Winter Meadow

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Last week, my husband and I picked a sunny morning to walk in the Lake Springfield Boathouse area. It is an easy drive from our house along curvy 2 lane roads. It was cold enough for a jacket but the winds from the previous day were gone – so not uncomfortable. The place was very different that our previous visit back in September (see posts (1) and (2)). Now the lush meadow is full of dried vegetation…providing a very different photographic opportunity. It was so sunny that it was challenging to see the camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) screen or view finder!

In one of the open areas along the paved path, there was a gingko tree….complete with a few leaves from last season and the distinctive buds for next spring.

Back at the boathouse – I took a picture of a youngish sycamore near the water. Tomorrow I’ll post about the birds we saw on our walk.

Our Maryland Neighborhood

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I took an early morning walk in our neighborhood – down to the water retention pond…savoring the familiar sights and sounds. The first was our oak near our mailbox. It was a much smaller tree when we moved to the house over 25 years ago. I planted day lilies around its base about 10 years ago; they never get a chance to bloom because the deer eat the buds like candy but the leaves make a lush collar for the tree that keeps the mowers from damaging the trunk.

I took pictures of some of my favorite trees against the morning sky/shadow – maple, ginkgo and oak. The maples are thriving while the oaks are declining. The builder planted one of each near the street originally.

The ginkgo is near the street in one of the yards along the way to the pond. It leans a little toward the street.

At the pond, cattails were thick with old and new growth, the red winged blackbirds and green frogs (rubber band sound) were noisy, and I appreciated once again that the slopes are no longer mowed.

I managed to photograph a female red winged blackbird and a rather scruffy looking fledgling that she was feeding. The fledgling stayed down in the cattails more than the adult.

I took a picture of the oak overhead as I sat on the bench near the pond. It is a lot like ours…more dead branches than it should have.

The arborist that worked on our sycamore and plum talked about the oaks dying…that making sure they are watered is about all you can do to help prolong their life; it looks like all the oaks in our neighborhood are experienced a slow death. The Virginia Creeper that is growing on our tree makes it looks greener than it would be on its own!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 29, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Photography In the National Parks: My 10 Favorite Shots From 2021 – I only went to one national park in 2021: New River Gorge (in West Virginia). There are so many beautiful National Parks to see…and they’re worth seeing again and again.

Big Gulp: Blue Catfish Eat Wood Duck – We’ve seen fishermen catch blue catfish at the base of Conowingo Dam (we’re there for the bald eagles). They are huge…sorry to learn that they eat ducks.

Top 25 birds of the week: Raptors! – How many of these live in your area of the world?

Air Pollution Makes It Harder for Bees to Sniff Out Flowers – Not just a problem for bees…also moths, hoverflies and butterflies are having a harder time. This results in a 14-31% reduction in pollination among plants exposed to polluted air.

Ocean microplastic pollution may be greater than estimated – Not a good trend…and this form of pollution that is new enough that the full impact is still being discovered.

With Fewer Animals to Move Their Seeds, Plants Are Stuck in Threatened Habitats – Another way the world is becoming less resilient at a time when climate change is pushing all life to use all the resilience available.

Large Permian Basin Methane Leaks Are Causing As Much Climate Pollution as 500,000 Cars – It’s frustrating that the oil industry has not been a better steward of resources they are extracting for energy. The methane leaks are a waste of the effort put into extraction….and bad for the planet too.

Dinosaur food and Hiroshima bomb survivors: maidenhair trees are ‘living fossils’ and your new favorite plant – Learn more about the ginkgo tree! There is one along my walking route in my neighborhood and others I find in local gardens and parks near where I live. They are so different from other trees…worth noticing.

North Sea Fossil Fuel Companies Plan to Invest More in Wind than Oil Drilling – Hurray! Maybe other companies around the world begin to do this too….a strategic move for Shell, Total and BP.

Antimicrobial resistance now a leading cause of death worldwide, study finds – This challenge will increase over time…if we don’t take action to slow the development of resistance and develop new antimicrobial techniques (maybe we need more strategies than simply trying to develop new antibiotics).

Zooming – March 2021

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The sunny March days have been so pleasant – great times to be outdoors and photographing what I see. I’ve been venturing out from home a bit more too – Brookside Gardens, Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant, and Centennial Park. There are still zoomed images taken through my office window (birds and the moon framed by tree branches); the sunrise and daffodils are from my house as well. Overall - this is just the beginning of the season for spring flowers. Can you find:

  • Skunk cabbage (Mt Pleasant)

  • Mourning Dove (my house)

  • Shelf fungus (2 of them - Mt Pleasant and my house)

  • Witch Hazel (Brookside)

  • Gingko tree trunk and branches (Centennial)

  • Blue jays (my house)

  • Dried hydrangea flowers (Brookside)

Enjoy the slideshow for March 2021!

Getting outdoors on these spring days is a mood boosting activity as well as good exercise. I’ve gotten comfortable enough wearing a mask that I just keep it on if I’ve in a place where I might encounter someone else on the trail. I enjoy it in the moment and then again when I view the images on my bigger screen monitor…and formulate the blog post. The activity is a bright core with tendrils of benefit that are longer lasting.

