Missouri Botanical Garden – Part 1

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We made a road trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis to see the Patterns of Nature: Lightform exhibit….during an afternoon and then returned to see the forms at night. This post is about the daytime portion of our visit. The day was cloudy and stayed in the 60s. It was still bright enough for good photography. The first area we saw included a colorful sculpture and some native plants. We made our way around to see as many of the geometric shapes of the special exhibit as we could….even though I frequently was sidetracked by plants! I used my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) for the landscape pictures.

My phone (iPHone 15 Pro Max) does better with the close-up shots! I realized by the time we left to check into hotel that I would lighten my load for the evening and just bring my phone. It was good in the close confines of the conservatory for sure!

I took a picture of the wall in the visitor center that is a key for the leaf patterns in the flower of building. Most of them are natives!

1st shift in the Butterfly House

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I volunteered for a morning shift in the Roston Native Butterfly House a few days after the training. It was a cool morning, and I took a few pictures along the sidewalk down to the house. The rain garden is a lot of green right now…but there are buds that will increase the number of colors. I always enjoy the duck sculpture.

The fritillaries are the most numerous in the house…but there are zebra and tiger swallowtails too. There was a giant swallowtail that looked quite battered that I didn’t get a picture of. The thistles were great favorites…lots of nectar there.

There were cecropia moths and cocoons…luna moth cocoons…red spotted purple caterpillars on the willow…pipevine swallowtail caterpillars on the pipevine…and tiger swallowtail eggs on the wafer ash and tulip poplar. It was a good start to the season and a great way to spend my Mother’s Day morning!

My husband was making his way to the Texas Star Party near Fort Davis - his car loaded with telescope and camping gear. One of the pictures he sent was of a butterfly similar … but not the same to butterflies we have in Missouri: a two-tailed swallowtail!

Butterfly House Training

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Volunteering at the Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens is my favorite volunteer gig from May-September. Last week was the final training….in the butterfly house itself.

The late afternoon was breezy and a little chilly when I arrived at the park. I wore a sweater. The gardens on the way to the butterfly house were looking good – trees leafed out…past the spring bulb flowers and waiting for the summer bloomers.

Inside the house there were tiny caterpillars to discover. I didn’t have equipment to attempt to photograph them….but I did make a map of the trees in the house. The photos are of the largest ones: tulip poplar (for tiger swallowtail caterpillars) and pawpaw (for zebra swallowtail caterpillars). The others are wafer ash, spicebush, black willow, and false indigo bush.

Some butterflies were brought in but not released to the house while we were there. They were not very active because of the temperature. There are enough flowers blooming for nectar – butterfly food. There were even some milkweed plants with buds that will be fragrant and full of nectar when they bloom.

I missed the part of the training that was held in the Botanical Center (since I went straight to the butterfly house) but it was evidently the same as last year. The procedures for opening and closing were reviewed in the house…and tips for handling various situations. Even though the way we sign up for shifts is new…the skills I learned volunteering last season and in previous butterfly houses are still pertinent.

Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden

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Volunteering to maintain the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden is a new type of volunteering for me! So far it has been all about pulling weeds and taking out debris from last season. The goal is to get the garden on the lake side of the boathouse iv prime shape for early summer pictures (the place is popular for weddings). The plants are mostly native, so they grow well if left alone. There are stone paths through the sloped garden to make it easier to reach weeds among the plants we want to thrive.

All the volunteers come with gloves and a bucket…maybe some hand tools. The bucket is for holding what we are taking away from the garden area that gets dumped in a natural area nearby to decay.

The crew of Master Naturalists meets on the same day every week and works for a couple of hours or more. At this point I am still new to the tasks but learning fast; hopefully part of the learning will be figuring out how to do it in a way that my back does not hurt!

Sustaining Elder Care/Road Trip to Texas – May 2026

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I made my monthly trek to Texas to see my dad last week. I made the usual stop at the Texas Welcome Center on US75 to eat my salad lunch and note the changes in the native plant garden near the building. The bluebonnets have lots of seed pods forming – with a few blooms remaining. The Texas Mountain Laurel was also producing pods.

