Yard Work – July 2024

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The only yard work I do on a weekly basis is mow the grassy area; it is a good way for me to achieve my ‘intensity minutes’ of exercise for the week! I do some weed eating every other week. Everything else is more ad hoc…and as needed.

I ordered 25 orange daylily roots and got them planted around the base of our two red maples in the front yard. The ruff of these plants around my oak in Maryland looked good and made it easier to mow around the base of the tree without being too close to the trunk. The daylilies are better than mulch to keep the grass from growing too close to the tree trunks!

The Virginia creeper has covered the stones in the raised bed in front. I pull down any that tries to climb the brick and try to keep weeds from growing in the area (like poke weed). I do need to trim the boxwood (and remove the Virginia creeper growing into it.  

I have rounded most of the corners created by the fence by planting lambs ear…and I let low growing poke weed grow there too.

I mowed part of the area I didn’t mow in May back in June and left the thick clippings to mulch in place; much of the grass has died there and violets from the flower bed are spilling into the yard. The larger leafed plant near the metal iris is a spikenard which is in the same area. About a foot of grass has been eliminated along this section of the flower bed. Over time I will use this strategy to reduce the grassy area of our yard.

A plant came up in a bare ‘hole’ in the turf in my back yard and I have been carefully mowing around it. It appears to be a small white aster and has been blooming for more than 4 weeks. I’ll eventually mow it, but it was a fun experiment to see what kind of plant it was.

I noticed a tall something in the flowerbed on the yard side of the stairs from our deck. It is a young redbud! I’ve decided to keep it…will trim the bush that is on one side of it and the ornamental grass that is on the other side.

My spider mum metal sculpture was visible from my office window when I first stuck it in the ground…but the branches of the pine are growing and getting lower around it. I have borrowed a pole saw from my daughter and will trim the lowest ones (it is impossible to get close enough to the trunk without using a pole saw!).

I am pleased with the progress I am making on the yard. My goals are to make it easier to maintain…more native plants…less grass…all while staying within the ‘rules’ of the neighborhood HOA.

Carrollton Yard – June 2023

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June is the ‘getting hot’ month in Carrollton, Texas…leading into more frequent 100-degree-plus days in the following months. It is already obvious which yards in the neighborhood are getting watered. My parents have a sprinkler system that my sister keeps tuned to maximize the watering where it is needed most. In the backyard the Queen Anne’s Lace, cosmos, hibiscus, and day lilies are lush – flowers and lots of green. In the front yard there are dusty miller plants in bloom, the last of the daisies, and the red yuccas with blooms and lots of green seed pods. The red oak planted there is finally getting a lot of light and growing well since the ancient mulberry has been cut down.

There is still grass to mow and weed eating/edging – a continuing chore – even though the years of gardening have reduced the area maintained in that way. Pulling ‘trash trees’ that emerge in the flowerbeds requires more finesse by the person doing the work (distinguishing what needs to be pulled from the plants that should be in the flower beds) and is always on the ‘to do’ list for the yard!

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Wishing everyone an enjoyable 4th of July…Independence Day in the US…a day for fireworks, parades, and watermelon!

Tree Mulching Project

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When we first moved to Missouri last summer, we hired a crew to mow/weed eat/edge our yard. This season I am doing it. The first time I mowed (with our new battery powered mower…a big improvement over the gasoline powered one we had in Maryland), it was obvious that the job would be easier if the trees had mulch around them – an area large enough to avoid any low branches. The front yard has three trees: 2 red maples and an Asian dogwood. The red maples are relatively young trees so the mulched area did not need to be large. The dogwood had a lot of lower branches that I wanted to keep – hence a larger circle of mulch.

The first step was define the circle I would cover with mulch with very short grass; it was a good project for me to learn to use our new weed eater (also batter powered).

My husband helped me pour bags of mulch and I spread it around with a rake. The red maples took 1.5 bags each and the dogwood took 3 bags.

