First Snow this Winter

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Our first snow of the season came this week…and it was about 6 inches that fell from the wee hours of the morning until about noon. The temperature hovered around 30 degrees.

I did little photography projects throughout the morning. The accumulation between 7:30 and 10 AM shows in the pictures below.

I stood in the open garage door to photograph the scene from the front of our house about sunrise while it was snowing heavily and leaned out to take a close picture of the holly growing at the corner of our house.

Later I went out on our covered/screened deck and opened the door to take pictures of the sycamore – old leaves, tangle of branches, and the snow clinging to the texture of the peeling bark.

The snow was sticking to near vertical surfaces of the deck.

I did some experimental pictures of the maple and a cedar through the screen (the screens were catching snow too). It made a counted cross stitch effect!

I heard a wren singing when I was in my office and looked for it…found it under the bench…and watching for a space at the feeder to open.

I also noticed some crows cleaning up around the base of the feeder out in the yard.

My husband too a picture of the deck. The feeder was periodically full of birds throughout the morning!

I made our traditional peppermint snow ice cream after most of the snow had fallen…skimming off the top layer of snow into a big bowl and then adding milk, pieces of peppermint candy, sugar, and vanilla. Mixed with my electric mixer. Yummy! I was not as successful at another traditional activity: photographing snowflakes. At first it was too warm and then it seemed like the flakes were all breaking on impact with my chilled plate. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the next snow.

My Office

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My office is my favorite room in the house. The view from the large window is the forest from 3 stories off the ground – a wall of green in the summer, a tangle of bare branches in the winter. From my Swopper chair, no other houses are visible; if I get up and move closer to the window  there is a house to the back left visible and if I turn more to the left there are more houses in the distance. This time of year, the beginning and end of the day are in darkness and the view from the window is inky dark unless the moon is shining; it’s a special morning when I see moon-made shadows on the floor before I turn on the light.

At the being and end of the day, I like to create an island of light rather than having a bright light (picture below). The vaporizer (far left) has a color feature that has it glowing sequence of muted light: red – yellow - green – blue – purple. There is a light bar across the top of the right monitor. If I need more light, I turn on the lamp behind the laptop with a button on the Power Controller that is under the laptop.

I have honed my set up over the past year. The right monitor is always used for my browser and for picture editing. The laptop (in the middle) is used for Word…usually one document although sometimes I am working on more than one. The left monitor is mostly for spreadsheets although it has File Explorer, email, and the Your Phone windows running as well. The keyboard and mouse are wireless…intentionally not the largest of their kind.

There is a stand that charges my phone and three pairs of glasses around the bases of my monitors along with an adapter to read my camera’s SD card from my laptop. All the other connections (external drives and scanner) are partially hidden by the monitors….a chaotic mess of cables!

I’m feeling good about my home office at the beginning of 2022!

Macro Photography (indoor)

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I got a new macro lens for my phone over the holidays – a Kase Smartphone Macro Lens. It comes with wih a U-shaped clip which didn’t fit over the phone + case so I am using the clip that also came in the package. I leave the lens attached to the clip and store it in the small bag that was also included.  The advantage of this lens is the increased distance from the subject (i.e. I don’t have to get as close…a very good thing if the insect has a stinger!). It is a little heavier but, so far, it seems to be easier to hold the phone and lens steady…no tripod required.

My first experiments were indoors around the house. I started with flowers I’d bought recently. My favorite of this group is the yellow rose.

The acrylic yarn of my 40+ year old crocheted chair blanket shows how long lasting the fibers are! A macrame hanging my sister made is the same vintage. The material is twine-like and I wonder if she had to wear gloves while she was making it.

Some images printed on paper are pixelated when magnified…others are not.

Peacock feathers are like abstract art in macro view.

I looked at the way different surfaces with patterns appear in macro: pulp paper (Zentangle with Sharpie ink), plastic, an ivy ceramic coaster (I never noticed the yellow mark in the pattern before), a bamboo back scratcher handle…a joint of the stem, and a clear plastic ribbon with a gold pattern.