An hour later…I found my dad in the activity room with a lot of other residents. It was ice cream sandwich day! He was soundly asleep! I decided that I would wake him up for the treat since ice cream has always been his favorite dessert. He enjoyed it --- but made no attempt to feed himself. Afterward we walked outside. I guided the walker since he can no longer see well enough to stay on the sidewalk. He moved very slowly but did make it around the courtyard and back to his room without stopping for a rest….and then he wanted to go back to sleep in his chair.

The next morning, I arrived after he ate breakfast. He was asleep in the chair! I noticed that he hadn’t taken his medications, so I woke him up for that. He managed to take them with a little assistance and then agreed to go for a walk. He had more difficulty getting up from the chair than he did in April. We walked indoors since the morning was wet and cool outside. He managed a normal walk, but when we got back to his room he wanted to go to sleep. He seemed to listen when he was awake but the only clear comments he made were about not being able to see.

My sisters are noticing his decline as well. We’re trying to keep him moving on his own (with his walker)…but we all are aware that it might not be possible for much longer.

Zooming – April 2026

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April was a mix of temperature extremes with some plants thriving – others not faring so well. By the end of the month, it was obvious that the majority were going to be OK. I enjoyed my yard in April as I planted almost 40 new native plants (the bulk in a new garden); I photographed older plants as I added the new ones. I released 10 luna moths that emerged from last summer’s cohort; the temperature swings might have been challenging for them but I opted to release them within 24-48 hours after they emerged since their adult life span is so short. There is one picture from my Texas trip…3 from a visit to Powell Gardens.

Family of Man eBook

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Family of Man: the Greatest Photographic Exhibition of All Time - 503 Pictures from 68 Countries - Created by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art was published in 1955. The prologue is by Carl Sandburg. In the introduction Eward Steichen says they worked on the exhibit for almost 3 years and reviewed over 2 million photographs. The collection is interesting to look at now for the original reason the exhibit was created and from a historical perspective. What would be different if such an exhibit were produced today? The most obvious is that the photographs would be in color…but so much has changed in the world in the past 70 year. For example, I wonder if we have become less ‘ethnic’ less ‘religious’ – are we more likely to be obese – are some human faces so modified by treatment that they look artificial). The book is available on Internet Archive.

Family of Man

Powell Gardens – Part I

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Last week, I made my first trip to Powell Gardens to see their orchid display. It is a day trip from my home in Nixa MO so I will probably go again later this spring….and/or next fall. It was a cold day, and we weren’t planning on walking around outdoors, so we weren’t disappointed that the trees were mostly still bare. Our membership at Springfield Botanical Garden got us into Powell Gardens too!

The horse sculptures on the way into the visitor center were a plus. I was surprised that they were not listed in the Wander Walk Art in the Gardens brochure.

We knew in advance that the main reason for our trip was the Orchid Delirium event. It was in the visitor center….beginning as soon as we walked in. There is a large area of the building that has a glass roof – and lots of windows in the walls.

It was a great place to wander around and get close looks at orchids; more of my orchid pictures in the blog post for day after tomorrow.

There was a side exhibit about First Ladies and Orchids that I enjoyed.

One aspect of the exhibit that was unique was manikins in formal wear among the orchids. My favorite was one where the skirt of the gown was plants!

On the way back to the car, I saw a redbud in bloom. The flowers along the larger branches were OK but the ones on the small branches appeared to be damaged (killed?) by recent frosts.

More orchid photos day after tomorrow….

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 28, 2026

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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.

3/23/2026 Washington Post What an oncologist wants you to know about environmental cancer risks - Given what we know about how microplastics can cause damage in the body, the increase in early onset colorectal cancer in the U.S. and the similarities in timing between the increase in cancer rates and the rapid increase in microplastics in the environment, many experts suspect that microplastics are a risk.