My follow up plan is to plant some daylilies and butterfly weed in the mulch areas around the red maples. The base of the young trees in sunny because are relatively skinny trees; the plants should do well. I enjoyed the ‘ruff’ of daylilies I had around the base of our oak tree in Maryland, and I hope eventually that will happen around these red maples. The plants might make it easier to extend the mulch circles as the trees grow since they reproduce rapidly. There aren’t deer wondering through our Missouri neighborhood eating buds like candy (like happened in Maryland); I’m looking forward to having flowers!

In Maryland

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Our first local stop in Maryland was our old house. We loaded up the few things we had left (which included some things we had left accidently). I took one last picture through the windows on the upper floor into the back of the house (view of the sycamore and the red maple). The room that had been my office (the picture on the right) was my favorite of the house. I realized that the room I’ve chosen in my new house is quite different…but my favorite of the new house.

The only furniture we left was the table and chairs on the covered deck. The table was just too awkward to move (didn’t fit through doors without disassembly).

We cut two daylilies (with buds) from the front flower bed and added them to a bouquet we purchased at a grocery store to put on my mother-in-law’s grave. She died in 1990 and had purchased the original daylily bulbs the year before…it seemed fitting to include the flowers in this bouquet. We’ve had annual times that we put out flowers/wreaths on her grave – her birthday and the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday. We don’t know when we’ll be back in the area so this might have been a last time.

We took a short walk around Brookside Gardens…a place we enjoyed during all the years we lived in Maryland. It was not a thorough walk around…but enough to be a gentle goodbye to a special place.

We stayed in a hotel near the title company where the closing would occur. It had an impressive shower: a different kind of drain and well-balanced barn type glass doors and textured walls without seams.

The next morning, we were the first appointment of the day at the title company with a waiting room like a sitting room…with a carpet that needed a good vacuuming.  Our part of the closing was uneventful; I was disappointed that the buyers were coming in later and we did not get to meet them.

We made a stop at my favorite grocery store for one last purchased of my favorite salad dressing. It was a bust since it was sold out, but I was still glad to be in the store on last time.

We left the area to head back toward Missouri before noon.

Clearing the Path to the Front Door

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One of the suggestions to prepare our house to sell quickly was to clear vegetation away from the front walkway...since it detracts from the entrance to the house. It was easy to see the point, so I started the project at 6:30 AM on what promised to be a very hot day. My first action was to cut an iris that was blooming very close to the sidewalk to enjoy inside. Most of what was leaning over onto the sidewalk were day lilies with a few iris…and milkweed.

I used the hedge trimmers as a first pass to get the leaves removed so I could see how much I would have to dig out. There were two trips with the wheelbarrow back to the brush pile with the leaves!

It will probably take a couple additional rounds of morning yard work to get the area the way I want it. I’ll post some pictures from the follow up rounds as they happen.

We also need a new welcome mat!

Round 2

The next day I cleared all the weeds from under the bushes and dug out a shovel-wide swath along the sidewalk. There were a lot of day lily buds crammed into the space. Overall – it was another 2 wheelbarrow loads back to the brush pile. We’ll put mulch down in that strip and the front should look a little less ‘wild.’

Photographing a Day Lily

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I noticed a stalk of day lily buds in the front flower bed recently – one of the few day lilies that bloom both in the spring and fall; it was something to bring inside rather than leave for a deer to eat! There were two types of photography I wanted to do with the flowers: macro and high key. Fortunately, several of the buds were mature enough to complete their development in my office.

The high key images were done with the first flower early in the morning with my Canon Powershot SX70 HS – handheld but stabilized on my knee as I sat in an office chair rolled to the far side of the room so that the zoom would focus. I had the vase with the opening flower positioned in front of the lamp.

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I tried three different positions for the flower. Which do you like best? I think the last one is my favorite.

Later in the day, the flower had opened completely, and I put the vase in my office window that gets afternoon sun.

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Another bud matured and opened a few days later…my opportunity for doing some macro shots. I used my phone with a clip on macro lens…discovered that my clicker’s battery was dead so I used voice commands to take the hand held pictures (voice commands do not work as well has the clicker since the timing is not as exact). The vase was on the window ledge on the cloudy day.