Two objects with inlay: a box and an earring. On the earring, the black piece that looks like the arms on a clock…is (unmagnified) a bird flying over a landscape.

And continuing with some other earring…small objects made large with magnification.

1st Morning of 2022

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Every year – I am looking out at sunrise on New Year’s Day…capturing the view. This year the scene was foggy with heavy clouds. It was so dim I used my camera ‘night view’ setting to take my pictures. The oak in front of our house (normally part of my sunrise pictures), was my main subject – standing in my open garage door because it had started to rain.

The sensor in the light near our front walkway still sensed that it was dark!

The forest behind our house (to the west) was even darker….no reflected dawn light. The fog was more visible in the forest.

So – not a beautiful start to 2022 but I am rationalizing that we need the rain; it has been relatively dry recently and every growing thing needs water. The weather will turn much colder tomorrow…more what we expect this time of year. We are still waiting for our first snow and the colder weather in the forecast is dry for the next week or so at least. Hopefully, the change tomorrow will improve our air quality….clear out the small particulates.

Zentangle® – December 2021

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31 tiles for the 31 days of December….

In the first few days of the month, I continued to use my old pens…but then switched to red (with black…sometimes white) and some Christmas themed patterns. There was a skew toward square tiles rather than rectangular this month…just as there was in November.

I enjoyed the red pen…will return to it for February (valentines). Maybe in January I will pick another color to feature in most tiles….and strive for some very different patterns.

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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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 1, 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.

Spruce Tree House – extreme rockfall management – It’s been decades since I visited Mesa Verde, but I’m still drawn to any articles about it. This one was a reminder of the fragility of the place from a geologic perspective.

4 of the biggest archeological advancements of 2021 – including one ‘game changer’ – I always browse these end-of-year summaries…catch up on any big things that I somehow missed when they were originally in my news feeds.

No more annual flu shot? New target for universal influenza vaccine – Wouldn’t it be nice if this could happen? Even if they did develop a vaccine effective against all strains of influenza…would we still have to get boosters (i.e. would our immunity fade over time)?

With omicron, you need a mask that means business – I’ve been wearing KF-94 masks since February. My Christmas present from daughter was some patterned ones…although I still have a good supply of the black (the Ninja look) ones. I wear one anytime I am indoors (and not at home) and if I am outdoors with a lot of people around. Now that it’s cold, I wear them for warmth too; it’s surprising how much the mask keeps the nose and face comfortably warm….and the mask seals well enough that my glasses don’t fog!

Climate Clues from the Past Prompt a New Look at History – Some examples of the outsized role of climate in human affairs….and the interdisciplinary contributions to papers on the topic.

As Wetland Habitats Disappear, Dragonflies and Damselflies Are Threatened with Extinction – Maybe we need to start thinking about having wetland/ponds in our gardens as well as pollinator gardens…reduce the ‘lawn’ part of the area around our houses.

Forest Keepers: The National Park System is an essential laboratory—and also a battleground—in the management of invasive pests – The invasive pest pictured at the top of this article is woolly adelgid…something a learned to recognize in our area of Maryland…that has killed most of the hemlocks. Some of the trees growing in parks were saved with aggressive treatment, but the ones in the forest behind our house are gone.

New smart-roof coating enables year-round energy savings – A technology that changed the reflection/absorption properties of the roof based on temperature would be another step toward increasing the energy efficiency of buildings….reducing the heat island that plagues cities.

Study shows critical need to reduce use of road salt in winter – This has been a topic in several water quality sessions I’ve attended overthe past few years in Maryland. I have noticed the spraying of brine prior to storm events in our area so maybe some jurisdictions are already following the suggestions in this article.