3/14/2026 BBC The strange deep-sea creatures that eat whales - Whales usually die far out to sea, scattered along their often vast migration paths. t first, the carcass may float as the gases inside make it swell up like a balloon. Then the whale sinks – through the sunlight, twilight and midnight zones – eventually reaching the darkness of the abyss, its final resting place. In death, the whale gives life, becoming an immense island of food.

3/16/2026 MSN Couples with infertility 'detox' from plastic to get pregnant in new Netflix doc. Does it work? - A new Netflix documentary called "The Plastic Detox" is a sobering look at all the ways that plastic harms our bodies and the planet — especially our reproductive health. Shanna Swan, Ph.D., a professor at Mount Sinai in New York City, is one of the prominent figures sounding the alarm on the effects of environmental pollutants on fertility. For the documentary, she worked with five couples who'd been struggling to get pregnant for years without a medical explanation. The goal? To reduce their exposure to plastics to see if they could conceive. In the end of the documentary, it's revealed three of the couples had gotten pregnant, and one was expecting again. The results were also published in a study in the journal Toxins on March 16.

3/20/2026 Yale Environment 360 In Mexican Forests, Monarch Butterflies Halt Their Decline - For the past quarter century, the future of monarch butterflies has looked dire, with these iconic American insects flitting toward extinction. Now, however, there is at least a small reason for hope: New data from WWF Mexico, a large conservation group, offers further evidence that the decline of eastern monarchs — the world’s largest population — has stopped, even as the insects face worsening threats across their range.

3/16/2026 Our World in Data Why cheap waste management is key to stopping plastic pollution – I was disappointed in this article. They completely miss the issue of food packaged and heated in plastic. Yes – that plastic packaging does not get loose in the environment but the microplastics (and chemicals) that leach into food gets into our bodies. And the leachate coming off lined landfills in countries with good waste management systems includes microplastics that the sewage treatment plants don’t take out before the liquid is released back into streams….and that will continue to happen for many years to come. And what happens when the liners of the landfills begin to break down and the leachate goes more directly into the environment. The answer in probably not cheap waste management…we need to be look at less waste – particularly less plastic waste.

2/17/2026 NASA Winds Whip Up Fires and Dust on the Southern Plains – This satellite image is from mid-February but I noticed smoke in the air as I drove on I-44 east of Tulsa last weekend! I don’t know if it was wildfires or controlled burns…but I was glad I had a portable air purifier in my car!

3/21/2026 I’m Plastic Free 9 Essential Ways to Reduce Plastic Waste on Your 2026 Travels – I would add a reusable bowl/plate for hotel breakfasts (along with cutlery…I take stainless steel cutlery since I have an extra set…and simply clean then to reuse…I have a tin that keeps them together).

3/18/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Cannibalistic Blue Crabs Are Eating Their Younger Peers in Part of the Chesapeake Bay - Young blue crabs find refuge from many predators in the mid-salinity waters of some spots along the Chesapeake Bay. But there, they face another threat: Getting eaten by their older peers.

3/16/2026 National Parks Traveler What It Takes to Clean a Yellowstone Hot Spring - Cleaning hot springs is hard work! Some remediations, like the Grand Prismatic Overlook trail spring, require shovels, strainers, and grabber tools. The cleaning of Solitary Geyser, however, required a hook with a 16-foot extendable handle to remove large objects within the interior parts of the pool and hand rakes to collect the hundreds of wood splinters that had been thrown into the splash basins around the pool margin.