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I started out taking macro images of flower parts.

Then I noticed some white ‘foam’ and then something that moved. There were tiny insects on the flower and remaining buds! The one with defined antennae had very delicate looking wings. In the last image, it looks like one of them has just shed its skin (and is standing on it). The one with the wings might be an adult and all the rest are larval stages of that insect.

Home Again – Day 1

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My time away from home on the road trip (Maryland to Texas to Missouri and back to Maryland) was from April 17 to June 2. It was my longest time away from home since my junior year of high school when I traveled with an Up with People cast/traveling high school; I was away from home for semester length stints then. This time was very different both because of the intervening years of experience, returning to my own home/husband rather than my parents, and more recently impact of the pandemic but there was a similarity too – coming home was a return to the place I felt most secure after going out into the world with some anticipated trepidation.

The first thing I did when I got home to Maryland was to walk down the driveway taking a few pictures. I had missed almost all the iris blooms. There were only 2 flowers remaining…no more buds. The day lilies were beginning, and the deer had not eaten very many (yet). The Virginia creeper was vigorously growing up the oak tree. The trees and yard had filled out while I was away.

I unpacked the car…tried to disperse items close to where they could be put away. For some reason I was exhausted even though the drive had been easy…and sedentary. Being home again felt odd instead of ‘normal.’ I was grateful that my husband had kept things in good order while I was away. Somehow the list in my head of what I needed to do felt overwhelming. More about that in tomorrow’s post.

Yard Work

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The yard work seems to never be finished. My goal is to spend a morning hour every other day catching up. The front flowed beds are the first phase. The milkweed is looking awful and the day lily leaves need to be cut since they are turning yellow. I learned last year that trimming the day lily leaves back causes the plant to grow fresh leaves that last until frost. It probably reduces the bulb growth underground, but the deer take so many of the flowers that producing more bulbs is not my priority.

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On the first morning, I cut or trimmed the most aphid infested milkweed and about 1/3 of the day lily leaves. I discovered it was slower going since I wanted to leave the black eyed susans (the deer eat them but maybe not quite as much as the day lily flowers).

The second morning, I continued working on the rest of the bed. There were still a lot of day lily leaves to go.

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I use a wheelbarrow as my measure for each day – my goal it to fill it up. It wasn’t that difficult although it was only another 1/3 of the flower bed! I took the load back to the compost pile; it covered the kitchen scraps I had taken out before I started.

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On the way back up the hill, I stopped to photograph some tiny orange fungus in the grass (I’ll check on them in the next few days…see if they become mushrooms) and a moth which I though was a leaf at first.

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And then there were the milkweed bugs on one of the plants that I chose to leave up in the flower bed.

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Now to find a third morning to finish off the work in the flower bed…and move on to the next flowerbed/bush trimming on my list. It won’t be tomorrow since the forecast is for all day rain from Tropical Storm Isaias.

I’m getting more accomplished on the flower beds now that I’ve settled on the wheelbarrow metric and planning to be out for only an hour. I am not an enthusiastic gardener, but I do want the flower beds to look a lot better than they do right now and am psyched to get there an hour at a time. I am hopeful that I’ll get to a point that I can take off an occasional day (or not get too far behind if the weather does not cooperate) in the next few weeks. The other change I’ve made is to wear my river (field trip) boots; they take away my excuse that the foliage it too wet!

We are at home so much right now that there is no excuse to not have the yard it great shape.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Watermelon. We ate our first watermelon from the CSA this season. It was small enough to eat in one sitting for my husband and I. It was yellow (rather than red) and had seeds….but we both enjoyed it tremendously. I’d love to get one of the big red melon with seeds that I remember from my childhood but it seems like they aren’t grown very much anymore.

Surprise! Monarch Caterpillars

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I’d planned to work in the front flower bed in the early morning – cutting down 1) the milkweed that was being overrun by aphids and something that caused the leaves to curl and 2) the day lily leaves that were beginning to turn yellow. I took a ‘before’ picture.

