Ten Little Celebrations – July 2024

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4th of July. The holiday was full of the poignancy of the First Americans Museum and the Oklahoma City National Memorial (site of the Murrah Building bombing)…and then fireworks observed from our hotel window. It is probably going to be one of the most memorable 4th of July celebrations for me.

 A neighborhood walk before the rain. There is always something to notice on a walk around our neighborhood…I celebrate our robins and dandelion puffs and magnolias in bloom…relatively common things that brighten my day.

A protein drink that already has lactase enzyme in it. I was pleasantly surprised that the protein drink that I can find easily at the truck stops along the way to Dallas includes lactase so that I don’t have to remember to take a Lactaid….and it tastes good. Celebrating!

 Philbrook Museum and Gardens.Celebrating finding a ‘favorite place’ in Tulsa.

 Planting orange daylilies. I ordered 25 daylily roots and planted them around the two maples in my front yard. I am celebrating that maybe I can reproduce the ruff I had around my oak tree in Maryland.

 A robin’s egg. Celebrating finding an eggshell…and realizing – from the color – that it was a robin’s egg.

Springfield Botanical Gardens daylilies and pollinator gardens. Celebrating one of my favorite places in Springfield. There is always something worth seeing there.

Out to lunch with my daughter. My daughter and I are exploring locally owned restaurants for brunch or lunch. All of them have been good experiences….celebrating my daughter and the food.

Friends of the Library. Celebrating my first volunteer gigs in Missouri. I got some additional training this month so I can do more tasks. I enjoy the work and the other volunteers.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Zooming – July 2024

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As I reviewed my group of zoomed images from July, the favorite subjects of the month emerged: hot air balloons, animals (birds, butterflies, a squirrel), museum and monuments, and (of course) plants dominated by flowers. The places included areas close to home, Springfield Botanical Garden, Oklahoma City (First American’s Museum and Oklahoma City National Memorial), Tulsa (Philbook Museum), and Joplin (Wildcat Glades)

The hot air balloons are from a Balloon Glow event. They didn’t leave the ground!

I enjoyed the pottery room and garden structures at the Philbrook, the light of late afternoon as I walked around the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and the wall art in the First Americans Museum).

Animals included a robin, a green heron, a skipper, a swallowtail (not sure what kind), a fox squirrel, and a juvenile male mallard.

And then there were plants. Most were flowers but there were seeds (dandelion puff), a pine cone, and olorful new redbud leaves.

It was a good month for photography and being outdoors. Only the pot and the wall art are indoor images.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – July 2024

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There is always something to see in walks around the ponds in our neighborhood…bits of nature thriving even in an area dominated my manicured yards: a dandelion puff (hurray for some deep rooted plants in the turf), a fat robin (there must be plenty of worms here), clover in bloom (making nitrogen available to other plants), and magnolia flowers (the bee had just flown away).

There are always turtles in the pond. One on the bank looked like he was waving at me!

I stop at the bridge to look at the sheet of water flowing into the first pond – runoff from rain or sprinkler systems running too long. I look for ripples and collections of debris to photograph. The feather caught my attention first….then the leaves and green clippings…a background of algae.

The large redbud near the pond was damaged by a storm a year ago. There is new growth from the large branch that had to be removed. I like the way the new leaves start out reddish…turn a light green…they will get even deeper green as they age.

Most of the fish I see in the ponds are small and gray or brown…but there is at least one monster koi (about 2 feet). Hopefully if someone catches it, they will not return it to the pond!

Finally – a fresh feather on the path that had been sprinkled by a neighbor’s automatic sprinkler system!

Our Missouri Yard – July 2024

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The wildest part of my yard is the wildflower garden I planted last summer.

In front of the wildflowers are some pumpkin vines, lambs ear, and fragrant sumac. Behind the wildflowers there is a rose bush that has died back to the roots during both winters we’ve lived in the house but has come back each year to form a low bush…blooming small red roses.

That area is always a good place to do some macro photography with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’ve noticed that the native plants tend to harbor more insects although most of them are quite small. We’re missing the big butterflies in our yard too.

When I mow the grass, I stop to photograph anything I find of interest…like the shell of a robin’s egg (was it taken by predator or did the young hatched and the parent clear the nest?) and a plant that grows reliably by our mailbox.