Inside Idaho’s Campaign to Include Indigenous History in Its Highway Markers – Good idea; history of the US is more than European colonization. This article also prompted me to wonder if there are web sites that document the location and text of highway markers. I did some web searches and found several at the state level…and a general one: https://www.hmdb.org/

Philip Henry Gosse Books

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Back in October, I enjoyed browsing 8 volumes published in the mid-1800s by Philip Henry Gosse available on Internet Archive. He was an active naturalist and popularizer of natural science with his ability to create appealing/accurate scientific illustrations for his books. I found out from Wikipedia’s biography of him that he was the inventor of the saltwater aquarium in early Victorian England too. Enjoy browsing a Gosse book or two or three…

A Year at the Shore (1865)

The Rotifera (or, wheel-animalcules) volume 1 and 2 (1889 assisting Charles Thomas Hudson)

Most Memorable 2021

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Looking back at 2021…the upheavals of 2020 continued: the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental/climate disasters, racial strife, and strident politics. This is the same list from my 2020 post; when I wrote it, I was optimistic about 2021…the year turned out to be worse in terms of unheaval. Even so – 2021 was still a good year…my personal experience overcoming the dramas happening in the country and world.

High drama times

  • Strident politics. In my life there are two traumatic national events that I remember vividly prior to 2021: JFK’s assassination when I was in 4th grade and planes impacting the World Trade Center/Pentagon (9/11). The January 6th attack on the US Capitol is now on the list too. My feelings watching the events as they occurred on 1/6/2021 were like what I felt watching the events on 9/11/2001: surprise, horror, fear that the US was being attacked and would either be forever changed or cease to exist. January 6th was probably worse than 9/11 because the attack was coming from within. A bright note -  occurring shortly after this black one, was Amanda Gorman’s poem/performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration; kudos to her; I wish that the warm glow of that moment would have become more infused in the year. Now…almost a year later, the anxiety for the health of the US Democracy is still there…underlying everything else going on. It’s frightening that a vocal minority evidently does not want democracy to continue; they want to control the way votes are counted to ensure their candidate wins or if their candidate does not win an election, they want ‘officials’ to override the results (based on the state election laws recently passed/proposed).  

  • Pandemic. At the beginning of 2020, the vaccines were just beginning to roll out; the trend looked very positive until the summer when it became more obvious that there were too many people refusing to be vaccinated….partly linked to politics in the country. Another drama that is at the intersection of politics and the pandemic is the increase in unruly passengers on planes – many times over the face mask requirement. The Delta variant and now the Omicron variant impacted the unvaccinated the most; at the end of the year, we haven’t surpassed the mid-January 2021 peak hospitalizations, but the Omicron variant cases have spiked very recently and the hospitalizations have started upward; more of the vaccinated are testing positive with the Omicron variant and having mild cases that don’t require hospitalization…the benefit of being vaccinated. It is so easy for misinformation to propagate…so many people that don’t question sources even if what they are hearing/reading does not seem plausible (i.e. that a drug to treat parasitic infections in animals would be an effective COVID-19 treatment) and individuals sometimes request that doctors provide the ineffective treatment! It must be incredibly stressful for medical professionals not only to treat increasing numbers of COVID patients (mostly that refused vaccination) but also to have patients that want to demand their own treatment again medical advise.

  • Racial (or any people seen as ‘different’) strife. There have been some high drama cases (Chauvin, Potter) that have achieved accountability…but no solid indication that policing practices are changing yet. And the arguments over US history in schools and books in libraries seem to be reverting to Jim Crow era strategies in some instances…and have long lasting implications. There is an intersection with strident politics too: the laws pasted to reduce access to voting my minorities in many states.

  • Environment/climate disasters. They are happening so frequently now that we are beginning to see them as normal…although the tornadoes that swept through Kentucky in December were unusual enough to made headlines. The financial impact of this ‘new normal’ is as devastating as the event itself. At what point will they overwhelm our economy?

Resuming road trips….seeing family.  As soon as I was fully vaccinated, I started traveling again but only to see family rather than for birding festivals or museums or national parks. Road trips are a way to travel with lots of control over interactions with other people. There were some big family events this year: a wedding and my daughter buying her first house; it was a great pleasure to be present for those and to be with my 90-year-old parents again! A big place: no one in the immediate family has tested positive for COVID so far…and we are continuing to be cautious.