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Before starting – I checked the milkweed plants for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Aaargh! They were on almost every plant – even the plants that looked terrible and were full of aphids.

Change of plans. I opted to cut out the worst aphid infestation and move caterpillars to better plants if I couldn’t leave them where they were. It was slow going. After I finished with the milkweed pruning, I started on the day lily leaves and pulling weeds. I found a red maple seedling.

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There were 10 tulip poplar seedlings – and I probably didn’t find all of them since I only worked about a third of the bed. The sheer number of tree seedlings surprised me because I’d already pull quite a few from that flower bed already this year.

There was one black-eyed Susan flower that has been missed by the deer.

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I took an ‘after’ picture that wasn’t as dramatic as originally planned and still a lot of work to do…but I’m hopeful about having a small group of Monarch butterflies this year. I’ll continue monitoring the plants and moving the caterpillars to the healthier looking ones. There are plenty of places for the caterpillars to make their chrysalis; I’ll try to do all the clearing out of the day lily leaves before the caterpillars are big enough to leave the milkweed to find their spot to pupate.

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Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Assessing risk. My daughter told me about the model from Georgia Tech at  https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/. It has a zoomable map of the US showing counties and placing the cursor on a county provides the current risk level of attending an event (you can select the size of the event) that at least one person present will be positive for COVID-19. This is a good way to assess the risk for being with groups of people – ignoring the reduction in risk that social distancing, masks, environment can provide. With the increasing number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in so many areas across the country, this is a way to roll up all that data for where you live in a way that may be more actionable …something to look at before deciding on a particular activity away from home.

Bird Feeder Camera Snippets

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Every week – I download the videos accumulated on the bird feeder camera and note any of special interest. Here are some recent finds:

On 7/6: A male finch appeared to be feeding a fledgling. The young bird found balancing on the perch somewhat challenging and kept flapping its wings to say in place. It also couldn’t seem to figure out how to get seed directly.

On 7/8: There was a squirrel that tried to get seed from the feeder. The springs worked to shut off the seed holes, so the acrobatics were for naught.

On 7/9: The bird feeder camera captured the goldfinches which I also photographed with my camera (included in the 7/10 blog post). It was interesting to see the different angle of the action. The bird feeder camera didn’t start recording until the house finch was already gone.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Last of the day lilies from the flower bed. The deer got more of the day lily buds than I did. I cut the last stalk that survived because it was tangled in the branches of a nearby bush. The buds should open nicely in the vase on our breakfast table. They will be dark orange…. descendants of the bulbs by mother-in-law bought about 30 years ago.

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The two stems I cut a few days ago are blooming in the vase upstairs in my office. There are still several buds developing…should keep my office in fresh flowers for 3-4 more days.

Once the day lilies are gone, the front flowerbed is going to be all green. I thought I’d have black eyed susans but the deer have eat all the buds this year already! I’ll rely on the CSA cutting garden for the rest of the summer.

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CSA Cutting Garden

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After I picked up my veggies at the CSA barn, I got my clippers and walked around to the cutting garden now that it has blooms. I’ll come home with a small bouquet of flowers every week! The row of sunflowers was just beginning!

I had a jar of water for the cut stems and worked as fast as I could since I was still wearing my face mask and realizing that it was making me very aware of the heat. I was glad to get back to the car and get the air conditioner started. Once I got home, I took the veggies out of the bags and figured out how to get it all into the crispers. It was easier than the previous week because there were not as many veggies with huge tops (i.e. carrots were without tops and fennel was not in the share again).

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Then I put the flowers I’d cut into a vase with some waning day lilies. They’ll easily last until CSA pickup day next week!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Yellow day lily opened this morning. A yellow day lily bud had opened overnight….what a wonderful greeting when I walked into my office first thing in the morning.

