Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.
There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!
Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!
Springfield Botanical Gardens is one of my favorite places; I will try to go at least once a month for the rest of this year. We went on a sunny cool day in the late morning. The sky was almost clear and the light was very bright….making for some ‘almost high key’ pictures of the blossoms on a tree growing close to where we parked.
There were other trees/bushes in bloom as well.
The maples were already making seeds (i.e. past blooming). The seeds were still colorful.
Spring bulbs were still blooming….
But I was more interested in the new growth all over the hosta garden. It will be very lush this summer.
I took some pictures of the garden mosaic…carefully avoiding getting my shadow in the picture.
Lenten roses were blooming. My daughter has some in her yard too. They do seem to grow well but I tend to not like them because their blooms face downward.
There were birds in the gardens too. Lots of robins. We heard a brown thrasher and then saw it high in the tree….too high for a good picture. I did get a picture of a blue bird though!
My husband was very tolerant of my walking around to take pictures even though he didn’t see anything he was interested in photographing. He seemed very intent on macro photography….and didn’t see any opportunities. I find that the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) is good enough to take some ‘almost macro’ pictures without being close to the flowers (or birds) at all!
A recap: My sisters and I started our journey ramping up elder care back in November. At first we thought we were being proactive in our conversation about ‘next steps’ with my parents’ doctor….but, less than a week later, my mother was critically ill and in the hospital. I spent the next 7 weeks in Texas. My mother managed to recover enough to come home before Thanksgiving even though she needed a lot of support at home. We hired caregivers to assist her at night through December and moved my parents to an assisted living group home just before the new year. As we worked to get them settled into the assisted living routine, we started a surge of effort to get their house cleared and on the market; the sale was finalized at the end of February. Both parents responded favorably to assisted living and decided they wanted to go out to eat occasionally rather than having special meals via take out as we had done for them at their house. In mid-February, they became sick with COVID…my dad first; he got Paxlovid and was recovering. My mother tested positive a few days later; her doctor adjusted her meds and she got Paxlovid; at first her case seemed even less symptomatic than my dad’s; the staff at the group home thought her breathing was wheezy one afternoon (even though my mother did not think she was having breathing problems) and sent her to the hospital via ambulance; she died 2 hours later.
The last few weeks have been busy ones. We reconfigured my dad’s living space from two rooms down to one and are in the process adjusting the assets my mom and dad accumulated to support his long-term care. As I write this, I realize that we have already settled into a ‘sustaining’ rather than ‘ramping up’ mind set. It isn’t that we won’t evolve what we do based on my dad’s needs…but we have a framework that will stay the same: the assisted living group home…daily visits from family….out to eat several times a month…walking in the neighborhood when the weather is good. Right now, he is still adjusting to not having mom around all the time; she was there for him for over 71 years. We are grateful to the staff of the assisted living for their increased attention. He still has times when he looks lonely…but he is talking more than he did when mom was around to talk for him.
Going forward, my trips to Texas will be quick ones – drive down and visit with dad in the afternoon before I head to my hotel, drive home the next day. Sometimes I will visit with dad in the morning before I drive back. I have done 2 of these trips so far in March. My sisters are there more frequently because they live closer than I do – one is there almost every day, another comes 2-3 times per week, another once or twice a week. Along with taking him out to eat, we put out his clothes for the next day, work on a puzzle with him, accompany him on a walk, help him find something that he lost (his wallet with his id and he glasses tend to go missing).
My sisters and I have had conversations about how much we have accomplished in the past few months – having to adjust very rapidly. We are not exactly relaxed at this point, but the stress level is dramatically lower!
Previous posts: November 2023, November 2023 update, December 2023, January 2024, February 2024, March 2024 (1)
Sometimes I get in the mood for macro photography. It has happened several times this month.
The first was at my mother’s funeral. I was thinking about the bouquet of daffodils/narcissus that her neighbor cut from their old yard (with the new owner’s permission) and decided to take some macro views of the flowers while we were waiting for the service to begin. I thought about all the joy my mother experienced with her garden…with the flowers growing there and the ones she cut to bring inside. And that she transmitted that joy to her daughters.