Medical catch up. In 2020 I had put off regular doctor’s appointments and the number of issues that came from the restart of regular checkups in summer 2021 was a bit more than I expected…particularly the cancer diagnosis. Fortunately, all the issues are very treatable…no indirect long term health impact from the pandemic.

CSA to farmer’s market. I anticipated that I would be traveling for weeks at a time to Texas so didn’t sign up for the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in 2021…but was pleasantly surprised by the offerings of our local farmers market. It is something I will remember about 2021.

As 2021 ends - I am not as optimistic about 2022 as I was at the end of 2020 about 2021. January 6th (and aftermath) has fundamentally changed my perspective of democracy in the US. On a smaller scale - within my home and family, the resilience we all developed during 2020 has been sustained and may be permanent simply because we are so consciously aware that we need it!

What will I do different in 2022?

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At the end of 2021, I am thinking about changes over the next year. There will be changes that I don’t anticipate…events requiring me change in some way; those changes I am not going to worry about; I’ll deal with them as they occur. What I’m thinking about for this post are changes that are intentional…that require my action to bring to fruition. Here are some possibilities I’m contemplating:

Releasing myself from some of my daily ‘metrics’ that have accumulated over the years. The one that has certainly gone ‘over the top’ during the pandemic has been book browsing; in 2021, I browsed over 2,000 books! The metric started back in 1985 with the goal of reading a book a week. Maybe some of the others that could be reduced or the metric allowed to float rather than always being a stretch goal for every day.

Look for the unique. Now that my blog has been going for over 10 years, I’m realizing things I repeat again an again…and need to force myself out of the rut more frequently. Sometimes it would be as simple as taking a totally different kind of photograph than I normally do…it would take more effort to go to places I have never been before…or to become more patient in locations where I go frequently to observe them in a new way.

Reverting to a cleaner/neater house. I’ve been gradually getting messier as I’ve gotten older: leaving things out on surfaces rather than putting them away…not vacuuming and dusting as frequently. I want to move back to my younger-self version of housekeeping in 2022.

Moving to live closer to my daughter…within a 30-minute drive seems about right. It would be much better than the current 2-day drive. The situation we’ve be in during the pandemic has made it more important to me. It will be a huge change to move from the house we have lived in for over 25 years and our first long distance move in almost 40 years. There would be a cascade of changes from this one: quickly locating service providers and shopping in the new location, picking new volunteer gigs, etc. There could be tweaks to a new house that would keep us busy for months. And selling our existing house would be a project that would enable the move. The time commitment for this change is higher than anything else we have done in recent years.

Of course – intentions are not sure things. It takes focus and sustained action; there could be events that preclude some of these. Time will tell - I’ve already made a note to follow-up on how these intentions are progressing in July 2022.

Zooming – December 2021

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The usual birds and plants in the collection for December – plus some from the light display at Brookside Gardens. My camera’s zoom feature is one I use almost all the time to control what I want in the image….usually opting to make the subject fill most of the frame. Sometimes I want even more magnification and am forced to be content with the max my camera can do. All of the images this month were handheld except for the bald eagle; my camera was on a monopod for that one. Enjoy the show!

Cold Morning at Conowingo

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The sun was just coming up when we were driving to the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River…hoping to see bald eagles.

It was very cold, and we had winter gear to put on to put over our regular clothes when we got there: winter boots, snow pants, coats with hoods, scarves, gloves, handwarmers, footwarmers. It didn’t seem like there was much action when we got there but there were enough photographers that we thought there would likely be something to see. We bundled up. I put on my KF94 mask to keep my nose and lower part of my face warm. The temperature was in the mid-20s.

And then all we saw were gulls feeding in the churning water coming from the dam…too far away for good pictures. The black vultures were absent….first time we’ve been to Conowingo and not seen them. I put my camera on maximum zoom to scan the rocks and towers across the river; my husband was doing the same thing. No eagles.

I was just about to give up in frustration when I turned around and saw an eagle high in a tree on the hill behind me! There were branches in the way, but I managed to focus on the bird. The top of the head had a little brown. Maybe an early adult?