Watermelon lemonade. The watermelon I bought at the grocery store was not as flavorful as usual, so I am using it up making watermelon lemonade. I processed the watermelon chunks, a splash of lemon juice and ice cubes in the Ninja…and it’s a slushy summery drink that has a good flavor and is not overly sweet! It’s a wonderful pink/red color too.

New Masks

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I bought 3 new masks since I want to have plenty to last me between laundry days….and it’s hot enough that I might want a fresh one if I’m out in the afternoon for very long. I ordered them from Society6.

These masks are heritage type prints – from books I was familiar with. The poppy and dandelion are from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal (available from Internet Archive here). I browsed through it back in 2009.

The solar eclipse one is from Etienne Leopold Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings (available from Internet Archive here). I browsed the images in 2019.

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These masks are a little different than the 2 I already am using so I’ll wear one for an hour or so around the house to make sure it is comfortable enough for the time it takes to pickup my CSA share (and cut some flowers/herbs in the cutting garden) and buy groceries. I am going to keep a Ziploc of fresh masks in the car for the foreseeable future.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Tweaking the office. I am back to using my bouncy Swopper chair in front of my computer. It seems I am becoming pickier about how my office ‘fits’ my needs with being at home so much of the time. My back is happy today!

Breakfast picnic. I cut up the cantaloupe in chunks and cooked scrambled eggs. My husband cooked hash browns and bacon. And we ate the big breakfast out on our deck. It was the most pleasant temperature of the day. We were fortified enough to mow the yard about 30 minutes later….and that was the extent of our time outdoors until dusk when I went out to cut some day lilies that were blooming in the front flowerbed; I’ll enjoy them in a vase rather than taking the chance of the deer eating the flowers and buds.

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Enjoying 4th of July Weekend at Home

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No fireworks for us this 4th of July. Our gas grill ran out of gas a few weeks ago and we haven’t discovered a low risk way to get a refill…so we won’t be grilling either.  We’ll be spending the holiday weekend savoring home – like all the days the past few months. Two ways I’m celebrating: 1) I made a series of red, white, and blue Zentangle tiles in the days leading up to the holiday.

2) And melons! When I did the grocery shopping this week, the grocery store had both cantaloupe and watermelon, so I bought both! Now that I am thinking about it – maybe I like melons better than much of the other ‘traditional’ 4th of July food!  And we’ll have corn on the cob when it’s in-season locally – because it’s another big favorite.

It’s going to be hot and humid here on the 4th so we’ll probably do our outdoor meal for breakfast on the deck (I’m thinking hash browns and sausage or scrambled eggs….maybe some zucchini muffins)….then be cool indoors for the hottest part of the day.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

3 new day lily stalks. Three more stalks cut this morning. I now have two vases of day lilies – enjoying them inside since they don’t last in the flower beds once the buds are large. They are deer candy!

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Learn your eastern USA birds. Video flash cards of 84 birds…a quick 14 minutes. All of them were familiar (many come to our yard) …but this video will improve my ID skills for the ones I don’t see as often!

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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.

Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference – Day 2

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The biggest take away from day 2 – and really from the conference as a whole – is the shift in the conversation focus re climate change from problem to solutions….it is hopeful rather than doom/gloom.

So much good material referenced in the conference….here are some of the sites I’ve looked at so far.

Project Drawdown. Drawdown is the point in time when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. The focus of this is site is, therefore, about solutions…things we can implement now….with the goal of reaching drawdown by mid-century. There is also a 104-page downloadable The Drawdown Review (free) available from the site.

American Public Health Association page about Climate Change. There are regional factsheets about the health impact of climate change plus some climate-relevant COVID-19 resources.

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. Infrographic about “Health and climate: co-benefits.”

Center for Climate Change & Health. Climate Change and Health: A Framework for Action (another infographic)

These links are skewed to the last session of the conference because I’m still overwhelmed and trying to figure out how to organize what I have in my notes. The conference organizers are posting the videos and saved chats to the shared folder by sometime next week (I think). I’ll start with reviewing my notes this week and then add to the summary of what I’ll keep over the next few weeks. I’m envisioning a list of annotated links – at minimum. Some parts of the conference were done as concurrent breakout sessions….so the videos for the sessions I did not attend will be totally new material for me.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Summer squash custard. Before I went to pick up my share for the 3rd week of the CSA, I used up all the summer squash I had in the crisper making a custard with pecan topping. It made an excellent light lunch.