The second round of macro photography was when I trimmed some low branches from one of my pine trees and decided to take a closer look at one of the branches.
Pine cones are so sturdy….they are hard on my lawn mower…but there is a fragile aspect to them too. At close range they are wrinkled and folded and etched.
The bark on a small stem shows where needles once grew and the expansion of the stem making brown islands in gray green.nce.
The bud at the end of stem looks reddish surrounded by green needles. Once again – I realize how much color there is that is unnoticed until we take a closer look.
The last macro photograph is one my daughter sent via text when she visited the Memphis Botanic Garden recently. She knows how much I enjoy finding fiddleheads….and evidently had caught the macro photography bug too. These were interesting because of the felt-like covering that must have protected them until they started to unfurl.
My daughter enjoyed a boat tour of Sequiota Cave (in Springfield, Missouri’s Sequiota Park) last spring and encouraged us to sign up when they were offered this year. They only do the guided tour a couple of weekends in the spring and fall – leaving the cave to the roosting bats for the rest of the year. The instructions were to ‘bring your own headlamps’ so we grabbed our headlamps that we have for astronomy nights/emergencies.
It was my first visit to the park, and I was a little disappointed that Galloway Creek was dry. It has been channelized in the area near the cave entrance with abutments and concrete additions. There was a bumpy area of concrete that might work to slow the water a bit.
The buds on some of the young trees near the sign-in pavilion were colorful close up.
We picked out hardhats (which seemed to be fall squash colors!) and flotation vests and gloves for our visit to the cave. The boats were loaded at the mouth of the cave; they held 4 people (including the guide). Our guide worked for a non-profit associated with water quality and was volunteering for this event. I appreciated his comments about the cave and its water quality (and the water quality of the region).
As we entered the cave, my husband took a picture of the mouth of the cave with the truck/trailer that brought in the boats.
The cave is not pristine in the sense that it was used as a fish hatchery in the 1920s and the mounds that were once mushroom beds are still visible. The water course has been cleared (probaby would not have been navigable by boats originally). Nubs of metal from old infrastructure are still visible. But the cave features are in great shape – still actively growing…unbroken…no algae growth. There are not any blind cave creatures; if there ever were any, they didn’t survive the fish hatchery days.
But there are bats. The ones in residence during our tour were tri-colored bats – roosting alone. They are very small….but stand out because they are often darker than the cave walls (the bat is to the right of center in the picture below). There is a colony of endangered gray bats that roost during their migration that number in the 1000s. We’ll go in September to see their nightly exodus from the cave!
This might be my favorite cave tour! I liked it because it was not as commercial. The only light was from headlamps. The tours happen infrequently enough that there isn’t algae or moss growing on the cave features (although there was fuzzy white mold growing on poop from racoons that wonder quite a way into the cave). Spotting tri-colored bats was a great challenge during the tour. The water flowing through the cave made for lots of drips….but also added to the ambience of being in a cave now being left alone most of the time.
My March visit to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was on my way home the day after my mother’s funeral in Dallas. I needed the healing of being out in a natural place like Hagerman. There were the usual male red-wing blackbirds proclaiming spring and their territory. Several times I could see males spaced out over the landscape…a visible cue for the size of their territories.
There were American wigeon, gadwalls, northern pintails, and American coots on the water in small numbers. A neotropic cormorant was enjoying the warming sun on its wings. Some birds had probably already headed north.
There was a group of 2 great blue herons and a great egret in sentry mode. They must have already had their breakfast because they didn’t move while I was watching.
A vocal cardinal perched in a tree near the road.
I had two favorite birds of the morning: a killdeer that was posturing in a field just as started down the wildlife loop road (it looked like it was signaling something…but I don’t know what) and
A female common goldeneye…the first I had seen at Hagerman. This bird would certainly be moving north soon since most of their breeding area is in Canada and Alaska!
I continued home…glad that I had made the effort to photograph birds at Hagerman.