Then we spotted an eagle soaring and circling around us. Unfortunately, there was a vehicle leaving the secured parking lot and we couldn’t stand where we needed to photograph it in the air. But it was awesome to watch…and we saw where it landed in a tulip poplar tree with lots of seed pods.

While we were positioned to photograph the bird that had been soaring…we heard eagles nearby….realized the sound was not from the one we were photographing. We walked back so we could see the location where the first eagle had been perched. It was still there…and there was another eagle that was perched nearby! The sounds we heard must have been from from their interaction when the second eagle arrived!

The eagle on the right below is the one we saw first….the one on the left is the new arrival.

Overall – seeing 3 eagles – even if they were only in the trees – was awesome compared to the frustration of the first 15 minutes we were at Conowingo! Patience and looking around made the morning!

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2021

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It’s a season full of celebrations. In my family we have celebrations associated with a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas…and then ones associated with the beginning of winter. Here’s my top 10 for the month:

A winter day at home. Being at home enjoying the forest through the window….still one of my favorite places to be…even in winter. I like I particularly in the morning when the sun first hits the treetops with golden light.

Flannel sheets. The week we change from percale to flannel sheets has a lot in common with decorating for the holidays….it is a celebration of the season…full of warmth and snuggles. It’s such a treat to get into a bed made with flannel sheets prewarmed by a heated mattress pad!

Brookside Gardens lights. Our walk around the lights at Brookside Gardens was even more celebratory this year since we didn’t do our traditional visit to the garden lights in 2020!

Pumpkin roll. Our grocery bakery has this treat seasonally. My daughter is the one that introduced me to them several years ago so the celebration is a special food of the season that prompts me to savor the positive impact she has always had on my life.

My birthday…my parents’ wedding anniversary. Celebration abounds in December for my family…every year.

Coursera course – Anatomy of the upper and lower extremities. What a great way to fill up the lulls this month. It’s challenging enough to require my full attention! Celebrating the course…grateful to the Yale faculty for producing it…Coursera for hosting it.

Druid Hill Park for birding. Celebrating the walk around the park as we did it…and in hindsight that it was before the Omicron variant was spiking in our area.  

My mother’s experience coming home from the hospital. I am celebrating that she is getting focused therapy that is showing positive results….more than any previous hospitalizations.

Telephone conversations. Celebrating all the alternative communications we have…since I didn’t travel in December. Even though we do texts and emails and zoom…somehow the telephone seems to be the one where the deeper communication is occurring (maybe because it is synchronous, one on one and not as ‘quick’).

Quiche. When I make quiche…I simple use what I have on hand – so I am celebrating that one I made recently turned out great!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 25, 2021

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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.

New copper surface eliminates bacteria in just two minutes – One of the emerging technologies to fight bacteria (and viruses) without antibiotics. Copper is already being used in some applications, but this materials research developed a new structure of copper that is more effective and faster. The article didn’t comment about durability…but still very promising finding.

Home Battery Storage: The (Solar) Rich Get Richer – There is beginning to be more equity in solar panel installation….but storage is still a challenge at lower incomes. Some states have programs that may be the wave of the future and there are incentives in pending legislation. Hopefully a positive momentum will build over the next few years.

California Readies Launch of Largest Food Waste Recycling Program in the U.S. – Part of the county where I live in Maryland has curbside pickup of food waste for composting…but not the part where I live. I have a backyard compost bin…but many people do not so there is still considerable food waste going to the landfill.

10 Winter Birds to Spot During the Christmas Bird Count – Seen any of these in your area?

Why is snow white? – 3 videos…the last one with more ‘bonus’ explanations (such as why polar bears are white).

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Pigment – This post was a bit confusing since it wasn’t explicit about which colors were from pigments ( as in the red of cardinals) and which were from light scattering caused by the physical structure of the feathers (for example, in blue jays). Read more about this non-pigment phenomenon particular for blue feathers here.

Winter is coming: Researchers uncover the surprising cause of the little ice age – New research shows that the little ice age in the early 1400s occurred when the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapsed after a warming period which flushed Arctic ice into the north Atlantic, cooling it and reducing its saltiness. Could the AMOC collapse again with ice melting because of climate change? Existing climate models do not model the impacts of ice melt (making the north Atlantic cooler and less salty)!

