the sauces were warmed just before we tried them. Everyone agreed that the cranberry and tomatillo salsa was a great flavor with the meatballs – and it looked festive too.

Experimenting with Christmas tree decorations. The kittens are changing our thinking about decorating this year. We put our artificial tree up in the center of our living room using an outdoor umbrella stand for the base (to keep them from knocking over the tree). Right now, we are letting them get bored with the tree, but they’ve managed to dislodge lower and middle branches (they climb up around the center of the tree). We don’t want to use hooks to attach ornaments. I experimented putting Beanie babies on the branches and the kittens knocked them all off as they move around the inside of the tree. So – a series of unique experiences that isn’t over yet!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 26, 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.

Battle Over Bears Ears Continues in Utah – I am looking forward to visiting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and hope that their boundaries stay the way the tribes that have used the area for a very long time want. At some point Utah and the counties that are opposing the size will recognize the values of the tribes and country that want to preserve historical, paleontological, and geologic aspects of these places….and that the state benefits significantly from people visiting. The tourism $ may become more dependable and long term than other uses of the land.

Pyramid and Hundreds of New Kingdom Coffins Found in Egypt - An Old Kingdom pyramid, 300 New Kingdom coffins with well-preserved mummies with names of the deceased, and nearby a pyramid to Queen Neith…a previously unknown Queen.

Long-COVID clinics are wrestling with how to treat their patients – Frustrating situation.

Fenced In: How the Global Rise of Border Walls Is Stifling Wildlife – Border walls have increased since the end of the Cold War! This makes climate change an even bigger challenge to mammals…because they cannot move to better habitat if there is a border wall in the way.

Baby's vaccine responses linked to birth delivery method, study finds – Babies born via Caesarian section have lower antibody levels after vaccinations than babies born naturally.

Scientists Discover More Than 22,000 Endangered Manta Rays off Coast of Ecuador – Larger than any other Manta Ray population.

A Massive Freshwater River Is Flowing Under Antarctica’s Ice – It is flowing at 3 times the rate of the Thames. This finding helps understand some problems with existing models…hopefully it will allow for model updates to predict the impact of warming more accurately on Antarctica’s ice.

A Field Guide to Jackrabbits – Hard to see denizens of the western US (and Mexico).

France Looks to Mandate Solar Panels Over Large Parking Lots – Good idea…maybe it will begin to happen in the US even without a mandate.

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies – Hope cities can learn to use LEDs like Tucson…not overuse bright white LEDs.

Josey Ranch – November 2022

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Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was the birding highpoint of my last road trip to Texas, but the big ponds at Josey Ranch are too convenient to not visit every time I am in Carrollton. I was rewarded with even more wintering birds than I had seen in October.

American Coots. There were a few last month…more were on the water in November.

Northern Shovelers had arrived. There were actively feeding. They are easy to ID with their ‘shoveler’ bill.

Lesser Scaups were also new in November.  There markings and bill color are distinctive – nothing drab about the birds even in winter.

American Wigeon would be prettier on a sunny day (with the iridescent green swipe on their heads)…but I wanted to document their presence at Josey Ranch even if the day was cloudy.

Ruddy Ducks were around last month. There didn’t seem to be as many this time. I had thought they were just migrating through but maybe some of them stay around.

Mallards are year-round residents. I photographed three birds….feeding in the shallows (2 males and a female). I watched for several minutes; at no time were all three heads visible!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 19, 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.

Energy crisis: How living in a cold home affects your health – The coming winter is going to be very difficult for many – particularly in Europe.

Parks of the 21st century: new ways to reinvent abandoned land – Parks always are signs of hope…the greening of places that might have been eyesores in the past. I wondered how much toxic remediation had to occur for some of the sites they described; its encouraging that we can clean up the messes we’ve made in the past!

Alcohol caused one in eight deaths of working-age US adults – The data used from the analysis was pre-COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, the CDC has released data for 2019 and 2020 and it shows a larger-than-normal 26% spike in the alcohol-induced deathrate. In 2020, alcoholic liver disease and mental/behavioral disorders were the leading underlying causes of alcohol-induced deaths. Sad numbers….lots of people and their families impacted.

A field guide to the unusual raptors of the Southern US – I was pleased to see the snail kite in this article – a bird I saw on a birding trip to Florida in 2019.

Farmers in China, Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice – Very positive results. Hopefully we will eventually have perennial forms of other grains (wheat in particular).

The weirdest places you can find wild turkeys – Wild turkeys have made a comeback since the early 1900s…a restoration success story. Part of the Thanksgiving vibe this week!

Breast cancer survivorship doubles – An analysis of Canadian data from the 2007-2001. The study also highlighted the long-term side effects in these survivors…the need for new therapies to improve the health of women after surviving breast cancer.