Our last field trip at the Whooping Crane Festival began with another early morning because we had to drive to the place (taking the ferry to cross from the barrier island). We arrived just a few minutes before the gate at Fennessey Ranch was opened for our tour group (not the first in line but not the last either).
I took a few pictures in the soft morning light: prickly pear cactus with brambles and a bird house, the layered reflected color of sunrise with the moon, and then some mourning doves in a nearby tree just as the sunlight hit them.
We waited a bit for the trailers with haybales for seats to arrive; we would tour the ranch in the trailers pulled by a pickup truck.
A few minutes into the tour there was a song sparrow in sunlight surround by mossy limbs.
I found photography from the trailer even more difficult than the bus at King Ranch. We did see wild turkeys and a bobcat…..but I wasn’t able to get a good line of sight with my camera. The bobcat was very hard to spot until it moved!
I did get some good shots of two crested caracaras high in a tree. Were they a mating pair? The birds tend to be solitary except with their mate and offspring. Since I was almost under the birds…I took a picture of the talons.
There were a few wildflowers blooming.
One of the places we stopped included some sandhill cranes in the distance. There were feral hogs near them, and the birds flew off when the hogs got too close. The ranch does sponsor hunts of feral hogs…hopefully lowering their numbers.
The ranch has nine linear miles of river frontage on the Mission River. We stopped at a place where there is a blind and feeder. Only cardinals came to the feeder the morning we were there.
I opted to photograph more wildflowers and a post emerging from the water with what looks like barnacles (I forgot to ask if the river was tidal).
I also looked at the bank on the opposite side…lots of vegetation to the river’s edge in most places although there were places where cattle probably came down to the river. The bank on our side of the river was much steeper. It would be interesting to see the flood model for the ranch.
The Fennessy ranch field trip was a good winding down for our festival attendance. I learned that hayrides on trailers behind pickups over bumpy roads are hard on my back…probably won’t do that again. We headed toward home. I was looking forward to Czech pastries in West, Texas on the second morning of the road trip back to Missouri.
We signed up for a shorebird identification field trip for the third afternoon of the Whooping Crane Festival. We got on the bus after lunch and, it turned out, spent the whole session at Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center…which was fine with us since we had wanted to return there. We spent less time with the guide and just enjoyed all the birds at the place. There is a lot to see; the boardwalk makes it easy to see birds without disturbing them. The shallows are a popular place for them to feel secure enough to rest and bathe…and snack.
American white pelicans – in a big group or singles.
The common gallinule was near the alligator (again). I decided to take close up views of the feet (very long toes).
A black necked stilt wondered along through other species…looking aloof.
The green-winged teals were bathing…preening.
Grackles were bathing and preening too….or making raucous noise in the reeds and glaring at my camera.
A pied-billed grebe wandered near the reeds…hiding in plain sight as usual. Once I noticed the bird, I took a series of pictures as it found lunch.
A northern shoveler snoozed…another perched on a post in the water.
Ibis preened and stretched their wings.
I took a series of images of a bird in the shallows…thoroughly cleaning its feathers. It takes a series of contortions. The bird appeared to be enjoying the water!
A blue-winged teal showed the blue on its wing when it bathed.
Now for some group pictures. They are good for size comparison and ID practice. The first has 2 black-necked stilts and a male northern shoveler.
The second had a black-necked stilt and 4 American avocets.
The smaller birds were easily startled and would explode up into air…circle and return very close to where they were before the panic.
There were neotropic cormorants seemingly content to just sit in the sun.
There was a tricolored heron that seemed to be posing for pictures. I couldn’t resist!
The alligator did not move at all in the several hours we were there!
Overall – the place lived up to my expectations; we could have done it on our own rather than with the bus/guide. I am beginning to understand better that we have learned enough about birding to leave more free time to during festivals…or go early/stay late.
The last field trip of the festival would be the next morning at Fennessey Ranch.
We were at the dock for the 7 AM departure of our boat on the third day of the Whooping Crane Festival.
I took a few pictures before we boarded – the moon over the harbor area.