There are frequently mushrooms that come up on the area where a tree was cut down (and the stump ground up) before we moved to the house. This month there were at least 2 different kinds.

One of our pine trees is not old enough to produce cones…but the other one is prolific and I wince when I run over a cone with the lawn mower (they probably cause the blade to get dull faster). The cones look good with green needles – or grass – around them!

I still have a few areas of the yard that I have not mowed this year. In one area – violets have escaped from the flower bed and spilled out into the unmowed area. I mowed some of no-mow May area and the clippings are slowing/stopping grass from growing there and the violets are moving there too! I am getting other ideas on how to extend the flowerbeds in a way that results in less need to use the weed-eater…and overall less lawn….that remains compliant with the Home Owners Association of our neighborhood.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2024

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June 2024 ---- the transition to the heat of summer ---- celebrating June days.

Sunflower in the window…following the sun. I cut a sunflower from my wildflower garden and put the vase on the windowsill in my office…and celebrated when that it followed the sun!

Peachicks. I had never seen a peachick before and had walked more than halfway around the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, MO before I spotted three peachicks with a peahen. Celebration! The young birds already had the beginning of the topknot on their heads but none of the iridescent color.

Corn muffins. Sometimes deciding to make a food remembered from childhood is about celebrating more that the food itself. The dash of cayenne pepper in the batter provided an extra flavor pop.

Mowing the whole yard. My plan at the beginning of the season was to mow the front yard on one day and the back another…but I am doing great mowing both on the same day. I am celebrating that I am physically able to do more than I anticipated!

Blueberries. Picking blueberries was another first this June. I celebrated the experience – and that the orchard is less than 30 minutes from my house.

Breakfast with my daughter. My daughter wanted to try breakfast at a coffee shop she frequents…invited me to meet her there. I celebrated the serendipity of the event (and savored the breakfast  and spending more time with my daughter too).

Hummingbird. I’ve seen a hummingbird buzzing around our yard several times. I celebrate every sighting and am determined to plant some ‘big nectar’ plants for them for next year.

Young robin. I celebrated seeing a small robin – about half the size of the adult feeding it – on our backyard fence. And it could fly!

So many good books. There are so many books available electronically from my local library and Internet Archive that I am never without reading material. I celebrate living at a time when technology makes books so available.

Scissortail flycatchers in the neighborhood. I hadn’t seen scissortail flycatchers in our neighborhood during the two previous summers….so am celebrating seeing a pair of them this month!

Young Robin

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I was heading out for a quick trip to the grocery store at 6:30 AM earlier this week. Before I got in the car, I walked out of the open garage door since there seemed to be an odd leaf under the dogwood tree beside the driveway. It wasn’t a leaf!

A young robin was in the grass. It stayed very quiet and still – although it did move its head slightly to follow my location. I didn’t get very close….used the magnification available on my camera. The wings didn’t look developed enough for the bird to fly.

When I came back from my errands about an hour later, the young robin was gone. There were no feathers scattered in the area so I think the bird hopped away – hopefully to a secure place.

A quick google search revealed some posts about young robins that left the nest very early and some of them managed to survive because their parents continued to feed them and tried to show them safe places where they can hide close to the ground!

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A few days later I saw an adult robin feeding a young robin on our fence. The young bird was half the size of the adult but it could fly! I am hoping it was the birds I saw in the grass.

Solar Eclipse – Part 1

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We traveled from our home near Springfield MO to Poplar Bluff MO for the solar eclipse on April 8th. There was a flurry of activity on the day before the event to finalize our destination; the weather forecast was the key driver for us to choose Poplar Bluff (along with Whitely Park being a good location that was not included as part of the event planning by the city).

We left our house at 5:30 AM to pick up our daughter and son-in-law before heading east; it wasn’t long before sunrise. I took some pictures of it through the windshield of the car (my husband did all the driving).

We did not encounter any heavy traffic during our morning drive…got to the park 2 hours before the first contact…plenty of time for set up and looking around the park. We set up on an asphalt parking lot that never completely filled up so we spilled over onto the two spaces on either side of where we were parked next to a fenced soccer field.

I walked around to look at a few low growing plants…

And trees that were just beginning to leaf out. I realized that the trees did no have enough foliage to make projected crescent patterns onto the ground as happened when we were in Loup City, Nebraska for the August 2017 solar eclipse.