Permanent Standard Time Could Save Lives, Explained by A Sleep Expert – I don’t like changing to/from daylight savings time; before reading this article, I didn’t care which one we chose to make permanent. Now I am convinced that we should stick with standard time! There are too many negative health impacts to staying on daylight savings.

How to avoid bad choices – The article is about the research on how to teach children ‘decision-making competence’ – not just a measure of raw brainpower but how well someone is able to appraise situations. There are many approaches but the goal is to get children and adolescents to start thinking about risk and danger in a more analytical way….on the way to adulthood.

Blind spots in the monitoring of plastic waste – The amount of plastic waste in rivers could be up to 90% higher that previously assumed. The current measurements are mainly based on surface observations…but plastic can be suspended or sink! This study tracked 3,000 particles from 30mm to larger objects like plastic cup. Knowing where the plastic is helps guide where clean up would be the most effective.

Donald Maxwell Illustrations

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Donald Maxwell was an English writer and illustrator active in the first third of the 20th century. This week’s free eBook selections are 5 of Maxwell’s self-illustrated books that are available on Internet Archive:

A dweller in Mesopotamia (1920)

Unknown Kent (1921)

The Last Crusade (1920)

Unknown Essex (1925)

Unknown Sussex (1924)

These are easy books to browse for the illustrations which are a mix of line drawings and color plates. Enjoy!

Ritter Springs

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Ritter Springs is a park near Springfield MO – north of the city in a rural area. It was our first visit to the park (one of our exploratory day trips this fall). There is a one lane paved road a short distance into the park then a gravel parking lot. A gate blocked the gravel road down to a pavilion; near the gate there was a map of the park and its connections to other nearby parks via trails.  

The park would have been a lot more scenic a few weeks earlier before most of the leaves fell. When we were there, drives of leaves accumulated everywhere…filling any low areas.

Even so we enjoyed our walk through the woods along the road and on mowed trails – looking for photo opportunities. I spotted shelf fungus that were bright spots in the fallen leaves,

A buckeye butterfly in a sunny spot,

The torn end of a recently fallen branch,

Some red leaves still on a young oak…protected from the wind by the bigger trees,

And a tree top full of cones.

But probably the tree I got most excited about was the Osage Orange. The tree had a very limited range in pre-colonial North America but has been planted by settlers as a hedge where its thorns deterred free-range livestock from vegetable gardens and corn fields. It also has historical significance in plains states where is was widely planted in rows for windbreaks. This time of year it is easier to identify the trees with their huge fruits….or simply looking up after seeing one of the greenish orbs on the ground. There are a lot more of the trees in Missouri than in Maryland!

I took a closer look at one of the fruits.

Next time…we’ll go further into the park…maybe even all the way down to the Little Sac River!

Our New Neighborhood – November 2022

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The fall in our neighborhood peaked very quickly. It was already fading by early November but I still enjoyed trying to capture the remnants as I walked around the stormwater ponds. There were some leaves in the shallow water in the trough of concrete that feeds water into the ponds. I stopped to take some pictures looking down from the bridge.

And a few colorful leaves are still on the trees.

The oak leaves were thick at the edge of one pond…some wild asters growing through them…floating on the top of the water. I didn’t notice the fish swimming from under the leaves and water plants until I looked at image on my computer screen!

A red eared slider poked its head out of the water a little further away.

On the loop back toward my house, noticed a little color on along the path

And some brilliant red seedlings at the edge of the pond (will they survive to become trees?).

Josey Ranch – October 2022

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The work to replace the decking on the boardwalks around the cattails end of the lake at Josey Ranch has been completed.

The damage to the concrete walkways from the drought and the maintenance trucks is still there and is evidently not going to be repaired anytime soon.

My visit toward the end of October was later in the morning, and I didn’t see as many birds as usual. There was one female grackle…not the larger crowd that used to be at there all during the year with raucous calls.

The Great Egret that I see almost every time was still there.

The Snowy Egret was new this time. It was on the other side of the lake in the grass at first then moved to the new decking on one of the boardwalks. The wind ruffled its feathers.

The swans were asleep on the bank.

There were a lot of white feathers in the water and in the grass. I took a series of pictures. Many of the feathers looked relatively fresh, and I wondered if they were from normal preening or a disaster that befell some white bird.

I saw some small birds on the water and walked closer to see them. The Ruddy Ducks were either passing through on migration or maybe they will stay for the winter!

These are diving ducks so it takes some effort to photograph them if they are feeding!

As I walked back toward my car, a turtle was poking its nose out of the water. The lake has been cleared of snags that the turtles could use for sitting on cool days, unfortunately.

Overall – the winter birds had not shown up yet at Josey Ranch by late October. I expect to see more in November.