Our destination was the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where Whooping Cranes feed in the marshy/shallow areas…only visible via boat and it took over an hour to get there from Port Aransas. We passed familiar areas early on and saw a group of American white pelicans, morning light with moon setting over the shore, roseate spoonbills and white ibis in the distance, and the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse.
Then we entered an area that was different than our previous tours and more open water…with occasional platforms with cormorants and great blue herons hunkered in the chilly morning wind. There was a tall bridge as well.
Then there started to be a lot of small islands full of birds: Cormorants, great blue herons and brown pelicans. One area seemed to have a lot of great blue herons and I wondered if the island was their roost. There were also groups of laughing gulls. (Click on the small images to see a larger version.)
And then we started seeing Whooping Cranes. Even at a distance – they are easy to identify because they are so large…and so white. The young are rusty looking – particularly their heads. Many sightings were of 3 birds: 2 adult birds and a colt; it must have been a good year for increasing the whooping crane population!
There were other birds to see too between whooping crane sightings – roseate spoonbills, green-winged teals, willets, American avocets, more great blue herons, buffleheads, cormorants, an osprey, and reddish egret (that took off as a wave covered the spit of shells the bird was standing on).
I took some closeups of some shells…out of the water at low tide.
I also realized how wakes of boats impact the shoreline…why there are often blocks on the shore to reduce the erosion wakes can cause. It doesn’t take a big or fast-moving boat to cause damaging wakes in smaller channels.
And then we took a break as we headed back to Port Aransas – no more photos until the jetty with the usual brown pelicans.
We got back to the dock with plenty of time before our afternoon field trip for lunch; we then headed back to the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center.
Our second day of the Whooping Crane Festival continued with another boat tour after returning from the King Ranch and a quick lunch. The afternoon emphasis was on bird photography. The difference was subtle. The guide did suggest some settings to accommodate photographing in the very bright environment of a sunny day. I opted to take the normal opportunities to photograph birds as usual…but then took some photographic challenges too.
I started before we even boarded the boat. Grackles were taking snack packaging out of a trash can. The female seemed to be unimpressed with her partner’s antics.
I attempted to get a double-crested cormorant taking off from the water…managed to capture the form and splashes of water but the eye doesn’t show….plenty of room for improvement.
There were terns (probably common terns) diving toward the water for fish. I tried pointing my camera in that direction and pressing the button to take multiple pictures in fast succession. It was hard to hold the camera still as the boat moved! The shape of the bird as it nears the surface of the water was something I couldn’t study until I looked at my pictures on a bigger screen. This was my first attempt at photographing feeding terns!
The back of a white-tailed hawk – the only sighting of this species of the trip. It isn’t a great picture in the traditional sense….but it does tell a story. The bird was sitting in dead mangroves; the mangroves died during very cold weather a few years ago and recovery is slow; hurricane damage to the Aransas area would be even worse than before if one comes through before the mangroves can become established again.
The birds always seemed to be a little further away than optimal…and the boat was rocking. But I took pictures anyway: white ibis, little blue heron, osprey, great egret, and great blue heron. I tend to take photographs rather than make notes about what I am seeing…it’s easier with the camera already in hand!
And then there were the reddish egrets… with their pink and black bill.
And finally one started foraging…moving rapidly in the shallows. It seemed to veer off suddenly…something there that the bird didn’t expect?
I took group pictures of birds on small islands in the water…always interesting to see how many I can identify on my big screen later. In the one below, I see brown pelicans (adult and juvenile), American white pelicans, cormorants (double crested probably)…all in the foreground.
As I zoomed in on birds that were not in a group I noticed a black skimmer and some Caspian terns.
It’s always a thrill to see a bird I would not have seen without being on a birding field trip like this red-breast merganser. It was a single bird…swimming rapidly away from the boat…and I probably would not have noticed it without someone pointing it out. I’m not sure it was the guide or another participant that noticed it.
The same was true for another black-crowned night heron. I photographed one on the King Ranch in the morning! I was pleased that I was able to find and focus on the bird more easily than many of the others on the boat.