On the ground – I noted roots of a sycamore, seed pods of sweet gums (from last year and green ones from this year) and a clump of green (probably a weed) surrounded by brown thatch.

There were birds about:

Two purple martin houses that were beginning to be populated. One had a pair of house sparrows too; I wondered how long it would take for the purple martins to evict them.

A starling in the grass – keeping an eye on the sky.

And a group of robins in a tree without leaves but lots of twigs that made it hard to get a good image.

I took most of my eclipse pictures with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HX) on a tripod with a solar filter taped to the camera body to cover the lens until totality). I had eclipse glasses that I wore to look at the sun with my eyes and put over the camera on my iPhone to take one picture. I’ll post my eclipse pictures on Sunday along with some my husband took…stay tuned for that.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – July 2023

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July has been hot…though not as hot as Texas. I’ve appreciated being home. The month started dry but then suddenly we got 2 inches of rain in 2 days after teasing with clouds and forecasts for rain that didn’t materialize. We have a good vantage point for the sunset over the neighborhood pool house from our patio.  

I saw a large red-eared slider on the move across the neighbor’s yard behind our house; it appeared to be moving in the general direction of the ponds. By the time I got out of the house with my phone for the picture, the turtle was at the tennis court…and quickly discovered the fence barrier. I noticed that the back of the turtle appeared wet; I wondered if it (she?) had been laying eggs – maybe in some damp, mulchy place. I assume the turtle managed to get back to the pond; I didn’t stick around in the heat of midafternoon.

About a week later I walked out into the eastern side of our yard to photograph the sunrise from two perspectives over neighbors’ houses.

More recently I took a morning walk around the ponds. We have more Purple Loosestrife that ever this year at the edge of the ponds….which is not a good thing since the state says it is “a noxious weed in Missouri and should be removed as quickly as possible.” Maybe it takes some finesse to remove it with propagating it? I hope eventually we’ll eradicate it and plant something native – like buttonbush (one of my favorites).

Note that the second picture (above) is near the willow tree…the one that had grown around a stake. There seem to be more plants around the base of the willow this year than I noticed last year.

Asian honeysuckle – another non-native invasive plant – is also growing in clumps around the pond. I wonder if there are children that pull the flowers to taste the nectar? I remember doing that as a child…and taught my daughter to do it too!

There are maple seedlings that are growing in the areas that don’t get mowed and a small clover hill that is full of blooms even with the occasional mowing.

I tried an artsy picture of the sun glint on the water silhouetting the shore vegetation. It looks like a picture that could have been taken at night!

Bullfrogs are some of the more recognizable sounds at the pond. It is harder to see them. This one was under one of the loosestrifes. I heard another one not far away while I was photographing this one.

As I headed back to our gate, I saw a robin on our fence…observing me!

July is a great month to be outdoors in the morning…but the afternoons have been stifling – good time to be indoors with air conditioning.

Mushrooms and a Robin’s Egg

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Some surprises that show up in my yard are worth photographing! The mushrooms that show up where a large tree was removed (probably several years before we bought the house) have appeared several times in the year we have owned the house. They come up in clumps that display different stages of development…then disintegrate to black goo. I saw these one morning when I was mowing….stopped to take pictures before I continued.

The same day I saw part of a Robin’s egg in the mulch under one our maples. Was there a robin’s nest in the tree…a parent cleaning up after a chick hatched? That is the hopeful story I told myself…although I also realized a predator could have found the nest in the tree or elsewhere and dropped the shell after a good meal.

The next day, I mowed the other half of the yard and discovered a stinkhorn had come up in the mulch where our pine had recently been cut and the stump ground up. I guess the fungi are hard at work in the cleanup!

Dead Robin

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I was noticing that the top of the tennis court slab in my neighborhood was painted/sealed but the sides were not…and then I saw it: a dead bird, the red breast making it obviously a robin. It was outside the chain link enclosure of the tennis courts, on a narrow ledge of concrete. I started thinking about the cause of death, ruling out a predator because the whole bird was still there.

I took some additional pictures. The feet were curled but the zoomed image shows the joints and claws (no wonder birds are often referred to as the modern version of dinosaurs), the feathers were in disarray, and the eye was missing (or maybe just shrunk).