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Lots of day lilies. The deer have eaten more day lily buds…so I am cutting all the ones that are mature enough. Today it was 6 stalks. There will be more ready to cut tomorrow….if the deer don’t get them first

3rd week of CSA. Look at the list of veggies. It was 2 overflowing bags (the fennel, carrot, and beet tops were sticking out)!

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I was glad I cleared out the crispers before I did the pickup. When I got home, I managed to get almost everything into the two crispers. The Caraflex (pointy head) cabbage didn’t fit. Tomorrow I will probably have to process some of it into the freezer.

Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference – Day 1

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The Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference (MACCEC) was a conference that went virtual because of the pandemic.  I anticipated that it would be an intense 4 hours in from of my computer. I set up to use both of my screens – one for the WebEx and one for note taking/agenda/etc. Initially, I thought I might use a headset for the audio but quickly decided that 4 hours was too long for that. I also thought that I might get up and move around more during the sessions, but I was too busy interacting with polls and chat…and taking notes. I only got up and moved during the breaks!

Now that it is the ‘morning after,” I’ve had some hours to digest what happened on the first day. It was overwhelming at times while it was happening – and in a different way than an in-person conference is overwhelming. The flow of chat during the presentation is often invigorating but also distracting. It requires multi-tasking. Sometimes I tuned it out to focus on the presenter entirely.

Like most conferences, the speakers were often rushed so that we could stay in the time windows on the agenda. The charts were posted which made up for the rush somewhat…but not completely.

There were breakout sessions that ended up having some similarities with in-person conferences since one time I got lost for about a minute…couldn’t find my session!

The big take aways from the first day were:

  • information is out there for climate change educators…choosing what works best for their situation

  • education on climate change is interlinked with JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion)

  • always get to solutions…don’t stop with defining the problems

The ice-breaker activity was to determine the native inhabitant of land where participants were located using the https://native-land.ca/ website. I learned that where I live is Piscataway land. Where my daughter lives in Springfield MO is Kickapoo, Osage, and Sioux land. The land where my parents and sisters live in Texas (Carrollton, Flower Mound, and Sherman) was Kickapoo and Wichita land. Got us all thinking about how the land, water and air have changed since then…what we can and should restore.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Deer found the day lilies. The deer ate many of the day lily buds in the past few days. I am cutting a few every day as they manage to mature enough to bloom indoors.

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I found one already blooming under the milkweed this morning – a different variety than I had cut before. The stalk was shorter which probably helped it escape deer notice. Other buds are hiding in the same way…and I hope they will remain for few more days until they are ready to be cut.

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Oak shedding acorns. Our oak tree dropped quite a few immature acorns on our driveway in the past few days. There are so many…. not many left on the tree to mature over the summer.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2020

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We are still at home almost all the time, so the celebrations are mostly based there. There are two that celebrate the changes that we made in June that are away from the house….creating a sustainable new normal for the coming months.

Double rainbow. Seeing a rainbow is such a great way to celebrate summer! We’ve been having last afternoon thunderstorms and one of them was moving fast enough that the sun came out while it was still raining in the east….and it created a double rainbow! The arch was interrupted by our oak tree – but the colors were vibrant for enough time that I got a good series of pictures. I was so engrossed in taking pictures from our front porch that I didn’t notice our 18-year-old indoor cat escaping until he meowed; I was able to catch him before he escaped into the bushes.

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Day lilies. I enjoy having flowers in my office. It’s a way of bringing a bit of the outdoors into a place I can celebrate at closer range.

Ice maker fixed. My husband and I installed the part he ordered to keep our ice maker from allowing water to overflow into the rest of the freezer…..and it worked. We are both celebrating that we were able to do it ourselves rather than requiring a maintenance person.

