Ten Days of Little Celebrations - January 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations’ - as had been the usual for the past few months. Here are my top 10 for January 2015.

Winter

Snow in Tucson. The year started off with a pictures from my daughter of the snow they got --- on the palms and cactus near their apartment. It was a beautiful scene to celebrate the New Year.

Fox. A healthy looking red fox walked through our back yard then trotted behind several other houses before turning into the forest. I watched from the window of my office - celebrating the grace of the animal as it moved through the winter landscape.

Fog. The forest and our neighborhood filled with fog. The temperature was in the upper 30s. It seemed like the fog damped sound as effectively as it did sight - celebrating a warm house in the isolation of winter.

Snow. Snow that falls when I can simply stay at home until it melts or the streets are cleared by the plows is my favorite kind of day. It is the classic winter scene worth celebrating.

Other

Dishwasher. Our dishwasher became very loud so we arranged for servicing - anticipating that it would have to be replaced. Hurray! It was quickly fixed and our kitchen is a quieter place.

Zentangle® class. I saw a blurb about a Zentangle class offered at the local 50+ Community Center. It was a good incentive to investigate the place! I’ve been to the first of four class sessions and am enjoying daily ‘tangling’. I’ll post a slide show of my creations once I’ve accumulated a few more. I’m celebrating both the class and learning about the 50+ Community Center.

Arizona and Tucson

Bald Eagle. In recent years, the bald eagle population has increased on the east coast and we see them more often….but when I saw one as we drove into Grand Canyon National Park - settling into the top of a pine tree - it was a first sighting in the west for me. Hurray!

Grand Canyon. Awesome place. I’ve been there before --- it is worth celebrating again and again.

Painted Desert/Petrified Forest. The times I’d been before were in summer and late spring. This time it was decidedly cool/cold. The colors were deeper in Painted Desert because it had snowed/rained. The Petrified Forest glistened when the sun came from behind the clouds. Both places are special…and worth celebrating.

Tree Ring Lab. I’m celebrating that the place lived up to my expectations - interesting from scientific, architectural and historical perspectives. If I lived in Tucson - I’d sign up as a volunteer docent.

Touring the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research

I enjoyed the docent led tour at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at University of Arizona last week. The Bannister Building, where the lab is located is quite distinctive - with a scrim of articulated metal tubes. The wind was not blowing on the morning of our tour so we didn’t hear the sound of the tubes in motion.

Inside we wondered around the lobby before the tour. I was looking for various ways the large tree cookies were labeled. I liked the simple white arrows that showed the semantics used: pith, early wood, late wood, branch trace, fire scar, cambium and bark.

Here is a closer look to understand what a tree ring is (the center of the tree cookie is to the lower left of the image). Note that the rings are not all the same…their width reflects the growth conditions for the year they were growing.

And some trees live for a very long time. The labeling on the tree cookie from the Giant Sequoia that lived 1704 years is labeled with more information.

When the docent arrived, we were invited upstairs into one of the labs to talk with one of the researchers who showed us how the sample cores from trees are collected and mounted. The tree-ring lab is multidisciplinary; many specialties are required to glean the information from the samples. I was intrigued by the cross section on one of the upper floors that was very different than concentric rings. This would take a lot of finesse to interpret!

I’ve included two close ups to show the dates labelled on the specimen.

One other tidbit I picked up from the docent: on the elementary school tours, the children are given a small tree cookie (~3 inches in diameter) and the children sand it to reveal the tree rings! That would certainly be a memorable learning experience!