In the end, because of where the bird was – it seemed that perhaps the bird had tried to fly through the chain link fence! Its flight was fast enough that the wings broke and the bird probably died almost immediately from the trauma of the collision.

I left the carcass as I found it.

Zooming – February 2023

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There were some sunny days in February – good for outdoor photography even if they were very cold! The ravages of winter on vegetation from last summer/fall is reaching an extreme. We’re all ready for the spring! Enjoy the February 2023 zoomed images!

Ice and Algae

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It was below freezing for almost 24 hours before I ventured out last week an hour or so after sunrise. The temperature was in the 20s and I anticipated capturing ice on our neighborhood pond. I bundled up in my heaviest coat and gloves…already had the lens cover off my camera since it is hard to remove with gloves on.  I noticed the robins were around and probably beginning to scout nesting locations.

There was a small group of Canada Geese; most stayed on the bank but two ventured into the pond through mats of algae. I began to worry that maybe the sun shining on the pond surface had already melted the ice even though the air temperature was still below freezing!

As I looked more closely I noticed that there was ice between the mats of algae! Some of the ice had a look of cut glass. There were leaves just under the surface in some places – distorted by the ice – but some are, quite clearly, oak leaves. The color of the algae is a nice contrast with the ice!

My favorite picture of the morning was a patch of ice surrounded by algae. The green mats creates a fuzzy (slimy?) frame around the ice structures.

I continued aroud the pond and noticed that a twig of red maple flowers had fallen onto the path. The tree blooms so early that the hard freezes sometimes are problematic. The red maple that this twig came from seemed to still have quite a few flowers that had tolerated the cold so the tree should still be producing seeds this year.

Overall – I’m glad I went out when I did. This could be one of the last times to capture ice on the pond since spring is one the way.

Springfield Botanical Garden – July 2022 (2)

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There are insects and birds in the Springfield Botanical Gardens too…although they sometimes require more luck…and searching. I was disappointed that the only butterfly I saw was a cabbage white – although I saw it right away on the walk between the parking lot and the hosta garden.

There was rabbit nibbling among the hostas…squirrels and robins were there too.

I spent more time in the English Garden…just a short path off the South Creek Greenway Trail…and I was glad I did because there was a hummingbird moth enjoying the flowers! They really do move about like a hummingbird!

The zinnias and sunflowers were far enough in their development for goldfinches to be eating the developing seeds. There was a small flock of the birds moving among the flowers near the Butterfly Garden.

As I hurried on the route back to the car (my husband had texted he was there and ready to leave), I took a picture of a robin perched on a garden sign. I see them frequently at home too. Somehow - they look a little smaller and scruffier than the robins I saw in Maryland. Maybe the drier conditions this year?

Brookside Gardens – April 2021 (1)

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Like all gardens, Brookside Gardens changes quickly…always something different to see. In April, it’s time to be cautious around the Canada Geese. They can be very territorial around their nests. The one I encountered was evidently not nesting but walkers were watching it closely as they made their way past.

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I noticed a snoozing Mallard and American Robin in the same area.

Along the mulch (rather than paved) trails seem to be more comfortable for the birds. I heard some noises in the leaf litter under the bushes to the side of the trail and was patient enough to see it was a Wood Thrush….and got some portraits.

Of course, there are a lot of spring flowers and trees. Some of them (like the camellias) suffered some frost damage a few weekends ago (we had a couple of nights when the low got into the 20s). Still – a lot of the plants that bloom this time of year are cold tolerant.

The new leaves are often as interesting as flowers. The shapes and colors are worth noticing!

Tomorrow, I’ll continue the photographic tour of my latest visit to Brookside: deciduous magnolias and tulips.

Storm Water Pond

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Our neighborhood storm water pond has changed quite a bit over the course of March. Earlier in the month a few red-winged black birds were at the pond but were not making much noise yet. The colors around the pond were mostly brown – the cattails from last season and the grass. There wasn’t much going on.

A few weeks later – the gunk has been flushed from the pond by recent rains and the cattails are still the drab colors of the overwintered plant. The grass has turned green.

Quite a few more birds were around. I noticed some crows just before I got to the pond. There were robins searching for worms in the grass.

