Blue Jays on the Move

Our neighborhood has a troupe of resident blue jays that make their rounds – most days – through our backyard for the bird bath and swooping off to the maple and then the taller tulip poplars at the edge of the forest. Sometimes they stop to look through our gutters for bugs in the leaf debris. The picture below is one on our deck railing after he got his drink of water. That is the small part of the route that they are easy to see; some of the time I miss seeing them completely but I always hear them.

This time of year the numbers of blue jays are much higher because so many of them are migrating through Maryland to go further south for the winter. I’ve often wondered whether the resident ones ‘talk’ to the transient birds because it seems like we have more blue jays around than we have during the rest of the year.

While I was raking leaves on Wednesday (the first round of the chore for this year!), a flock of blue jays chattered (or is it more like arguing) in the trees above.

Goldfinches in the Fall

In late September, I was lucky enough to get some pictures of male goldfinches visiting my deck – for the flower seeds and birdbath. At first they looked like a slightly duller version of their normal selves.

As I looked closer at one feeding on zinnia seeds – I noticed that the feathers were in the process of changing over to winter plumage which is not the bright yellow that they have in summer. The new colors will help the birds avoid predation in the winter.

The change was even easier to see in this series of image of a goldfinch at the birdbath.

Soon the yellow feather will be gone – and there will be a brown-black-white bird that will stay around our feeders (as soon as I put seed in them again). I’ll have to develop more skill to recognize them!

Chipmunk in the Garden

A week or so ago, before my new camera arrived, I was out taking pictures of insects in the garden are at the front of my house. I heard rustling in the bushes. I wondered if it was the lizard I had seen on my front porch. More rustling. I decided it was something a little bigger than the lizard. I continued taking pictures and listening to the sounds of the front flower bed. Then I looked down at the tubing we attached to the outlet from our sump pump to drain the water further away from the house ---- a chipmunk was staring up at me. The zoomed setting was perfect for getting a quick picture!

Now that I think about it – I wonder if the tubing is still attached to the sump pump. It seems to be a highway for the chipmunk these days so there must be an opening on an end close to the house where the animal enters the tube.

Zentangle® – September 2016

I averaged almost two Zentangle® tiles per day during September – so I had a lot to choose from for the slide show this month. It surprised me that there were so many because I usually make fewer tiles when I travel and I was away from home for more than a week during the month.

I am still enjoying different colored tiles and ink…trying to remember to add shading before I declare it ‘done.’

I noted some event of the day on the back of a few of the tiles – particularly if I savored what happened while I was creating the tile: a birthday, a hike, a particularly good meal. It was not so much that the event inspired the pattern or design; it was the emotional aftermath that the tile commemorated.

Enjoy the slide show of 30 Zentangle tiles for September 2016!

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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.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – September 2016

This September includes some unique ‘little celebrations.’ Two of them occurred in Florida.

OSIRIS REx successful launch. This was only my second time to see a launch (Kennedy Space Center/Cape Canaveral). I can’t imagine that every launch I attend will not make it to the celebration list!

Pelicans. I don’t remember every seeing American white pelicans before…or if I did I didn’t realize what I was seeing. They were the highpoint of the drive around Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for me.

Happy ‘what if’ thoughts. Both my daughter and son-in-law are close to finishing their graduate work and looking at post docs. September was the first month that there seemed to be a potential ‘what next’ and we all spun all kinds of ‘what if’ scenarios. The celebration will get bigger when we actually settle on a plan – which might not finalize until early spring 2017.

There were things that were not entirely unique – but not things that happen frequently either:

4 hikes with three and four year old children. I was very excited and keyed up while I hiked with each of the groups (about 10 children and 4 adults in each group) talking about trees in the fall and seeds. I celebrated when they were done (I was exhausted) but even more than I’d managed to connect. It was probably my best grandmother-in-training experience to date!

Stream assessment with high schoolers. Putting on boots…checking water quality…identifying macroinvertebrates….with high schoolers that are interested in what they are finding --- celebrating the fall day in the stream as much as I did.

Hummingbird moth. I’m not sure why – but I don’t see hummingbird moths all that frequently. I didn’t see one at all last year. And then there was one at Brookside earlier this month. Celebration (and lots of pictures).

Chipmunk in the garden. I heard some rustling noise in the dried leaves under then bushes then looked around….and saw the chipmunk looking up at me from the end of the drain tube from the sump pump. Yes – chipmunks are rodents…but they are the cutest ones as far as I’m concerned and I celebrate that they survive in my front flower bed.

And then there are the normal things that happen frequently enough…but that I still celebrate when they do:

A rainy day after a long string of hot and dry days. All the plants seem to be celebrating too.

Abundant fall veggies. I celebrate the amount – the colors – the flavors. The harvest time is a special kind of celebration.

Celebration being home. Every time I am away for a few days…or even a week…I celebrate returning. The ‘no place like home’ sentiment rings true for me.