Deck drapery. The deck drapery turned out to be a great project for us and we are celebrating the extra time we are already spending on our deck.

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Black squirrel. The black squirrel has only come to our deck once. I celebrated seeing it when visited because it was different than our usual squirrels….and it didn’t try to raid the bird feeder.

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Fledgling red-winged blackbird. If I hadn’t seen the parents nearby – I don’t think I would have seen it or be able to identify it. It’s a celebration of new life at the neighborhood storm water retention pond.

Plastic containers. The cabinet where we keep plastic containers in the kitchen had gotten so disorganized that it seemed to be overflowing…with us not adding anything new. I took about 30 minutes to reorganize it – putting the things we use most in the easiest to reach places…and putting some things in the recycle, trash, or give away. Moving from disorganized to organized is always something I celebrate.

Pleasant early mornings on the deck. Even on hot days, the early morning is wonderful on the deck. It’s a great way to start the day – often feeling like we are in the middle of a bird celebration.

Grocery shopping. Beginning to do my grocery shopping again is worthy of celebration. I take precautions (wear a mask, lots of hand sanitizer, go in the early morning, use self-scan and checkout, shop for 2 weeks rather than 1) but getting out just that little bit has made the new normal a lot easier to sustain.

CSA season. I always celebrate the beginning of our Community Supported Agriculture veggies. Picking up the share requires a mask and hand sanitizer…just like the grocery store. It’s an adjunct to the grocery shopping that makes the summer foods easily and abundantly available.  

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Unique activities for yesterday:

Rearranging deck furniture. The first afternoon I sat out on the deck to test the effectiveness of the deck drapery, I discovered that the table and chairs were not well positioned. They were in the patch of sunshine coming through the triangle of undraped screen near the ceiling.

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It was too hot to rearrange furniture that afternoon, so I did it during the cooler morning temperatures. I am also going to buy another prong to tie back the drape near the bird feeder (in the far left of the above picture) so that we can see the bird feeder when the drape is tied back.

Gleanings for Week Ending June 27, 2020

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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.

What if all viruses disappeared? - BBC Future – We are more aware of pathogenic viruses….but there are a lot more that are not pathogenic to humans….and are often beneficial (directly and indirectly).

Scythian Warrior's Genome Analyzed - Archaeology Magazine – Surprise! Discovered in 1988 and assumed to be a young warrior based on the weapons in the grave. DNA revealed it was a girl and was younger than 14 years old.

90 Percent of U.S. Could Be Powered by Renewables by 2035 - Yale E360 – Technically feasible…but do we have the determination as a country to do what we need to do for future generations?

Repetitive negative thinking linked to dementia risk -- ScienceDaily – But can training/therapy to reduce negative thinking reduce the risk? Whether it does or doesn’t – it seems that people who perceive the positives in their lives are more satisfied/happy….so teaching strategies to enhance that kind of thinking is probably worth it.

How Iceland is undoing carbon emissions for good - BBC Future – Examples of how Iceland is pushing the technical envelope for carbon capture even in heavy industry.

What Makes Some People More Resilient Than Others - The New York Times – Tools most common in resilient people: realistic optimism, a moral compass, religious or spiritual beliefs, cognitive and emotional flexibility, social connectedness.

Memory consolidation during REM sleep: Researchers identify neurons responsible for memory consolidation during REM sleep -- ScienceDaily – I remember the babies I’ve known well having frequent REM sleep….they are doing a lot of memory consolidation!

Top 25 birds of the week: Camouflage – They are easy to spot in these zoomed pictures….in the field, their camouflage is highly effective.

Urine test reveals quality of your diet -- and whether it's the best fit for your body – Interesting work. Maybe in the future we’ll get feedback from the toilet about the ‘health’ of our diet as easily as we get feedback about heart rate and sleep quality from wearable devises now.

The Winnowing of the Wilson’s Snipe – A bird that could fit in the camouflage group…but this bird is special – it makes sound with specialized tail feathers!