Grackles were around the edges of the pond in about equal numbers to the red-winged blackbirds.

The male red-winded blackbirds were assertive – showing their red and yellow shoulder patches as they defined their territory.

I only saw one female, but I’m sure there were more down in the cattails where the birds make their a nest.

So - The bird activity at the pond has increased this month but I haven’t seen any turtles or frogs yet…maybe it’s still a bit too cool for them to be active.

Mini Road Trip: Brookside Gardens – Part 1

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The mini road trip to Brookside Gardens last week was my first time back to the gardens in over a year. It was in the low 50s, sunny and breezy – I typical early March day for our area of Maryland. The outing started out with a group of five robins looking for worms in our front yard as I drove away for the house – a great indicator of early spring. There were not as many people at Brookside as there had been at Centennial Park and almost everyone was masked and maintaining distance; it was a more comfortable situation…and I took so many pictures that there will be a second post about the mini road trip tomorrow.

On the walk from the parking lot toward the visitor’s center, there was a bird’s nest from last season in one of the young trees. I’ll see the spring action at Brookside this year that I completely missed in 2020!

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It’s still early in the season – but there are some flowers to photograph in the gardens already.

There are plants that stay green through the winter too. I always enjoy the profuse stand of horsetails planted in one of the beds at the visitor center.

The tall sycamore uphill from the conservatory has been cut to a tall stump. It had struggled in recent years with some the higher branches being leafless/dead. The stump has been fitted with a mask and googly eyes!

There was another tree I noticed had been cut down too! I’m glad they left the roots and short stump…wonder what will come up around it in the bed.

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The hydrangea flowers from last season were prevalent….and seem to always draw my attention;  their flowers are so large and they last, in dried form, through the winter. Maybe I’ll plant some native hydrangeas at my house…although the deer that come through our yard would gobble them up if they were not protected with fencing.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the witch hazels blooming at Brookside!

Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/13/2020

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

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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Two iris flowers. Iris flowers don’t last that long. Once they start wilting, I snap them off. This morning when I got to my office, there were two more flowers that had opened overnight and another bud that is not far behind. Two others are showing purple. The last two I’m not sure will make it. They might not have been mature enough when I cut the stem.

Morning Drama. As I started to write this post, there was a group of birds that flew past the window making a ruckus. I got up to see the drama. A crow circled around with something in its beak; it was chased by a robin with other robins also flying around. Some grackles watched from the sycamore. The crow flew on with its prize and the robins gave up. I surmised that it was a hatchling from a robin nest…and had a second thought: I hope it was a cowbird rather than a robin hatchling!

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Morning glory and tangles. The central flower is another page from the 1882 Flower Designs book. I kept the page intact rather than cutting it into tiles – discovered that the larger format makes it harder to turn the page to be comfortable making the tangles in the space I normally use for projects.

Spring of 1964. I browsed the Life Magazines from Spring of 1964 on Internet Archive. They became the prompt to think about what I was doing then. I have a vivid memory of my 4th grade classroom that spring…of my pregnant teacher finishing a series of lectures about tornadoes which had been very interesting to all the students…she turned to the windows on the left side of the classroom and said ‘And there is one’….it was still white but was definitely a funnel….the sirens went off and we all trooped out into the hallway to kneel with our hand covered heads tucked toward the wall….it seemed liked it was a very long time before we were able to get up. A Google search found a reference for the event; it happened on April 3, 1964 and was an F5 tornado….one of the 3 major tornadoes to impact Wichita Falls, Texas. I was old enough to have been browsing through the Life Magazines at my grandparents, but I don’t specifically remember any of the stories. I do remember knowing about Douglas McArthur’s death, but I think it was more likely from the newspaper. By 4th grade I was already browsing the morning newspaper before I had breakfast and went off to school. Looking at the magazines now…the photographs that appeal to me the most were from a story about winter in Venice.

Putting out the glass bird bath. I decided that we are unlikely to have another frost so it’s safe to put the glass bird bath out in the front flowerbed. The stand for it is always there. I’m not sure how many birds use the bath because I can only see it from the narrow windows on the sides of the front door; I should check every time I go by now. While I was out I pulled a few trees that had sprouted in the front flowerbed. The one I photographed is a red maple.