3/13/2026 Science Daily Microplastics may be quietly damaging your brain and fueling Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s - Researchers identified five key biological pathways that may allow microplastics to harm the brain. These include activating immune cells, increasing oxidative stress, disrupting the blood-brain barrier, interfering with mitochondria, and damaging neurons. The review also describes how microplastics might contribute to specific neurodegenerative diseases. In Alzheimer's disease, they may promote the buildup of beta-amyloid and tau proteins. In Parkinson's disease, they could encourage aggregation of α-Synuclein and harm dopaminergic neurons. Additional studies are needed to confirm a direct causal link. Even so, the researchers recommend practical steps to reduce everyday exposure. We need to change our habits and use less plastic. Steer clear of plastic containers and plastic cutting boards, don't use the dryer, choose natural fibers instead of synthetic ones and eat less processed and packaged foods.

Springfield Botanical Gardens (1) – March 2026

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The Springfield Botanical Gardens are full of new beginnings in March. I took a walk around them on a sunny day – using by bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) on a monopod. The monopod worked great as a hiking pole, so my back didn’t hurt; I did have to clean mud off the tip though!

The daffodils and other bulbs are the biggest splashes of color. They are in clumps of mulched beds…sometimes with a rock to provide a backdrop (texture and color that is always there no matter the season). My favorites were the large pink hyacinths. They don’t grow as well now as I remember them from years ago evidently since there were some that looked scraggly; there weren’t enough to make give the garden their smell either.

There were other flowers of the season in the grassy areas – small but worth noticing…and dandelions are blooming as well. I have declared a truce with dandelions – won’t cultivate them but I won’t poison them or dig them out either; I might even eat some leaves of the ones that grow in my yard where I know they haven’t been sprayed with anything.

The Lenten roses/hellebores were blooming. They are always some the first blooms of the year.

There weren’t many insects active….but I did see a cabbage white butterfly!

Stay tuned for the trees I noticed while I was walking around the gardens in tomorrow’s post.

After the rain…earthworms

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I went outside while the pavement was still wet after a rain last week – looking for earthworms. I didn’t find many on the driveway or the sidewalk near the street – but there was a parade crossing the sidewalk between our driveway and front door!

The majority seemed to be headed from the yard to the corner flowerbed that is rocks on top of landscaping cloth around the plantings. It does not seem like a welcoming place for them to be going. Most were large but there was one that was clearly smaller than the rest.

Check out The real reason you see earthworms after rain from Cool Green Science to understand why the earthworms were on the move after a rain.

Table Rock Lake

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One of the Master Naturalist hikes that I planned was at the end of February – hosted by a person that lived near Table Rock Lake. It was a great day for a hike – not a wintery day at all!

There were winter trees to observe in the forest when we started our hike – sassafras, redbud, dogwood, eastern redcedar, honey locust….and a lot of dead ash trees. Anything that had bark sluffing off (or already missing) was probably an ash. Emerald Ash Borer is taking out Missouri’s ashes just as happened on the east coast before we moved from Maryland.

We also looked for minerals in the rocks during our downhill hike.

There were ledges of rock with water dripping in some areas. Moss is the greenest part of the forest this time of year.

When we got down to the lake, it was obvious that the water was low; hopefully the spring rains will begin to fill it again. There were gulls….and double crested cormorants that dramatically flew out of a nearby cove.

On the way back up the hill, we discovered a spring wildflower….coming up through the leaves on the path!

And there were some interesting shelf-fungus and lichens as well!

Lake Springfield Greater Ozarks Audubon Trail

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I had a form to drop off at the Lake Springfield Boathouse on a sunny day when the temperature was in the upper 50s. I opted to take the Greater Ozarks Audubon Trail to the overlook  (the trail head is just past the boathouse).

I took a picture of sycamore near the edge of the water. It still had a lot of seeds from last season.

The trail is up ledges of rock….gentle steps most of the time.

Most of the trees are deciduous but there are quite a few eastern redcedars there too. I zoomed in to take a collection moss and redcedar on fallen log – an intimate landscape.

At the top there is an overlook of Lake Springfield. I didn’t stay long because there were other people waiting to enjoy the scene too.

I walked down the hill and saw some honey locust pods on the ground…looked up to see the thorns in the tree! Nearer my car, I noted goose (?) prints in the area at the edge of the parking lot. There were a lot of Canada geese around!