Neighborhood Pond – November 2020 – part 2

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The high point of my walk to and from the pond was a gingko tree. My husband and I had spotted it on the day we took his car to get a new battery – a flame of yellow leaves in a yard along the main street of our neighborhood. In the few intervening days, most of the leaves had fallen. I took pictures of them on the street – in the grass – drifts in the street gutter.

The graceful shapes are one of my favorites (I make the Zentangle pattern frequently and these pictures give me some ideas of variation of the pattern!). This time of year, the color is yet another reason to enjoy the gingko trees. They are not natives to our area but have been planted as ornamentals in yards and parks.

On the way back from the pond I photographed one branch of the tree that seemed to have held on to more of its leaves. Some of them still have smudges of green.

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Mt. Pleasant – November 2020 (part 1)

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Our second field trip of the pandemic – birding at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant. We met the group at the Robbins Skywatch – distancing and wearing masks - to watch for hawks flying over. It was not an optimal morning with calm sunny weather. In terms of numbers we saw more vultures and crows than hawks…and the high point – for me – was a raven. I wasn’t trying to get pictures of the birds…felt lucky enough to track them with my binoculars.

I took some pictures from the vantage point of the skywatch: horse nettle fruits,

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Fall foliage across the meadow and on the other side of the Davis Branch,

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And some new houses that have been built in the past year or so (they change the feel of that area of the meadow for me…I prefer areas of the conservancy where surrounding development is not visible).

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I took a break to walk down to the Davis Branch ‘beach’ area (more about that area tomorrow). Along the way I started taking pictures of seeds spilling out of seed pods.

I walked across the meadow on the path where the chunk of quartz was taken out of the path to keep it from damaging the mower – has been just to the side of the path since. The indentation where was until a couple of years ago has almost filled in now.

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On the way back to the car I noticed that there are new doors on Montjoy Barn.

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I also walked around the other areas near where we had parked…taking in scenes from previous falls when I volunteered to hike with elementary school field trips: the old farm house,

The leaves under the gingko tree in the picnic area,

The witch hazel blooming in front of the Gudelsky Environmental Center.

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And then we were heading home after a pleasant fall morning at Mt. Pleasant.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

The sound of fall leaves. I ate lunch outdoors on our covered deck…listening to the leaves. The ones still on the trees are getting drier… and they make a different noise as they bump into each other than spring or summer leaves. They are the wind chimes of nature this time of year.

Zentangle® – September 2020

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Just as in prior months of the pandemic…I had a lot of Zentangle® tiles to choose from – getting to the 30 to showcase in this post. There are 16 square tiles in various colors of card stock and lightweight cardboard.  Note that all the tiles this month are made with dark ink (usually black) and I will make a second pass on the tiles to color them later; I have discovered that I enjoy coloring tiles as the wind down to bedtime.

The rectangular tiles are all made on lightweight cardboard from between layers of cans in cat food boxes. The short side is 3.5 inches and the longer side is the width of the cat food box.

I can’t resist the gingo pattern and have started making ones with more ‘leaves’…trying to always keep to an odd number!

I’ll do a post later this month with tiles that I’ve colored…trying to pick the top 10 is going to be more challenging than the selection for this post!

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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.

River Boot Tangle

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I decided to make my river boots (that I use for field trips with high schoolers into rivers and streams looking for macroinvertebrates) unique with a Zentangle®.

I chose the gingo pattern – which has become one of my favorites since it was shared on the TanglePatterns site in late August. These boots are several years old and are scuffed from the river rocks near the foot part of the boots…but the surface I tangled was relatively smooth. I used a Sharpie and only worked on the outer side of the boots…so I still have room for more tangling.

So – even if I somehow take off my boots and they get in the pile of boots we have for the students…I’ll always be able to spot mine!

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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.

Outdoors at Brookside Gardens

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I try to take a few minutes before each shift volunteering at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy to walk around outside in the gardens. There is a lot going on in August. I am featuring some of my favorite things I noticed and photographed in this post.

Button bush and cone flowers and sunflowers – with and without bees.

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Joe Pye Weed in bloom…very popular with the tiger swallowtails. One morning I photographed a dark morph female with several of the yellow and black versions.

Monarchs are more prevalent in the garden than they were earlier.

I can never resist checking the gingko tree near the conservatory. I like the way the leaves look outlined in gold of the morning sunshine.

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The sumac is a plant I am tracking this year. I recognize the seed heads but want to capture how the seeds develop. This will take me further into the fall since they don’t look like they’ve changed too much during this month.

There are always a lot of funnel spider webs in the low pines around the conservatory….and sometimes the spider is visible.

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There are several kinds of datura in the garden.

I had never nptoced what the seed pod looked like before.

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Some of the trumpets hang downward and I appreciated that the screen on my new camera can pivot so I can see what the camera is seeing when it is point straight up! I’ve always wanted to photography the unfurling flower.

The bald cypress has the scale insects like it did last summer but seems healthy enough to survive. The cones are beginning to form.

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The cannas are beautiful this time of year. Some are producing seed pods.

This is the view from the ticket taker table for Wings of Fancy. I ended up doing the job when no one had signed up for it….a  last minute change of plans.

There are milkweed plants close to the entrance to the caterpillar house and there are often insects on the plants other than caterpillars. When there are no visitors in the area…I roam around and take pictures; more on the caterpillars tomorrow.