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

And now for the after-bath preening of a Carolina Wren

I saw the Carolina Wren hop into the gutter of our covered deck not far from my office window. There was still some water in it from a recent rain. I got up fast enough to see it dunking itself in the water but by the time I had my camera it had already flown to the sycamore and looked very scruffy. Over the next minute it did a lot of preening. It still looked a bit scruffy at the end but at least it was holding its tail up in typical wren fashion.

We’d had a wren in the screened part of our deck earlier in the day and this might have been the same bird…cleaning up after the ordeal. We opened the door to the outside for it to escape but it took more than an hour for the bird to find the opening. It must have been a traumatic experience.

Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/9/2020 – eBotanical Prints

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

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

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The first hour of the day. Somehow there was a lot to observe when I first went into my office yesterday. There was ice in the birdbath. It is cantilevered off our deck railing about 1 story off the ground and tends to freeze before things at ground level. The ‘freeze watch’ forecast had been right.

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Then I noticed that one of the buds on the iris stalks I brought in yesterday was open. I have a very flowery office at this point.

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I was cleaning my glasses when a bird flew to the roof of the covered deck and dropped something blue that rolled down into the gutter. I put my glasses on and could see that the bird was a robin before it flew away. Then I used the zoom on the camera to see what was in the gutter: a partial robin eggshell! The bird was doing some nest maintenance. I hope the baby bird was kept warm by the other parent.

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A few minutes later, there were two birds fluttering around in the air a little way from the bird feeder. I got up and took pictures of them after they flew to the sycamore. One flew off to the forest and shortly after a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak arrived at the feeder and the remaining bird flew off to the forest with the male. I think the two birds in the sycamore were female Rose-breasted Grosbeaks! I am glad we have the birds coming to our feeder occasionally this year. Maybe they did in previous years too…I just didn’t see them.

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The flowers of the tulip poplar look unharmed by the cold weather.

Browsing Life Magazine from 1958. Internet archive only has 2 issues from 1958 (March and December) – the year another of my sisters was born. There were a lot of articles on the entertainment industry. I collected some of the ads (click on the image to see a larger version). Some of the brands are still around: Disney, Campbells, Coke, Pepsi, General Electric, American Airlines, Northern, Jell-O. There were also a lot of ads for cigarettes and various kinds of alcohol.

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Tangle background for the poppy. I used light colors to fill in the blank areas of the tiles around the poppy image that I had ‘colored’ the day before.

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

And now for the monthly post about the digital botanical print books I browsed through in April 2020….

There are 15 new books this month. The first 3 are by Anna Atkins and are cyanotype photographs (process invented by Sir John Herschel) of algae/seaweed. Then there were 11 volumes of Flora fluminensis – Brazilian plants publish in the 1820a. The last book is much more recent (2006) and about Hollies; the illustrations are photographs in this one.

The volumes are all freely available on the Internet by clicking on the hyperlinked title. The whole list of 1,879 books can be accessed here. Sample images and links for the 16 new ones are provided below. (click on the sample image to see a larger view). Enjoy!

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V1 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V2 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V3 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Flora fluminensis - V 1 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 2 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 3 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 4 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 5 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 6 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 7 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 8 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 9 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 10 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 11 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao  * sample image * 1827

Hollies foor Gardeners * Bailles, Christopher; Andrews, Susyn * sample image * 2006

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/27/2020 – Free e-Books

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

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Enjoying the 1st view of the morning. When I first went into my office yesterday, it still seemed almost dark because it was so cloudy; it was about time for sunrise. I could see 3 deer in the backyard headed into the forest (they were moving slowly looking at the stump and piled branches from the tree cut down yesterday) and hear a lot of birds in the trees. By the time I got my camera out, the deer were gone but the path between the trees that they consistently take is visible in the picture. It is too dark to tell – but I know the trees (left to right): pine, black walnut, tulip poplar, red maple.

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Taking plastic bags back to the grocery store. The last time I was in my car was March 20th! Having everything delivered since then resulted in a lot of plastic bags and I had been putting them in the back seat of my car rather than keeping them in the house after they were empty. Yesterday was the day to return them to the bin in the grocery store parking lot. I went early and was able to park relatively close to the bin. I put on my mask then made three trips between my car and the bin. All the early shoppers going into the store (probably 3-4 people over the time I was there) were wearing masks….a good sign that people are taking precautions when they are shopping. I used my hand sanitizer before I drove home….and washed my hands at the kitchen sink once I arrived. Being in my car…making a short errand…felt quite different than my recent ‘norm.’