From blood clots to infected neurons, how COVID threatens the brain – An overview of the research into how COVID-19 impacts the brain; there is still a lot more to be learned about this - probably one of the most devastating aspects of ‘long Covid’. It appears that the cognitive impact experienced by some COVID-19 survivors improves over time, but half the patients in one study were not back to normal after a year. It is a very sad prospect for individuals and for or society.

Watch This Giant Phantom Jellyfish With 33-Foot-Long Arms Float Through the Deep Ocean – The video is less than a minute…worth watching.

AAA Electric Vehicle Infographic — The Good & The Bad – My current car is a plug-in hybrid….the next one will most likely be an EV.

Old Faithful at Yellowstone (1880s-1909)

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Internet Archive has 4 volumes of images of Yellowstone National Park produced by F. Jay Haynes from the 1880s to 1909. It is interesting to think about what it must have been like to visit the park during those early years. It would have taken a lot more effort to get there than it does today! At the same time – the facilities would have been minimal/primitive….there would not be crowds of people or problems with vandalism either.

I selected pictures of Old Faithful as sample images – a wonderful variety of depictions: 2 in color, 1 at sunrise. Each volume is well worth browsing for the other images as well.

Yellowstone National Park: in water colors (188?....the volume does not have a title or copyright page but presumably it was sometime after fall 1881 when he spent 2 months in the park and took over 200 photographs; he had a lease for a small photography studio in the park by 1884).

Yellowstone National Park: the world's wonderland (1889 with Truman Ward Ingersoll and Charles Frey)

Haynes souvenir album : Yellowstone Park (1909)

I’ve only been to Yellowstone once…and it was before I photography became a hobby…thinking about what time of year I want to go next time and hone my plans for the type of photography I want to attempt there.

Favorite Foods of December 2021

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November and December and January are probably the peak months for me to try some new recipes…and making old favorites…enjoy ramping up the foods we enjoy in winter!

Rice Pudding

I had a container of left-over rice from a Chinese food delivery on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I knew I wouldn’t eat it right away, so it went into the freezer. A few weeks later I decided to make rice pudding (recipe). It started out easy since the rice was already cooked. I used cinnamon instead of nutmeg and honey instead of white sugar called for the recipe and didn’t measure the raisins (probably added at least double the amount!). The results were yummy but could have used even more raisins (I added some to the top of the serving in the picture). Next time I make it I’ll round up on the milk as well. It seemed a little to dry for ‘pudding’!

Quiche

I made a quiche with what I had in the refrigerator and pantry…made up the recipe as I went along. It turned out to be high protein!

  • 6 eggs

  • 1 cup milk

  • 1+ cup ‘Mexican blend’ grated cheese (didn’t measure just make a layer of cheese that I mixed with the veggies before I poured the egg and milk mixture over it)

  • 1 red bell pepper

  • 1 cup shelled edamame

  • Pumpkin seeds on top

Yummy and colorful too!

Chocolate Mousse (made with avocado)

Yummy 2 servings of the dark chocolate treat (I made half the recipe…using honey for sweetener and cocoa powder as the chocolate) and ate it over 2 days for 1st breakfast rather than my squares of Lindt Dark Chocolate. It turns out that is slightly less calories than the Lindt! It appeals to me because the ingredients are so straightforward….not as processed as the commercial chocolate.

Red Velvet Pancakes with Cream Cheese

I started with this recipe but then modified it because I wanted to use beet root powder rather than red food coloring….and add a citrus note to the flavor….and avoid refined sugar. Here’s my markup of the ingredient list (I didn’t end up using any milk in the glaze even though I forgot to mark it off).

It was partially successful. I didn’t like that the pancakes turned brown on the outside (they were red on the inside). The big success was the ‘cream cheese glaze’ which melted very nicely over the pancakes and the orange flavor was wonderful. I will be using it on gingerbread cookies (and anything else I want a little touch of sweetness); it would be excellent on raisin bread toast, for example.