I remembered that there were mallows down near the water’s edge…their seed pods were open and empty.

The last time I was on this trail was in Fall 2024 when I took the Identifying Woody Plants class; it was hot that day and my back was hurting for the entire hike. This time I did it with my hiking poles and didn’t have any problem at all!

Form Givers

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Mid-Century Architecture was the subject of the Form Givers exhibit of 1959. The exhibit book is the week’s Book of the Week and is available from Internet Archive. The exhibit was organized and sponsored by Time Magazine for The American Federation of Arts. The Corcoran Gallery of Art was one of the museums to host the exhibit. I was a little surprised that there was no west coast museum (the furthest west was The Minneapolis Institute of Arts) on the list of museums even though there were examples of some west coast structures featured in the photographs.

The quote from Henry R. Luce on the title page (“…and we will succeed in creating the first modern, technological, humane, prosperous, and reverent civilization. This creative response to challenge will be most vividly expressed in and by architecture.”) reflects the optimism about the future in the late 1950s….a time just before I started school.  

Form givers

eBotanical Prints – January 2026

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in January – all are available for browsing on Internet Archive.   I started working my way through the Carnivorous Plant Newsletters in December; there are 4 volumes per year so I only browsed late 1980s and into the 1990s in January; I’ll continue browsing this periodical in February.

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,283 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here.

Click on any sample image from January’s 20 books below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the January 2026 eBotanical Prints!

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.14:no.4 (1985) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1985

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.15:no.1 (1986) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1986

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.15:no.2 (1986) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1986

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.16:no.1 (1987) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1987

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.16:no.2 (1987) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1987

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.16:no.3 (1987) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1987

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.16:no.4 (1987) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1987

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.17:no.1 (1988) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1988

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.17:no.2 (1988) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1988

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.17:no.3 (1988) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1988

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.17:no.4 (1988) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1988

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.18:no.1 (1989) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1989

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.18:no.2 (1989) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1989

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.18:no.3 (1989) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1989

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.18:no.4 (1989) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1989

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.20:no.3 (1991) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1991

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.20:no.4 (1991) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1991

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.21:no.3 (1992) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1992

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.22:no.3 (1993) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1993

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.23:no.2 (1994) *California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum*sample image*1994

Life Magazine in 1945

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1945, it seemed that the was pivotal: the atrocities in Europe were in the news more and trials were starting for German leader that had not killed themselves….the US succeeded in ending the war with Japan by using atomic bombs.  The industry that supplied the war was being scrapped or turned to civilian uses. (Click on any of the sample images below to see a larger version and the links to see the whole magazine online.)

Life Magazine 1945-01-01 - 5,000 tires wear out on the western front every 24 hours

Life Magazine 1945-01-08 - Evening of July 25 in Normandy (painting)

Life Magazine 1945-01-15 - Granite stones for Hitler’s victory monument

Life Magazine 1945-01-22 - Western Electric ad

Life Magazine 1945-01-29 - Vegetable of War in the Southwest

Life Magazine 1945-02-05 - Murder in the Snow (where Germans shot US prisoners

Life Magazine 1945-02-12 - Trench foot

Life Magazine 1945-02-19 - Dalai Lama

Life Magazine 1945-02-26 - Soldiers in Germany (winter)