Bathing robin. Most birds come to our bird bath for a drink….but one robin took a thorough bath then flew off to the sycamore to preen the feathers dry.

Flying samara from the red maple. After lunch, the wind picked up and the samaras were ready to leave the tree…in little flurries with each gust. They landed on the roof of our covered deck and the gutter….as well as planting themselves in all the yards around the tree.

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

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

I usually pick 3 eBooks to feature in a monthly blog post…but I had too many good ones this month, so I am including 4 for April 2020.

Olcott, Frances Jenkins (editor); Cramer, Rie; Grimm. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company. 1927. Available on Internet Archive here. I was looking for books illustrated by Rie Cramer….and this was one that I found – enjoyed.

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Vermont Department of Tourism. Vermont Life. Volume 72, Issue 3. 2018. Available from Internet Archive here. The next to the last issue….and it includes a picture of a rose-breasted grosbeak (on page 5)! I enjoyed browsing through this magazine which started in 1946 over the past months…sorry it is no longer published.

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Chun, Carl. The Cephalopoda (Atlas). Translated from the German. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House.1975. Available from Internet Archive here. The book was originally published in 1910 after a German deep-sea expedition in 1898/99 to the sub-Antarctic. Chun discovered and named the vampire squid.

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Ward, Mary. Microscope Teaching. 1866. Available from Internet Archive here. A woman scientist from the mid-1800s. She did her own illustrations for the books that she wrote. I which more of her books were available online.

According to her Wikipedia entry:

  • Aside from being known for her scientific work (naturalist, astronomy, microscopy…a writer and artist too), she also had 8 children before being the 1st person known to be killed by a motor vehicle.

  • Her great-granddaughter is the Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/8/2020

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

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Hearing the phoebe first thing in the morning. I am hearing a phoebe outside my office window every morning as I begin my day. Maybe it’s in the sycamore. Maybe its nest is nearby. I know from the time that the sun has just come up this morning but the clouds are hiding it; it’s too dark too look for the bird and try to get a picture.

Cleaning off the covered deck furniture. With the temperature forecast to get into the 70s in the afternoon, I cleaned off the table and chairs on the covered deck in the morning so I could spend time there in the afternoon. Everything was very dusty since it hadn’t been used over the winter. The furniture is over 20 years old and had been on the covered deck since we got it. It is undercover but ‘outdoors’ and I noticed there are some bubbles in the paint on the metal parts. It probably needs to be sanded down, primed, and repainted…which I am not enthusiastic about attempting.

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Walking the neighborhood. The forecast here is for cooler/wetter/windier after today so I wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine…look around the neighborhood. Things change fast in the spring. Our cherry tree lost most of its petals overnight when thunderstorms rolled through. Most of the petals were on the ground. At another house the driveway was polka dotted with petals.

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The azalea still just has buds (and the deer have browsed the bush so there are not very many buds left).

A neighbor has a deciduous magnolia in bloom and it held its flowers in the storm.

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There is another tree blooming nearby. A fruit tree?

I recognized the redbud. ‘Cauliflory’ is a recent vocabulary word I learned from a tree tutorial; it means that the flowers are on branches and trunk…not where the leaf buds are…and that is how redbuds bloom!

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There were several kinds of maples in various stages of producing seeds.

When I got to the pond, I noticed several flowers nearby (dandelions being everywhere but not always so thick as near the pond).

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And then I looked more closely at the water retention pond itself. There were turtles! There were two large ones and one small. They were all Eastern Painted Turtles. The two big ones slipped into the water and then came back. The smaller one didn’t move except for the head and I noticed the scutes looked like they were peeling. Maybe they do that more when the turtle is growing up?

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And there were robins just about everywhere.

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Enjoying some outdoors-with-the-laptop-time. I tried standing at the table on the deck…that lasted for about 10 minutes…then I spent about an hour in one of the chairs. It was a great way to savor the spring day…listening to the birds (they came to the nearby bird feeder while I was there) and windchimes and breeze through the forest.

Catching up with the Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safaris:

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