Beartown State Park

We visited Beartown State Park in West Virginia for the first time back in 2001. It is a small, but memorable park and well worth another visit. It consists primarily of a boardwalk around huge boulders covered with moss, ferns and lichens….

(and some very fast moving chipmunks)

With lots of trees that manage to grow up through the rocks.

The deep narrow crevasses are as similar to the slot canyons in the western US as we get on the East coast.

I took a picture of a staircase with my husband on it to provide some an element of scale.

The rock face had eroded pits. It is hard to fathom the amount of time it takes for weathering to form these pits; some of them are large enough to hold a person.

The leaf color was spectacular up close and

Looking up to the sky.

My special find of the walk was a pair of puff balls.

Staunton River Star Party

My husband and I spent last Monday and Tuesday at the Staunton River Star Party (held at Staunton River State Park). The park is an International Dark Sky Park….lots more stars visible than in the area where we live. The park prepared well for the event – with star party themed jack-o-lanterns, red cellophane on all windows were white light my leak, and paths marked with red snake lights or small red LEDs on stakes.

The observing field already had a lot of people setting up by the time we got there but we managed to get a spot that was close to one of the electrical hubs – good to be able to run equipment directly and/or easily recharge batteries during the day. We started to unpack and quickly discovered that we had forgotten our tent! Fortunately we did have the tent-like cover for the back of our SUV and some extra tarps. My husband and I managed to sleep inside the car on an air mattress (it helped that he was observing until the wee hours of the morning since the space was a narrow enough that we could only roll over in unison)!

We tied one side of a tarp to the roof rack and used tripods we had brought for our cameras to hold the corners away from the car. The wind came close to knocking the tripods over before we hung heavy equipment bags as weights. Having the tarp helped during the day when it got a bit warm in the bright sunshine.

I took sunrise and sunset pictures too: Sunrise on Tuesday morning. Note the various tents, trailers, awnings and cars…the whole field looked like this with a lattice of drive lanes to provide just enough organization so vehicles could get in and out.

Sunset on Tuesday evening. There were enough clouds at sunset that everyone was looking around for signs of clearing…and it did by the time it was fully dark.

Sunrise Wednesday morning – a few hours before we left. There were quite a few crows greeting the sun and they seemed to like the bare tree – stopping there before moving about and sometimes coming back to perch again for a little while.

The clouds on that last morning looked like they were losing part of themselves as they floated into morning.

The dew was heavy both nights we were at the star party and people generally called it a night before 3 AM. Those that did not have heaters to keep condensation off their mirrors had to stop earlier. I took pictures walking around during the mornings when the telescopes were generally neatly covered.

 

I took one short hike and found more fungi than I expected. There were a few colorful trees as well. Otherwise – I was feeling relaxed and lazy with the flurry of star party activity going on all around me.

Fall Road Trip

Last week we made our annual fall road trip. Last year we went to Chincoteague and Blackwater National Wildlife Refuges (blog post here) which is southeast of where we live. This year we went south into Virginia and southwest into West Virginia.

Our trip started with 2 days at the Staunton River State Park for a star party. The park is in south central Virginia…and has very dark skies. Our car was completely full with telescopes and camping gear!

Then we drove into West Virginia along very curvy roads. It was a step back in time with little cell service and gas stations with only one grade of regular gas….but the drive was scenic – up, down, around, all the colors of fall.  There are rhododendron and pines to provide a dark green backdrop to the yellows and reds along the way.

We noticed that some of the mountains had trees already bare for the winter…some with brightly colored trees…and some that still looked like summertime. Altitude and the direction of the slope make quite a difference.

We enjoyed Beartown State Park, Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, Cass Scenic Railroad State Park and the Snowshoe Ski Resort. I’ll be posting more details over the next couple of weeks.

CSA Week 20

Our CSA ends at the end of October. Right now we are almost overwhelmed with fall veggies. I still have a lot left from last week and there was another very full bag for week 20:

Several kinds of peppers: bell and snack (I got double snack peppers by trading away my hot peppers).

Turnips. There were two kinds to choose from (red and white). I got one of each by trading away my eggplant for one of them. The turnip greens are a lot to eat before they go limp.

I’ve already made chips with the bunch of kale.

The broccoli and a few sweet potatoes were shredded with some turnips and watermelon radish left from previous weeks. It makes a complete meal when combined with dried soy nuts…and cooks quickly when added to stir fry. Of course I still have sweet potatoes to last for quite a while after the CSA officially ends.