Hope you are enjoying old and new treats for the holidays too!

My Favorite Photographs of 2021

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It was a challenge to pick one picture from each month of 2021 to feature in this post….but a worthwhile exercise. I did not use consistent criteria for my choices, so these images are special for a variety of reasons.

January for witnessing interesting bird behavior – A bluebird on our deck railing looking up at our bird feeder full of other members of the flock…waiting a turn!

February for learning to make high key images – A high key image of a lily….the flower purchased at the grocery store. I had just watched a video about high key photography and was thrilled to have some easy successes.

March for beauty old and new – The crocus were out at Brookside Gardens but I found the remnants of last seasons flowers more interesting.

April for a bird trusting that I wasn’t a threat– A bird looking rather assertive. I had paused its search for food in the leaves to make sure I wasn’t a threat; evidently I wasn’t because it went back to its search a few seconds later.

May for memorializing a bird – A juvenile little blue heron in the cattail leaves at Josey Ranch in Carrollton TX. It had a broken wing so I think of this image as a monument to its short life.

June for something that only happens every 17 years – The periodic cicadas seemed to be thick everywhere – even our yard. This one was under our red maple.

July for interconnection in nature– Back in Texas…am insect on a cosmos flower on a cool morning.

August for the fragile beauty of a new butterfly – A monarch butterfly seconds after it emerged from its chrysalis is our front flower bed.

September for capturing a small thing, seeing it better than I could with my eyes – Some birds nest fungus in the mulch at Howard County Conservancy. I was thrilled that I had my gear (phone, clip on macro, clicker) even though I hadn’t planned to do any macro photography!

October for being in a river – More macro photography – this time the wing of an insect on a rock just above the water line….photographed on a volunteer gig before the students arrive.

November for the colors of the flower – Another view of a cosmos flower. I like it when the light is such that a black background is possible.

December the new orb sculpture at Brookside – A surprise (for me) at Brookside – I hadn’t seen this sculpture before…and I also enjoyed the holiday lights (missed them last year).

Cancer Diary – Entry 6

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A month of waiting for surgery and almost another month to go….assuming that the hospital does not become overwhelmed with treatment of COVID-19 patients and the surgery is cancelled/postponed. I am not anxious about the possibility….yet; my concern has been ramping up over the past few days with the hospitalizations in Maryland increasing and the indicators that the Omicron variant’s being more contagious than the Delta variant….and knowing that a lot of people are gathering for the holidays (more than last year….with vaccinations available, a lot of people made big plans for this year prior to Omicron emergence). By early January – the medical system could be very stressed. There is little I can do to improve the situation aside from staying healthy myself; I am trying to keep myself busy and focused on other things.

There was little in my activities this month on the critical path toward my surgery other than continuing to take the medication. The surgery date was moved forward by a couple of days and an appointment made for a pre-surgery COVID-19 test. I was glad there was a lull; I thoroughly enjoyed my daughter’s whirlwind visit (road trip for her) for Thanksgiving and then had time to focus on supporting my sisters’ from afar as my mother was hospitalized. Fortunately, the hospitalization was short, and the follow-up seems to be improving her condition rapidly; her quality of life is improving beyond what it was a month ago! And I am relieved that I didn’t need to make an unplanned road trip to Texas.

We ventured out for a walk around Druid Hill Park and through the Christmas lights at Brookside Gardens. Both were enjoyable outdoor experiences…good for our mental health. There are other outdoor activities we’ve planned…but on our own in uncrowded settings rather than organized events. The more we learn about Omicron, the more cautious we are becoming.

It’s cold enough that I have ramped up indoor activities… another effort to avoid thinking too much about my cancer. I am spending considerable time on a Coursera course: Anatomy of the Upper and Lower Extremities (from Yale University). During the holidays, I spend more time cooking…making more complicated recipes and trying new things. And there are the regular things like Zentangle tiles and book browsing that I can ‘do more’ too. I’ve started buying flowers every time I got to the grocery store since the view from my window now is bare trees; on the plus side, the birds are easier to see.