The light began to change as we neared the end of the day. There were enough clouds to try a non-bird landscape shot of the water the sky…a bit of land at the horizon.
I changed a setting on my camera to try an artsy image of a cormorant and the shore as we came back toward the dock.
And then the boat stopped just before we got to the dock….for dolphins. I couldn’t top my husband’s dolphin picture in the bow wave of the big ship, but it was fun trying to anticipate when they would surface!
And then one last picture before we got off the boat! It was a great second day at the Whooping Crane Festival. The next morning was an early one….getting on a boat at 6 AM to see Whooping Cranes in the Aransas National Wild Life Refuge. We headed to the hotel for an early evening to be ready for it.
The second day of the Whooping Crane Festival started early; we got on a bus to head to the King Ranch at 6 AM! The King Ranch Visitor Center was a little over an hour from Port Aransas (and we did not take the ferry). By the time we got there the sun was up.
We had a ‘rest stop’ at the visitor center…plenty of time to look around for birds. There were curve-billed thrashers on some prickly pear cactus.
A rufous hummingbird was not bothered by the sudden influx of people. It stayed in place long enough for everyone to get a good look.
Mockingbirds were around too….they are the state bird of Texas.
A golden-fronted woodpecker was spotted. It moved around a lot but there always seemed to be twigs between me and the bird!
Then we did most of our viewing from the bus for a bit since the ranch is so big…and the trip has a limited amount of time. I managed some OK pictures through the windows: a roadrunner and crested caracara….
Longhorn cattle.
We made a stop and saw a group of sandhill cranes in the distance.
Back on the bus…we had been seeing American kestrels all morning and I eventually managed to get an image of one through the bus window…good enough for id but focus not sharp enough.
A group of female wild turkeys moved away as our bus got closer. Later we would see a group of male turkeys.
Another raptor through the bus window…a red-shouldered hawk.
The bus stopped at a water impoundment…and we all got an excellent view of an American Bittern.
There was a feeding station for birds at the next stop. We got good looks at red-winged blackbirds and gold-fronted woodpeckers…
And green jays!
There was a least grebe in the water a little ways down the road.
A snowy egret had caught breakfast.
Green-winged teal, pyrrhuloxia, and American Coots were also enjoying the water.
Alligator!
A Great Egret took off as the alligator headed toward it.
In the distance….Cinnamon teal with blue winged teal and a black necked stilt.
A great kiskadee made an appearance.
A black-crowned night heron is often hard to see in heavy vegetation. I always feel lucky when I finally see it and luckier still to get a photograph.
And the male turkeys were the last birds we saw as we headed back to the visitor center.
My husband and I both enjoyed this field trip…saw a lot of birds that we didn’t see during any of other field trips. It was interesting to learn a little history of the King Ranch as well. We had enough time for a quick lunch before showing up for trip out on a boat in the afternoon.
The second activity of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a Sunset Dolphin Cruise…in the late afternoon of the first day of the festival.
The angle of the sun made the water look bluer that it did earlier in the afternoon. There were plenty of brown pelicans about.
The moon was visible in the clear sky…above shoreline construction cranes.
Cormorants were using structures further above the water than earlier in the day.
I took several pictures of the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse as we passed by.
The high point of the trip was dolphins surfing the bow wave of a big ship coming through the channel. My husband managed to get a picture of three leaping out of the water!
By the end of the cruise the sun was sinking fast into the haze.
We headed to the hotel to rest up…be prepared for the early start of our second day at the Whooping Crane Festival.
The first tour of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a birding-by-boat tour of Mustang Island on our first afternoon in Port Aransas TX. It was a sunny day…perfect temperature for the tour. We saw cormorants as we left the dock area for the main channel.
The bird sightings included a first for us: the white morph of the reddish egret. They are distinguished from other white egrets/juvenile herons by the pink and black bill. We saw more white morphs than the usual more numerous dark morphs! One of the images has a little blue heron along with the white morph of the reddish egret…for size comparison.
A yellowlegs was searching for food in the shallows. It is hard to judge the size. Does the bill look long enough to be a greater yellowlegs? Not sure.