I chose the red leaf lettuce rather than all green. I like the color variety. The arugula and pale green cabbage is enough ‘green’ for salads.

I picked up a bunch of mizzuna from the overage table.

My focus for meals over the next week is to eat the veggies that will spoil most easily….and save the ones that will last a week of more in the crisper.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 17, 2015

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.

One-Third of Cactus Species Threatened – The main dangers to cacti are illegal trade for horticulture and private collections. I was surprised that development in areas where they grow was not high on the list of dangers too.

How to tangle on glass Christmas ornaments – Wow! This is a project I want to try. I’ve already started practicing by tangling on soft drink bottles. It takes some new skills to work on a rounded surface!

Take Free Online Classes, Get Course Credit at MIT – The experiment is a one year program in supply chain management. The first half is online (and free); the second semester is on campus.

What Those Frost Patterns on Your Car Window Have to Do with Ice in Space – The patterns are like abstract art – I prefer to use the defroster rather than the scrapper…watch them melt slowly.

DuPont Predicts CRISPR Plants on Dinner Plates in Five Years –Improving crops by rapidly introducing beneficial gene variants found in other varieties of the same species.

Microsoft’s Very Good Day – Microsoft has a whole new vibe….that became a lot more apparent in early October.

Postcard from Cape Monarch – It would be wonderful to see this many Monarchs on goldenrod here in Maryland. We have seen the butterflies this past summer – but not in the numbers we observed before the mid-1990s.

Dying at home leads to more peace, less grief, but requires wider support -

9 Germ Fighting Facts – Well timed for the beginning of the cold and flu season!

Not your average peacock – Peacock images collect by National Geographic editors

Zooming – October 2015

I managed to limit myself to 5 collages gleaned from snippets of photographs from late September and early October. The majority are from Longwood Gardens since that is where I took a huge number of pictures.

They are all botanical except for two: can you find the bee and milkweed bugs.

There are four clips of water lilies (pink, purple, white, and a giant that is white a pink)…the bee is on a water lily but it is clipped a bit too tight to see that one so I didn’t count that one. Can you find the fiddlehead clip?

Can you spot the poke weed? Hint: the stem is bright pink and the berries are dark purple. The connection of the stem to the berry is something I had not looked at closely before.

Dogwood in the Fall

I first became familiar with dogwoods when we had one in the backyard of our house in Virginia over 30 years ago. It grew by the patio under the tall oaks. We moved to the house in July so I first saw it with its graceful branches full of green leaves undulating in the little breezes. And then came the fall. The leaves turned red earlier than most and the red seed clusters were so vibrant they glowed even on cloudy days. Dogwoods became a ‘tree to note’ from that time forward for me. The one I chose to photograph this year grows at Mt. Pleasant Farm along the drive to the farmhouse. It is very similar to the one I remember.

Of course – the white blossoms in the spring (see post from last spring here) are pretty spectacular and I probably photograph them more than the fall foliage. I appreciate the fall foliage as a celebration of the season – the grand finale of the dogwood’s year.

Cut Flowers Photography

The flowers from our garden look a bit battered with the wind, rain and cooler temperatures of the past few weeks – but I cut two for some experimental photography. It was a quick project on a sunny afternoon.

I like the bright yellow and the bit of green in the corner of the sunflower image. The texture of the petals appealed to me.

The flower from the back was interesting too….and I liked the overall shape of the flower, leaves and stem enough to include the shadow.

The zinnia and its shadow made an ordinary flower something different.

The leaves of the zinnia have a bit of color in their connection with the stem….and the veins stand out too.

I had the sunflower I got from the CSA during the summer that has dried to look at as well. The petals are shriveled but retain their color. The curves and hairiness of the dried back of the flower seemed even more intriguing.

Centennial Park Reflections

There were thick clouds the morning I walked around Centennial Lake; the light made for muted reflections rather than crisp clean lines in the water and blue sky above the line of trees…but I enjoyed the challenge and got a few images that I like well enough to share.

There was a pile of rocks that has been extending into the lake long enough for vegetation to take root. The reflections of the plants growing on the rocks are reflected as well as the trees from the opposite bank of the lake. I liked the muted fall colors.

The trees are still mostly green but there is an occasional bright red. I wondered if the fishermen thought the fish were lurching in the water near the bright color!

The bridge over an inlet to the lake can always be counted on for color – and again there was a fishing boat nearby. The trees appear to be on the verge of losing their green; it should be all the colors of fall by the end of the month.