Overall – this month of waiting has not been hard at all. At this point, my mental perspective is about the same as it was a month ago although I find myself bracing for the possibility of the increases in hospitalizations from the pandemic causing a postponement of my surgery…an event that would be a major setback from my perspective.

Frost on the Recycle Bin

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Last week when I went out to retrieve our recycle bin (the truck comes around 6:30 AM!), I noticed that frost has accumulated on the black lid. It didn’t look too promising….just a thin film of frost. But with a magnifier it was much more interesting! I already had my phone with me; the clip-on magnifying lens and clicker were in the pocket of the fleece vest I was wearing. I took advantage of the outdoor light before I pushed the bin into the garage.

It was close to the time the middle school bus was due in the neighborhood and a boy was waiting for it – apparently listening to music through earbuds. I smiled at him but didn’t interrupt his morning. He probably wondered why I was so interested in the top of the recycle bin!

It felt good starting the day noticing something…. photographing it… catching the serendipity of icy crystals before they melted.

Macro Images of Christmas Cards

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I always use Christmas cards from years past when I decorate for Christmas; they are becoming more and more historical each year since not many people send cards these days. This year I decided to take a different look at them…photograph them through a macro lens.

The pixilation on the simple color images is obvious. The parts that looked more interesting to me were the metallic portions: flecks of glitter, metallic blobs, raised shapes in the paper covered with metallic paint and then combinations of color surrounded by metallic puddles.  Enjoy the macro views of Christmas cards!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 18, 2021

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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.

Monkeying Around with Venom – Hadn’t heard about ‘Snake Detection Theory’ before; it is the idea that snakes have exerted a selection pressure on the origin of primates’ visual systems, a trait that sets primates apart from other mammals. This paper is some recent research that supports the theory.  A condensed description of the research paper is found here.

Why climate lawsuits are surging - Lawsuits are becoming tool to force change…in conjunction with activism, policy and science. There have been some successful lawsuits…and more in the pipeline. Sometimes the suit is about better enforcement of environmental laws…and sometimes it is about climate protection for future generations becoming a constitutional issue.

Florida to Feed Starving Manatees, as Pollution Shrinks Food Supplies – Florida farm runoff caused alga blooms that cut the penetration of sunlight into the water so much that it killed the seagrass that manatees eat…and there have already been more than 1,000 that have starved. It is estimated that there are about 8,000 manatees remaining in Florida waters. It is unclear that the seagrass can be restored.

Top 25 birds of the week: December 2021 – Enjoying bird photographs!

How volcanic eruptions helped the ancestral Puebloan culture flourish – Response of people to the stresses of abrupt climate change evidently resulted in larger population centers…universal pottery making and turkey cultivation…more sedentary living…increasing social inequity.

Major Contract Awarded To Rehabilitate Section Of George Washington Memorial Parkway – The parkway is along the Potomac River between Great Falls and Mount Vernon. It was one of the first beautiful and history things we discovered when we moved to the area in 1983…and long overdo for renovation. Parts of it carry a lot of daily commuter traffic in Northern Virginia.

The impact of drugs on gut microbes is greater than we thought – Most people are aware of the impact of antibiotics, but other drugs impact the gut microbes too…and some of those drugs are treating chronic conditions so are taken for years. It appears this study was mostly about methodology to tease out the impact of drugs vs the underlying disease….much more work still to be done before concrete recommendations can be made.

The race to make vaccines for a dangerous respiratory virus – RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). There are currently 4 candidate vaccines and one monoclonal antibody treatment that are in last-stage trials. It appears we are at the cusp of much faster vaccine development times because of what happened to develop the COVID-19 vaccines.

The tomatoes at the forefront of a food revolution – The idea is to use Crispr modification to sustain the productivity of the tomato crop as the climate changes.

Chronic exposure to air pollution may increase risks for ICU admission or death among COVID-19 patients, study finds – Sometimes it is hard to separate the role of the environment on health disparities. This study analyzed 6,500 COVID-19 patients admitted to 7 New York City hospitals.