There seemed to be a lot of great blue herons as well. The wind was blowing enough to ruffle feathers.
A white ibis strolled near the shoreline.
A pelican on a post kept our boat in view.
A ring-billed gull was also enjoying the view from a post…did not seem as keen to turn as our boat moved past.
Turkey vultures were doing cleanup on a coyote carcass. There is some trash in the background. I try to avoid taking pictures of trash. The area was relatively clean, but trash is inevitable even in wild areas within water or wind distance of developed areas.
A little blue heron looked very intent on something in the water…ignoring our boat.
The osprey swooped in…and missed!
The cormorants with white outlining their yellow chin are neotropic cormorants. There was a group of them on a sandbar as we went by. Most of them stayed facing the sun but a few looked our way!
Port Aransas is on a barrier island with a ferry to cross the channel. Our tour boat went past the ferry crossing…a different perspective than when we were on the ferry in our car!
On the way back to the dock, we passed the jetty again with gulls and pelicans….and a royal tern.
Tomorrow’s post is about the sunset dolphin cruise that was the finale of our first day at the Whooping Crane Festival.
We had registered for the Whooping Crane Festival months ago…and managed to attend it between my mother’s death and her funeral. Being out in nature at a birding festival was a healing activity. It helped that my husband did all the driving. We made the drive from our home in Missouri to Port Aransas TX over 2 days. We started out before sunrise…
The clouds gradually dissipated into whisps before the sky cleared entirely.
I enjoyed trying to take pictures as we went through Dallas…not something I get to do very often because I am usually driving.
We stopped near Austin for the night. We got to Port Aransas early enough for lunch and to visit Roberts Point Park. There were groups of brown pelicans and cormorants easily viewed from the park. I liked the pelicans at rest…images in high key.
There was a snowy egret on the rocks showing off his yellow socks. When I looked at my pictures on my larger monitor, I noticed that there are yellow strips on the back of the legs!
There were large ships visible in the channel.
We also visited the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center…quickly realizing that we’d have to return when we had more time.
There were black-necked stilts – with their striking black and white bodies, straight black bill, and pink legs.
Blue winged teals flashing iridescent color as they preened.
A very sedentary alligator was lolling below the boardwalk (although with its eye open).
A common gallinule was feeding nearby.
A group of American white pelicans were preening in the shallows.
A larger group was on the shore.
Green winged teals preening in the shallow water…or lazing on the shore.
White ibis were in the area…sometimes feeding together and sometimes in small groups.
We were there in the early afternoon, and it surprised me that the light made the water color and shadows so artsy for this grouping for birds – snoozing and preening. At this moment they must have all felt very secure.
Just before we left, I tried to get a picture of the whooping cranes that were feeding in the distance – an adult and colt (with brownish feathers on the head and parts of the body). These are the birds we came to the area to see. All the other birds are a big bonus!
We headed for our first field trip…a Mustang Island boat tour (the topic of tomorrow’s post).
Internet Archive has a Fine Art History collection that includes slideshows of works by many artists. I browsed the slideshow for photojournalist Marilyn Stafford after reading about her death (at 97) last year. She photographed well-known people…fashion….people on the street…refugees – a wide range over a long life. She was born in Cleveland, OH but moved to Paris as a young girl then settled in London. She traveled the world – particularly Tunisia, India, and Lebanon. The slideshow is well worth the look. How many people do you recognize? Which photos are the most thought provoking?
I am always a little surprised at how easy it is to record something I celebrated every day…and how it is sometimes hard to pick the top 10 near the end of the month. The habit probably has helped me be more resilient to whatever is not going well….and appreciative of how fortunate I am.
A warm day to get the naked lady bulbs and iris rhizomes planted – Actually there were two Feburary days that were warm enough; I used one for planting in my yard and another for planting in my daughters.
Getting a full price offer on my Parents house – This was another double celebration since the offer and the closing happened in February.
Earl Grey tea – I seem to forget how much I like it…then celebrate rediscovering it.