Centennial Lake in the morning has a good orientation for reflections. My challenge is to go back on another morning toward the end of the month when there is no breeze….to get the glory of fall foliage in the trees and reflections.

Centennial Park Close Ups

Cloudy days are opportunities for some close-up photography. That was my first thought when I walked around Centennial Lake (Howard County Maryland) last week. The poke weed seeds stalks are quite distinctive….a nice color contrast with the green of their leaves.

Queen Anne’s Lace grows between the rocks on the dam that creates the water

As do other plants that are racing to bloom and create their seeds before frost.

A beech tree is shedding its seeds into the mulch bed (and lichen) along the walk near the boat rental

And an oak leaf – still retaining some green – has landed there as well.

I was looking carefully in that mulch bed for the birds nest fungus I had found there earlier in the season. Many of the cups were washed clean of their ‘eggs’ (spore cases) by last week's rain (or maybe an earlier rain) and the runoff had broken up some of the mats. There were some small mushrooms growing nearby – looking very delicate compared to the other plants and big leaves.

In the walk back to the car – I noticed several other plants in bloom

And some were dispersing their seed, already prepared for winter.

Milkweed in October

Milkweed is one of my favorite photography targets in the fall and the meadow as Mt. Pleasant Farm is my favorite place to find them. The heavy rains last week washed many of the pods clean. Those seeds left in the pod got very wet and now are cemented into the pod

Or the pod was not quite open enough to let them out before the deluge (I wondered if the pod would split open and the seeds would eventually disperse normally with their bits of fluff carrying the away with a breeze).

There were milkweed bugs but they didn’t seem as numerous as in previous years.

The best pictures this year were the few seeds that had dispersed - a little – but were covered with small water droplets. The structure of the fluff is jeweled! The very last picture of this group is my favorite. It was draped over a dried seed head of another plant – caught there long enough to catch the dew and drape around the structure enough to hold the seed aloft.

There were a couple of milkweed pictures in last month’s post about the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm. The milk weed bugs have grown!

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 10, 2015

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.

The People and Pueblos of Wupatki National Monument in the 1930s and 40s – The article includes pictures from just after the area became a National Monument. I enjoyed my visit to the monument last winter (see post with photographs here...and the picture below).

A Chart That Shows Where Every Country in the World Gets Its Food – North America is not very self-sufficient! About 90% of our calories come from somewhere else than North America. (Check here for the ‘Degree of Dependence per Country’ table.)

A neuroscience researcher reveals 4 rituals that will make you a happier person – A summary of research findings that can be applied…from Business Insider.

15 Intimate Portraits of Lions – Lions in the wild….pictures from National Geographic.

Aging Workers, New Technology – I was disappointed in the article. The examples seemed lame. For example – better floor mats for jobs that require a lot of standing are good for younger people too! Making technology more intuitive for everyone is important ---- smaller is not always better, and that is true for more than just gaining workers.

How many trees are there in the world? – From Scientific American – the answer is over 3 trillion but we are losing 10 million trees per year.

Martian Life Could Be a Biotech Bonanza – After the announcement of briny water on the Martian surface….what might that mean for the type of life we might find on Mars.

Easy Pumpkin Muffins – I love pumpkin muffins. The recipe I usually use is one that originally was for sweet potato muffins – so if pumpkin is in short supply this year (which I just heard that it might be by Thanksgiving) – substitute cooked sweet potatoes (not the canned ones….the ones from the produce department…bake them) for the pumpkin. Butternut squash will work too.

How to clean and airliner – Maybe I didn’t really want to know this. I’m carrying hand sanitizer from now on when I fly.

Solar-Plus-Battery Systems Can Insulate Customers from Increasing Prices – Solar panels – battery storage – the grid….some ideas about what the future relationship could be.

CSA Week 19

The week 19 share from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA was a full bag again this week. It was as large as last week (and I still have a few items in the refrigerator from last week…and I’m drying shredded radish leaves for use in soups through the winter).

In this week there is red leaf lettuce, arugula, chard (I chose the chard with the magenta stems), turnips (all white), red cabbage, bell peppers, banana peppers, 2 pounds of sweet potatoes, tatsoi, pac choi (traded my hot peppers for this), 1 pound of tomatoes, mustard greens, kohlrabi. I’m already thinking about making slaw of raw sweet potato, turnips, kohlrabi, and a watermelon radish from last week’s share. I’m enjoying the shredder attachment on my food processor!

