6 Free eBooks by Ludwig Borchardt – July 2020

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Ludwig Borchardt was an Egyptologist in the early 1900s – best known for finding the bust of Nefertiti at Amarna. I browsed through 6 books published by Borchardt that are freely available on Internet Archive and decided to feature them for my July eBooks post.

Porträts der Königin Nofret-ete aus den Grabungen 1912/13 in Tell el-Amarna (1923) includes pictures of the famous bust

The others (with sample images for each) are:

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Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Northern Cardinal fledgling and Blue Jay at the feeder. Two events I noticed in passing on our deck:

1) A female cardinal bringing a fledgling to the deck for a snack. The young birds was still begging the mother for food and getting fed…but also finding a few seeds on its own.

2) Blue jays are frequent visitors to our deck but usually to the bird bath or deck railing. This time the bird went to the feeder. It was heavy enough that it closed off the seed holes partially. I don’t think it was able to get any seeds before it flew off.

Sunset. I was walking around as I talked to my daughter on the phone and noticed the wonderful color outside through a small opening in some drapes. I went to a better vantage point and discovered that the sunset was very colorful…and the timing was perfect. I managed to juggle my phone and a better camera to get a picture. A great finale to the day!

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Zooming – June 2020

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Only two pictures in the slide show below were taken away from my house. The other location was a short walk from my house to the neighborhood storm water retention pond.

There are quite a few birds as usual:

  • Starling

  • Cardinal

  • Carolina Wren

  • Blue Jay

  • Red-winged blackbird (fledgling)

  • House finch

  • Mourning dove

  • Chipping sparrow

  • Turkey vulture

It seems like there are more other animals that usual: cat, deer (with faun), turtle, and black squirrel.

Overall it’s a good mix – but I am missing the usual garden and butterfly pictures as I look at these and think about June the past few years (see June 2019 and June 2018). In previous years June was a hyper month at the beginning with two volunteer gigs (Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy and Howard County Conservancy’s hiking with school field trips) overlapping and helping my daughter move (last year). June 2020 has been a quieter month…but still enjoyable.

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.

Neighborhood Pond

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Earlier this week I made a circuit of our neighborhood’s stormwater pond. I noticed the painted turtle on a rock just breaking the surface. The morning was still cool, and the turtle was warming up. It stayed were it was the whole time I was at the pond.

As I continued around the pond, the light changed enough to make the water look more interesting around the turtle. This was my artsy photo of the morning.

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A few years ago, the county cleaned out our pond and eventually replanted the slopes with vetch and clover (I am guessing…since there is a lot growing there now). The crew that maintains the area has finally decided to not mow the slopes as frequently, so we have flowers.

Another area they aren’t mowing has turned into a milkweed meadow.

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There were mating milkweed beetles on several plants close enough to the edge for me to photograph without being in the taller vegetation.

But – the highlight of the morning was a fledgling red-winged blackbird! I was hearing a lot of red-winged blackbird calls and had seen both males and females around the pond as I walked. A female flew up from some cattails and, when I looked more closely at the area she left, there was the fledgling. It is still mostly bald on its head and the tail feathers are very stumpy.

The female kept an eye on me from the cattails a little further around the pond.

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Unique activities for yesterday:

Wegmans shopping. Grocery shopping has become a bit more adventurous these days. This is my second time in the ‘new normal’ for grocery shopping. I’m not quite comfortable yet.

I printed out my list in the order I traverse the store rather than hand writing it like I did the first time; the scanning app the store provides really does need to incorporate a list function since switching in and out of the scan app and the Our Groceries app (that I use for my list) is too much flipping around on the phone.

Shopping every two weeks rather than each week is still a little challenging but I am sticking to the strategy. This time my cart was very full because the store had both toilet paper and paper towels – which it hadn’t the week before.

I am getting used to wearing a mask; it didn’t feel as strange as it did last time. However, the day was very humid, and my glasses fogged more frequently.

Overall – it was another good experience and right now I can’t think of anything I’ll be doing differently when I shop again in 2 weeks.

Fledglings and Zentangle Prompt

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

A Zentangle Prompt

Make a mono-tangle tile using the gingo pattern.

Here are 2 tiles I made yesterday with the prompt: Make a tile using these three patterns: WAVLIN, CURLY-Q, and DL Sunray.

Fledglings!

Our bird feeder was suddenly busy after 2 windy days when the birds tended to stay in the trees. And we had some special visitors. Two birds that are just learning their way around the feeder. The first was a downy woodpecker. The adult male came first and

Then a bumbling juvenile. It was noisy from the deck railing at first the tried the feeder but not where it was able to get any seed. The male came back to show it the technique again but the young one had already flown off to the sycamore and then back to the maple.

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An adult white-breasted nuthatch came to the feeder and then flew below to get seed from the deck floor. It was followed by a scruffy looking bird with less distinct markings…a little clumsy getting around too. A fledgling nuthatch?

The other bird that came to the feeder that I hadn’t seen in a few days was a red-bellied woodpecker.  Last summer we had at least one red-bellied woodpecker (in July) but this must have been mom getting a snack rather than training a fledgling.

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I am pleased that I haven’t seen a fledgling cowbird coming to the feeder with a weary adult bird from another species.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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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.