 Life Magazine 1945-03-05 - Iwo Jima

Life Magazine 1945-03-12 - Glass manufacturing

Life Magazine 1945-03-19 - Germans crumble in the west

Life Magazine 1945-03-26 - German girl in ruins of Cologne

Life Magazine 1945-04-02 - Coca Cola ad

Life Magazine 1945-04-09 - American paratrooper….east of the Rhine

Life Magazine 1945-04-16 - Ford ad

Life Magazine 1945-04-23 - Roosevelt's death

Life Magazine 1945-04-30 - Hitler's hideout

 Life Magazine 1945-05-07 - Belsen

Life Magazine 1945-05-14 - Nazi suicides

Life Magazine 1945-05-21 - London goes wild on VE day

Life Magazine 1945-05-28 - Okinawa

Life Magazine 1945-06-04 - Battered face of Germany

Life Magazine 1945-06-11 - Middle East oil

Life Magazine 1945-06-18 - Americans battle for Okinawa

Life Magazine 1945-06-25 - Harry Truman's Missouri

 Life Magazine 1945-07-02 - Hitler's eyrie

Life Magazine 1945-07-09 - Japanese surrenders are increasing

Life Magazine 1945-07-16 - Caricatures of correspondents

Life Magazine 1945-07-23 - Berlin

Life Magazine 1945-07-30 - Postwar Jeep

Life Magazine 1945-08-06 - Empire State Building fire

Life Magazine 1945-08-13 - General Motors: refrigerators and airplane propeller blades

Life Magazine 1945-08-20 - Atomic bomb

Life Magazine 1945-08-27 - Victorious China

 Life Magazine 1945-09-03 - Planes scrapped

Life Magazine 1945-09-10 - Battered Tokyo

Life Magazine 1945-09-17 - Hiroshima

Life Magazine 1945-09-24 - Coca Cola ad

Life Magazine 1945-10-01 - International Harvester ad

Life Magazine 1945-10-08 - Masks worn in Hiroshima

Life Magazine 1945-10-15 - Nagasaki

Life Magazine 1945-10-22 - USS Battan in Panama Canal

Life Magazine 1945-10-29 - USS Enterprise I New York Harbor

 Life Magazine 1945-11-05 - Solar eclipse

Life Magazine 1945-11-12 - Waterfront fire - Chicago

Life Magazine 1945-11-19 - British brides

Life Magazine 1945-11-26 - Graveyard of US Liberty ships

Life Magazine 1945-12-03 - Berlin children

Life Magazine 1945-12-10 - International Harvester ad

Life Magazine 1945-12-17 - Housing shortage

Life Magazine 1945-12-24 - Tom Wolf and Asheville NC

Life Magazine 1945-12-31 - Big snow in Buffalo

Project Feeder Watch – January 2026

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My husband and I enjoy our time watching birds at our home feeders for 4 30-minute segments each week as part of Project FeederWatch. Something interesting always seems to happen – varying numbers and kinds of birds, relaxed feeding and then a round of bird frenzy,  the regulars and then silent/empty feeders (our theory when this happens is that our neighborhood Cooper’s Hawk is somewhere nearby). Our feeders are not situated for optimal photography…but I still take a few pictures.

We often develop profiles of the different birds; for example, the Carolina chickadee and Titmouse are the quick grab and go experts….the starlings come in mobs and bully everyone else!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 17, 2026

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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.

12/28/2025 SciTechDaily Microplastics Burrow into Blood Vessels and Fuel Heart Disease - New research led by biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside suggests that routine contact with microplastics — tiny particles released from packaging, clothing, and many plastic products — may speed up atherosclerosis, a condition in which arteries become clogged and can lead to heart attacks and strokes. The team studied LDLR-deficient mice, which are genetically prone to developing atherosclerosis. Both male and female mice were fed a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet comparable to what a lean and healthy person might consume. Over a nine-week period, the mice received daily doses of microplastics (10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight). These exposure levels were chosen to reflect amounts considered environmentally relevant and similar to what humans could encounter through contaminated food and water.

1/1/2026 ScienceDaily This 100-year-old teaching method is beating modern preschools - Public Montessori preschool students enter kindergarten with stronger reading, memory, and executive function skills than their peers. These gains don’t fade — they grow over time, bucking a long-standing trend in early education research. Even better, Montessori programs cost about $13,000 less per child than traditional preschool. (My daughter went to a private Montessori school for preschool-kindergarten…she enjoyed it and did very well in her subsequent education/career so I am not surprised by the results of this national trial.)