Unique activities for yesterday:

Three kinds of day lilies. I have three different kinds of day lilies blooming right now. I love having the flowers in my office and something new opening every day!

Ice maker repair. My husband ordered a replacement part for our ice maker once we started having water overflowing the unit and accumulating in the freezer. He’d done some research online and it seemed likely that the new part would fix the problem. It came and after a few days of the box sitting around to decontaminate, we pulled out the refrigerator to install it (using the opportunity to clean the floor too). This is the type of thing we would have called for repair service pre-pandemic. There are areas where we’ve become a lot more resourceful in recent months and I wonder if we’ll continue that trend post-pandemic.

Deck Drapery Project

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Our screened deck is on the west side of our house, so the afternoon sun has always been a challenge. We had two sets of rolled shades that lasted about 10 years each before they began to fall apart (we’ve been in the house about 25 years). This time we opted for indoor/outdoor drapery. The drapes we purchased are light green and have metal grommets for hanging. Our initial experiment was to see if the hooks already above the windows would hold them (and, if so, we would simply add a few more hooks to make sure the last gromet on each side would have a hook).

We hung two of the panels up just before a blustery thunderstorm came through. The drapes got wet, but they stayed on the hooks!

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So – our next step is to add the additional hooks and create some tiebacks to use when we don’t need the shade (there are already some hooks that were used to tie the pulls for the old rolled shades that can anchor the tie backs). Even on sunny days we’ll enjoy our deck in the afternoons (when it’s not too hot).

Unique activities for yesterday:

Sycamore leaves. There were thunderstorms and winds…..and then sycamore leaves on our deck. And down in the yard.

I arranged a size sequence of leaves to show how much the size varies. The leaves continue to grow larger as long as they are on the tree so as the season progresses there are more very large leaves. This year the tree is scraggly with the damage from the late frost in May. It still has lots of new leaves developing and – I hope – will look better as the season progresses.

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There were leaves on the stairs from the deck down to ground as well. Note the dark mass under the leaf on the right side of top step. It’s racoon poop!

I looked at the bird cam videos and the racoon visited early Sunday morning (6/21)…and left a ‘present.’ (Two views of what the bird cam captured are below). I think the racoon must come through the yard relatively often since I found 2 poop piles when we mowed the grass on the 13th.

Another color of day lily. The darker orange day lilies are beginning to bloom. Once the buds are developed enough to continue opening, I cut them…denying the deer a flowery treat.

Grapevine Wreath

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

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


Unique activities for yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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Flowerbeds in the Morning – Part 2

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One of the advantages of cool mornings is that the small critters move a little more slowly – making them easier to photograph. It was in the mid-60s on the morning I went out to work in the front flower beds – and took a few minutes for some photography. The first insect I noticed was a small damselfly flying around and then landing on a day lily leaf. I sat there in the sun long enough for me to get a picture with my phone. I clipped the best part of the image.

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I used the same technique with the bee on the clover. The bee was working its way to all the tiny flowers.

The oak had a lacewing larva several years ago, so I always check the lichen for another; I didn’t fine one this time…. But there was a slug moving over a lichen patch.

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Later – after I finished most of my work, I noticed a fly on a milkweed leaf. It too was a little sluggish because of the temperature.

Overall – I was pleased with the photographic results – concentrating on taking focused pictures without using the digital zoom on the phone – then clipping the portion I wanted for macro viewing.

Unique activities for yesterday:

First Fawn. When I first went into my office about 6 AM – I saw a doe and fawn in our backyard….headed toward the forest. By the time I got the camera turned on and zoomed, they were at the forest edge. This was my first fawn sighting of the year. Last year we had a doe with 2 fawn that came through the yard frequently all through the summer. There don’t seem to be as many deer this year; the path into the forest is growing over with vegetation and my day lilies have not been eaten. It would be good if the deer population were trending lower – although I enjoy seeing them in the forest.

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New low weight for the year. I’m 7 pounds lower than my max weight for the year! I celebrated with dark chocolate for breakfast – of course.