Home again – After the many weeks away late in 2023, I find myself celebrating each and every time I arrive back home.
Out to lunch with my parents – I celebrated that they both were enthusiastic about going and that they ate well at the restaurant for lunch….and wanted their leftovers for dinner!
Snow suitable for patterns – Making patterns in the snow has been a treat this winter….celebrating my second attempt that benefited from my prior experience and the snow being wet (made the pattern I walked stand out more).
Pintails. I celebrated the picture of a pintail at Hagerman….one of my best so far this year.
Married life – Being married for over 51 years is something I often take for granted but, for some reason, I found myself celebrating more this month – that wasn’t even my annual anniversary. Having the long term relationship…a person that I know well, and that knows me well…is fundamental to the way I feel about just about everything else.
Port Aransas Whooping Crane Festival – Celebrating our first multi-day festival since COVID…more on our experiences in upcoming blog posts.
Parents’ house ready for new owner – Lots of coordination with my sisters…and physical work…celebrating that we got everything cleaned out before closing.
My mother died a little over a week ago. She was in her 90s and frail…had survived some significant health challenges over the last decade; I thought I had internalized that her death could happen at any time, but it surprised me. It happened very quickly.
My thoughts are still jumping all over the place…
I am savoring the last times I saw her a little over a week before her death – taking her and my dad out to lunch at a new restaurant, talking to them while they ate breakfast the next morning. She had gotten her hair cut and styled by the woman that had done it for the over 40 years recently and was looking great. They both seemed happy. Good times!
One of my sisters cut some of the Japanese quince and added it to a bouquet of other flowers a few days before her death; I am so pleased that my sister did that since Mother had always cut some from the bush in recent years…the first flowers of spring.
She was a very organized person and passed that along to all her daughters along with practical knowledge of households. She went back to college when I was a teenager….started her career as a teacher before I graduated from high school. I’ve always thought of her as a near perfect mother figure. When I had my own daughter….I knew what kind of mother I wanted to be.
My mother was in my life for over 70 years….it might be one metric I won’t be able to duplicate with my own daughter (I will be 105 when she is 70).
My mother recognized how introverted I was very early on. When I wanted to stay in the car while she went into the post office or store, she encouraged me to go in with her. She sent me to ‘charm’ school. She volunteered for my Camp Fire Girls group. She encouraged me to apply to Up with People (and travel during my junior year of high school). She introduced me to her female college professors to expand the role models I had. I will never be an extrovert…but I do have a lot of people skills that were developed even before I entered the workforce and began to get ‘management training.’
There are little lessons that I’ve learned from my mother more recently about aging gracefully:
Cut flowers from the yard are wonderful (require developing a yard for flowers). Buying cut flowers is OK (but second best).
Family pictures that are easy to see frequently should share space with art.
Regular exercise is important….using as many different muscles as possible.
Following instructions for physical therapy and medication is important but can be a challenge.
Splurges are OK…in moderation.
One of the things she said as part of her greeting when I arrived for a visit was ‘I am so glad you are here’…and she repeated that each night as she headed back to her bedroom. Maybe that is one of the biggest lessons of all….to appreciate the people around you and let them know that you do.
It’s been a busy month with 2 trips to Texas and then a flurry of activity when I was home in Missouri. I tried to take breaks for photography…even if they were very short! There are pictures from my parents’ house in Carrollton that has been sold, Josey Ranch in Carrollton, Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, and snow at home. Enjoy the February 2024 slideshow!
The last work trip I made to empty storage areas from my parents’ house before the sale is finalized at the end of the month, was mostly about how to donate, reuse, or trash what was left. I did notice that the Japanese quince was starting to bloom. My mother’s favorite color was orange when I was growing up; the color of the flowers is probably why the bush was purchased…why my mother cut the early blooms to bring indoors.
As I cleaned out the storage areas there were only a few items I decided I could reuse. One was a very large clip board (shown with a standard sized clipboard for comparison). There were two of them. I chose to take the one that had remnants of paint around the edges; one of my sisters took the other. I assume my mother used it when she was taking art classes at the local community college, but she doesn’t remember the large clip boards at all.