I couldn’t resist including a close up of a chard leaf with this post. The color combination adds to the appeal of this vegetable in both salads and stir fries!

Longwood Gardens – September 2015

There were a few more photographs that I wanted to share from our road trip to Longwood Gardens last month. They don’t fit in any particular category.

I liked the colors in these buds. It would be a good photo to experiment with a blurring tool if I ever get around to spending the time to learn a photo editing tool. I’d blur everything except the bud!

I loved the curls and waxy colors of these leaves.

Light pink and green…with the bit of yellow…one of my favorite color combinations in flowers. The shape and orientation is unusual enough that I looked twice. I tried taking a picture from under the flowers – up into the flower that hangs downward – but I didn’t like the vantage point as much as this one from the side.

Pink and white….and a myriad of petals. This vantage point makes it easier to see that the petals curve inward the closer they are to the center.

The orange and green seemed like the typical October color scheme to me…but the plant was not typical at all. The color appears….and then elongates into a very unusual tub type flower.

I always make a point to visit this garden in the Conservatory. If I ever have a garden room – I would like this type of water feature in the floor – gently flowing with the plants surrounding it.

Sometimes a spot of sunlight just makes a plant glow.

The water in the Italian Water Garden fountains goes off and on in a sequence. I managed to catch the side fountains just as they reached the point of stopping for a few seconds…so the last drops of water were suspended in the air rather than a steady stream.

On the way out – I noticed a maple leaf….fall is coming!

Our Oak

The oak in front of our house was planted about the time the house was built – so it is about 25 years old.  It is near the mailbox and drops leaves, acorns, and self-pruned twigs on our driveway as well as the yard. I notice it more in the fall because of the increase in debris. The wind has been blowing a lot the last few days so leaves are flying – some clearly ready to be jettisoned

And some still brilliantly green.

The tree still looks mostly green – but the foliage is less dense.

A few years ago I planted day lilies around the base of the trunk. Their green fringe looks nice through the summer and into the fall. They never get a chance to bloom because the deer eat the buds just before they open!

Over the years, the bark has become more deeply furrowed and acquired lichen. The tree is aging well. The lower branches that the county cut last spring so that fire trucks would not be damaged coming into our neighborhood in an emergency have not been missed; if anything – the tree green a bit more than usual this past summer.

It is big enough to shade the front of the house in the summer time. I’m glad it is a deciduous tree so that the front of the house gets warmed by the sun in the winter.

I picked up some acorns from the driveway. It is not a heavy year for acorns. I recall one year when it seemed like we had a carpet of acorns and my daughter collected bags of them to donate for a riparian restoration project in our area.

In an earlier year – before we moved to this house - my daughter and I collected acorns from another oak when she was in pre-school. We made a garland my gluing acorns and their hats together around a piece of gold thread. We left them in a bin for the glue to dry before we put them on the tree. When we came back the next day – little worms had come out of the acorns!

Longwood Gardens Orchids – September 2015

I always take orchid pictures when I go to Longwood Gardens and our visit last month was no exception.

Orchid flowers are such a mix of unusual characteristics….signaling the path for their pollinators to follow through: shapes, colors and structures. This first one had yellow tendrils at the beginning of the runway then wings to mark the side boundaries of the path, and red to mark the spot.

The slipper shaped orchids always remind me of carnivorous plants. It isn’t as clear (to me) where flower wants the pollinator to go. Is there a surprise in this slipper?

I’m not sure what this structure would eventually become – probably an orchid flower but I liked how pure the curve looked…how solid it was with the green stain in the center.

And then there are the flamboyant ruffles of other orchids. The colors of this one must be irresistible to the pollinator.

Do orchids in the Longwood conservatory ever have pollinators that their flowers evolved to attract?

As an after note – the conservatory room with the banana palms is near the orchids. I’d never noticed how bananas are attached to the stem of their parent. They are packed very tightly. The remnants of the flower are visible on the outer end of each banana too.

Learning Log – October 2015

The fall is the time of year still feels like the beginning of the schools year – a time to start learning something new – even though I have been out of school for more than 30 years! The fall is no exception.

Coursera is a mainstay for me although I’ve made a rule for myself to never have more than two courses going concurrently. Right now, I’m working on week 5 of 6 in a Meditation course (University of Virginia). The material is so rich that I find myself overwhelmed at times; it takes work to get through all the material for week in 7 days! One way to evaluate a course is to ask myself what I do differently after taking the course. For this one, the change is happening while I am taking the course: a daily meditation practice.