12/31/2025 Archaeology Magazine Bones of Chaco Canyon’s Imported Parrots Reexamined – A reexamination of more than 2,400 parrot bones unearthed at Chaco Canyon suggests that most of the macaws and parrots that were kept by ancient Puebloans were likely restricted to the large, multistory buildings known as great houses, where they lived in heated rooms with plastered walls.

12/31/2025 ScienceDaily Microplastics are leaking invisible chemical clouds into water - Microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans aren’t just drifting debris—they’re constantly leaking invisible clouds of chemicals into the water. New research shows that sunlight drives this process, causing different plastics to release distinct and evolving mixtures of dissolved organic compounds as they weather. These chemical plumes are surprisingly complex, often richer and more biologically active than natural organic matter, and include additives, broken polymer fragments, and oxidized molecules. Understanding how these chemicals evolve across different stages of plastic breakdown will be essential for assessing their long-term environmental impact.

1/2/2026 National Parks Traveler A Day in the Park: Assateague Island National Seashore – This was a great get away from where we lived in Maryland until recently. We’d cross the Bay Bridge, visit Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and then be at Chincoteague and Assateague Island National Seashore after that.

1/2/2026 The New York Times A Study Is Retracted, Renewing Concerns About the Weedkiller Roundup - In 2000, a landmark study claimed to set the record straight on glyphosate, a contentious weedkiller used on hundreds of millions of acres of farmland. The paper found that the chemical, the active ingredient in Roundup, wasn’t a human health risk despite evidence of a cancer link. Last month, the study was retracted by the scientific journal that published it a quarter century ago, setting off a crisis of confidence in the science behind a weedkiller that has become the backbone of American food production.

1/2/2026 Smithsonian Magazine When the Bayeaux Tapestry Makes its Historic Return to England - Created in the 11th century, the delicate, 230-foot-long embroidered textile has been in France since 1077.

12/30/2025 YaleEnvironment360 2025 Was Another Exceptionally Hot Year - 2025 was the second hottest on record, surpassed only by 2024. It continues a recent trend of exceptional, unexplained warming. The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded. The recent jump in warming, which exceeded the predictions of climate models.

12/21/2025 My Modern Met Photographer Explores the Rich Complexity of Africa’s Great Rift – Photography of a place --- and an interview with the photographer.

12/17/2025 Washington Post These kitchen items may be contaminating your food with chemicals - Plastic ushered in a new era of convenience and filled homes with cheap, disposable goods. But it also has exposed ordinary people to tens of thousands of chemicals that slip out of those items into household dust, food, water — and from there, into bodies. Some of these chemicals are known to disrupt pregnancies, triggering birth defects and fertility problems later in life; others have been linked to cancer and developmental problems. “The problem is, none of the plastics that we have right now are safe,” said Wagner, of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “That’s not a very nice thing to hear, but that’s what the data tell us.”

12/15/2025 Nature The best science images of 2025 — Nature’s picks – Educational and beautiful at the same time.

Loess Bluff National Wildlife Refuge

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We got to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in the early afternoon on the day after Christmas. It was sunny and relatively warm – no coat required. We made a slow drive around the loop and side road. The next morning, we drove the wildlife loop again in the fog before heading home.

There were lots of birds to see and hear!

Trumpeter Swans

Snow Geese

White fronted Geese

And Bald Eagles

There were more eagles than when we had visited Loess Bluffs last March…but similar numbers of snow geese and trumpeter swans. The muskrats were not active outside their mounds, so we didn’t see any this time.

Unfortunately, another difference we noted were dead birds in the water; I recognized snow geese and trumpeter swans. Some looked like they had been dead for some time. Pre-Covid, the carcasses of dead birds were collected as one refuge we visited (to determine why the birds were dying and to minimize the contagion in the water); perhaps they no long do that because it isn’t effective, they know it is bird flu, or there are not staff to do the work. The area where most of the dead birds were located was not near where the bulk of living birds were; maybe water movement acted to collect the birds in the shallows along the shore (mostly) away from flocks.