There were 4 pieces of Masonite in the pile of wood that we were putting at the curb for pickup (the city does curbside pickups on Friday in their area…but often the items are picked up by others and taken away before the city trucks come). The pieces were lighter in color than the clipboard; I decided they would work as Zentangle tiles…that could be hung together or separately.
Another find – covered with dust – were some vertical blinds. At first, we thought they might be from the window treatment in my dad’s old office – but the ones there are very different. I opted to take them to use as Zentangle tiles as well – probably using the smooth side rather than the textured. They have a hole in the top that makes them easy to hang from a nail (maybe a decorative one).
Now I have taken the moving blankets out of my car; they worked well for all my trips to Carrollton in January and the first weeks of February. The house and storage areas are empty. My parents’ house is ready for a new owner.
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.
Surprisingly vibrant color of 12-million-year-old snail shells – Polyenes (includes carotenoids) preserved almost unchanged…and found in fossils.
Asbestos: The strange past of the 'magic mineral' – Asbestos was woven into textiles fit for kings and used for party tricks. One 18th-Century philosopher even slept in a night-cap made from it. It was also used to make the funerary shrouds for monarchs; because it didn't burn, it helped to keep their ashes separated from the rest of the pyre. An account from Ancient Greece describes a golden lamp made for the goddess Athena, which could reportedly burn for a whole year without going out and had a wick made from "Carpathian flax" – thought to be another name for asbestos. In 1899, an English doctor recorded the first confirmed case of a death linked directly to the material – a 33-year-old textile worker who had developed fibrosis of the lungs. In the UK, all asbestos was banned in 1999, but much of the asbestos added before this date remains in place – as buildings degrade, it is posing a significant health risk.
Rise of Peru’s Divine Lords – Hilltop sites in the Andes…early examples of divine lordship - a form of leadership that would endure in Peru for more than 1,000 years.
Amid Record Drop in Fossil Power, Europe Sees Wind Overtake Natural Gas - The E.U. power sector is undergoing a monumental shift - fossil fuels are playing a smaller role than ever as a system with wind and solar as its backbone comes into view. Coal generation fell by 26 percent, while gas generation fell by 15 percent.
Student Design Competition: Integrating Solar and Agriculture - Some 2.8 gigawatts of agrivoltaics exist across the U.S. Many combine solar energy with pollinator habitat and sheep grazing. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is looking for new design proposals from graduate and undergraduate landscape architecture students to push the agrivoltaics envelope!
The Moon Is Shrinking, Causing Moonquakes at a Potential NASA Landing Site - Researchers examined data on moonquakes detected by lunar seismometers, which have been on the moon since Apollo program astronauts left them there more than 50 years ago. They also used mapping data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to identify the telltale creases on the moon. Through modeling, they linked these faults to seismic activity.
Texas Reservoirs Reach Dangerous Lows - In Corpus Christi, on the south Texas coast, authorities last month stopped releasing water aimed at maintaining minimum viable ecology in the coastal wetlands, even as oil refineries and chemical plants remain exempt from water use restrictions during drought. On the lower Texas coast, the Rio Grande has not been flowing consistently, and Colorado River water releases have been minimal as that river faces shortages farther upstream.
Extreme Birding: Gull Watching at the Landfill - You can find gulls around North America (and many parts of the world), including in interior states. At least 28 gulls can be seen in North America, with additional vagrant species showing up from time to time. Individual species look different depending on age and other factors. A gull goes through three feather molts in its first year.
Poisonous Seed Stash Discovered in the Netherlands – Black henbane contained in a hollow goat (or sheep) thigh bone sealed with a plug of black birch bark…from AD 70-200.
Ocean Sponge Skeletons Suggest a More Significant History of Global Warming Than Originally Thought - An analysis of six sea sponges—centuries-old creatures with an internal chemistry that holds secrets about climate history—points to global temperatures already having increased by 1.7 degrees Celsius due to human activity --- that’s more than scientists currently agree upon….so there is a flurry of activity to corroborate the finding.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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