I finished the first week of the Forests course (University of Wisconsin-Madison) on the very last day of September. There are three more weeks to go. It has gotten off to a good start. The instructor has included a lot of context around the topic of forests – like why we have seasons, wind and current patterns, etc. I’m looking forward to the rest of the course.

About the time I finish up the Meditation and Forests courses, a new one on Ancient Egypt will start near the end of October.

Audio Book. I checked out Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness for Begginners from my local library (online) to listen to in conjuction with the Coursera course on Meditation. About half of it was guided meditation practice which meshed well with the practices from the Coursera course.

Creative Live was the source for several classes in September. My husband purchased The Art of Flower Photography and we watched the entire thing once; we’ll probably review some modules again after we have done some more experimenting. We ordered a white umbrella to diffuse to bright light on outdoor flowers and I made a baffle out of a white plastic shopping bag to make a white background for a flower.

I also watched some of the Creative Life Photo Week. I learned just enough to be dangerous from a 1.5 hour module on Photoshop Elements!

Learning by doing. September was a month to refresh myself on the general content of hikes with elementary school aged field trips since the fall hikes peak in October. The first one was on Oct. 1 – and it rained for most of the hike with first graders. It was an experience that the students, chaperones, and volunteer naturalists (like me) will remember – mostly positive. I think I learn something new on every hike I do with children.

Both my husband and I are renewing our knowledge of car camping. Years ago we camped to save money as we traveled. Now we are camping as part of his astronomy hobby – so we can stay out all night at astronomy gatherings but still be comfortable for when we are not observing. We had sold or given away all our gear so are busy figuring out what would work best for us now --- and our first nights out will be in October.

CSA Week 18

The share seemed huge this week. Maybe it is just typical of fall or the farmer bulking up this share just in case Hurricane Joaquin cases some flooding of the farm before next Wednesday.

The watermelon radishes are 3 to 4 times bigger than last year. I traded the eggplant for another 3 so I have a total of 6. One has already been shredded and it added both flavor and color in a slaw with ingredients from last week: broccoli and kohlrabi.

There was another bunch of beets. I’ll be making more fruit beety with the beets even with half the previous batch still in the freezer. That still leaves the leaves. I’ll be focusing on eating them while they are fresh either in salad or stir fry.

There are a lot of ‘greens’ right now: arugula, watermelon radish leaves, lettuce, and mizzuna (two bunches since I traded hot peppers). The freshness of the leaves means that they will last a bit longer in the bins I have for the refrigerator….as long as we don’t lose power when the storm comes through early in the week.

There were bell peppers and snack peppers still this week.

I was thrilled to get another sweet dumpling squash – yum!

The heaviest single item of the day was 3 pounds of sweet potatoes. I’m glad the squash and the sweet potatoes don’t need to be refrigerated.

I picked rosemary as my herb choice…it’s already drying.

We got 2 items from the overage table; I got 1 pound of roma tomatoes and some scallions.

My refrigerator feels very full!

Mt Pleasant Farm – September 2015

A few weeks ago I walked around the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm on a wet Saturday morning. I was with a birding group but didn’t manage to get any good bird pictures. Instead there were shelf fungus that looked a lot like pancakes layered with whipped cream and

Milkweed bugs maturing as the milkweed seed pods reach maturity.

At this point it started to mist heavily and even rain for short periods. The milkweed seeds spilling from pods quickly filled with droplets

As did other plants. The thinnest parts of the plants seemed to hold the most moisture.

Eventually I gave up trying to capture the scene, tucked my camera under my windbreaker to keep it dry, and just walked on enjoying being outdoors.

Longwood Gardens Fiddleheads – September 2015

When we were at Longwood Gardens last week – several of the ferns in the conservatory were in the fiddlehead stage. I always find the tightly packed spirals of the fronds fascinating. Some of them already have the beginnings of spore structures on the underside of the tiny parts of the frond that beginning to unpack itself as it uncurls. Often times the stem looks hairy too.

Sometimes the structure is one simple spiral and sometimes there are multiple spirals packed together. In the case of the one below – the main stem elongates to separate the spirals before they are completely open. The color of the ‘hair’ stands out with the bright green of the spirals.

On tree ferns (below), the fiddleheads start out without any green at all and then expand as they unfurl – revealing the green frond.

Next spring I’ll photography fiddleheads in our nearby woodlands….if I can get my timing right. They might not be as large as these from the conservatory at Longwood…but they are a joy to find and a sign of spring.