I’ll end this post on a positive note with the botanical pictures! Seeds and pods and brown foliage dominate…but there was one green plant that had a lot of water droplets.

The wildlife refuge is a great place to see bald eagles in the winter….and other things too!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 03, 2026

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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. (Note: I have changed the format to include the date and source of the article.)

9/15/2025 NIH National Library of Medicine Microplastics in Drinking Water: A Review of Sources, Removal, Detection, Occurrence, and Potential Risks - Microplastics in drinking water systems exhibit multi-source input characteristics, originating from environmental infiltration into water sources; leaching from materials in water distribution systems; migration from bottled water packaging interfaces; and re-release during water treatment processes. The potential hazards of MPs remain a critical concern. Future work needs to integrate research from environmental science, toxicology, and public health to clarify the dose–effect relationships of MPs, improve risk assessment systems, and promote technological innovation and policy regulation to effectively ensure drinking water safety and public health.

12/21/2025 Plantizen Winter Road Salt is Making Waterways Toxic to Wildlife - Salt used to keep roadways free of ice and snow is accumulating in waterways, causing dangerously high salinity levels in water bodies in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware - well above the healthy accepted drinking water standard for people on a low-salt diet.

12/22/2025 ScienceDaily This fish-inspired filter removes over 99% of microplastics - Washing machines release massive amounts of microplastics into the environment, mostly from worn clothing fibers. Researchers have developed a new, fish-inspired filter that removes over 99% of these particles without clogging. The design mimics the funnel-shaped gill system used by filter-feeding fish, allowing fibers to roll away instead of blocking the filter. The low-cost, patent-pending solution could soon be built directly into future washing machines.

12/24/2025 The Prairie Ecologist Photos of the Year – From Chris Helzer: “Well, we’ve almost made it through 2025. To say it has been an eventful year seems like a massive understatement. As I’m sure is true for many of you, I tried to manage stress and anxiety by spending time in nature – exploring with curiosity and wonder and giving myself a break from the rest of the world for a little while. It helped.”

12/24/2025 ScienceDaily Scientists reverse Alzheimer’s in mice and restore memory - The damaged brain can, under some conditions, repair itself and regain function. )ne drug-based way to accomplish this in animal models in the study, and also identified candidate proteins in the human AD brain that may relate to the ability to reverse AD and opens the door to additional studies and eventual testing in people. The technology is currently being commercialized by Glengary Brain Health, a Cleveland-based company.

12/22/2025 The Conversation Everyday chemicals, global consequences: How disinfectants contribute to antimicrobial resistance - During the COVID-19 pandemic, disinfectants became our shield. Hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and antimicrobial sprays became part of daily life. They made us feel safe. Today, they are still everywhere: in homes, hospitals and public spaces. But….The chemicals we trust to protect us may also inadvertently help microbes evolve resistance and protect themselves against antibiotics.

10/14/2025 All about Vision How microplastics affect your eyes, and what you can do - Microplastics don't go away. They just get smaller and smaller over time. They can come from everyday things like bottles, tires, fabrics and personal care products. Studies have found microplastics on and even inside people's eyes.

12/25/2025 BBC The best nature photography of 2025 - From the depths of the oceans to deserts, mountains and the remote Amazon, this year's most extraordinary nature photography brings us glimpses of the diversity and awe of the natural world. This year we meet acrobatic gorillas, maritime lions and grinning bears. 

12/22/2025 Smithsonian Magazine This Mama Polar Bear Adopted a Young Cub - The bears need all the help they can get these days with climate change. If females have the opportunity to pick up another cub and care for it and successfully wean it, it’s a good thing for bears in Churchill.

12/19/2026 Artnet Inside the 6,000-Year-Old Underground Temple Where the Walls Literally Sing - Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, an ancient, underground burial complex on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Built around 4,000 B.C.E. this subterranean burial ground amplifies sound at a soothing frequency.