1994 Nature Study

In the summer of 1994, my daughter was almost 5 years old. She was not big enough for most of our yard work chores but she enjoyed being outdoors. I was reminded of her at that age by a picture I came across in my scanning project. My husband had finished mowing and she and I had gone around picking dandelion flowers that had missed being cut. She had a small basket that she put the flowers in. I started trimming some bushes while she arranged grass clippings and dandelion flowers (and a few other things she found) into an arrangement on the garage floor. After she finished – I went inside to get the Polaroid camera and her father took a picture with his camera too. She was thrilled with the near immediate result of the Polaroid; I’m not sure she ever saw this one that came back weeks later.

What a difference digital photography has made!

Bountiful Fall Food

September is the transition month for us – from summer to fall. At the beginning of the month there were still tomatoes in our CSA share. Now we have lots of leafy greens (mizuna, arugula, kale, bok choi, lettuce, cilantro, great beans) with color variety from peppers, winter squash, and garlic. There are so many ways to prepare these goodies.

I always cook the winter squashes whole (pricking the skin with a fork) then take out the seeds just before I eat the first serving. Left overs are easy to use up. I like spaghetti squash in salads and stir fry. Any leftover acorn squash, sweet dumpling or butternut squash is well suited for making muffins or custard.

One of my husband’s favorite sides for meat loaf of hamburger patties is sautéed peppers, onions, and garlic. I like the peppers in salads but recently have used them all in the side dish – the colorful peppers are the highlight of the plate.

Of course – sometimes all the bounty is overwhelming and I revert to my favorite snack, anytime of year: popcorn. We don’t buy the packages of microwave popcorn anymore since the Nordic Ware bowl for popping the kernels in the microwave works very well for us. When I am dieting, I only add a little salt. Yesterday (pictured), it was buttered and salted!

Raw, steamed, stir fried, baked…I like these fall veggies so many ways. I am savoring the bounty and fresh flavoring now - trying not to think about when the CSA will be done for the year at the end of October.

Onions in the Chaos Garden

There are onions blooming around the base of the sycamore in the chaos garden. I cut the green parts as chives when I remember but there have been some that have gone to seed  for the past several years so I have more plants every season.

Now there are enough to get every stage of the flower heads in one photoshoot. They start out with a cluster of buds.

They do not all open at one time (there is a blurry coneflower adding color in the background for this flower head). At first it looks like the flowers are going to be overly crowed.

But then – some of the stems that support the individual flowers elongate.

There still seem to be a large number of buds when the flower head looks like a miniature bouquet.

The new buds hide underneath the flowers that have already opened.

And that is the state of the chaos garden onions in early September!

Zentangle® – August 2016

The time spent creating Zentangle® tiles seems like islands of calm focus that fit within the context of the rest of life so easily. Perhaps they fit because they are not overly time consuming….or because the rhythm of creating at least one a day has become a habit…a habit that I enjoy.

I’m still cutting tiles from folders with battered edges from my daughter’s years in public school. The boxes of old school paper are finally being cleaned out and we are only keeping a few mementoes rather than every paper. I enjoy the colored tiles.

Different colors of ink are a change too. I may go through a stage when I am back to off white tiles and black in sometime too --- but not in the near term.

Enjoy the slide show of 31 Zentangle tiles for August!

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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.

Milkweed Seeds

One of the milkweeds in out chaos garden is already spilling seeds. One pod was fully open and the seeds were spilling out. There was a little breeze but I didn’t see any of the seeds float away – although they looked ready to go. I took pictures from several angles.  I liked the way the breeze was changing the light on the pod. The seeds look very dry and the white fluff that acts as a parachute to carry them on the breeze away from the parent plant glistens in the sunlight.

Another pod has split open but there was only one seed that had unfurled enough for the fluff to show. The others were still tightly packed in the pod. Next time I am working outside, I’ll take some of the seeds back to the edge of the forest where I’d like to have a stand of milkweed next spring. Once the plants are established they come back year after year.

Sunflowers

Last summer the sunflowers I planted in pots on my deck did not do so well but I’ve had more success this summer. Yesterday I went out to photograph them. Even the buds look good with the fuzzy edges of sepals.

Then there is the unfurling of the petals.

They expand and the flower follows the track of the sun. This is the stage when the butterflies visit the flower.

The flower ages.

Even the back of the flower is complex.

Then the petals fade. This one looked like a flower person with yellow orange hair and a green cap!

The petals fall away…and soon the goldfinches come for the seed.

I have enjoyed doing flower photography from my deck because it is easy to use the camera’s zoom for detail and achieve a blurry green or brown background too.

Beautiful Food – August 2016

August is full of tomatoes and peppers – both very colorful foods.

My favorite way to eat tomatoes is in salads. Early in the month, the CSA share also included a sun jewel melon (to me the taste is between a cucumber and a melon…so I use them in salads) and scallions that went into the salad pictured below along with edamame for protein. I used a lemon vinaigrette dressing.  The lettuces are not at their best in August so most of my salads are full of colors other than green!

Of course I have so many tomatoes that I have to do other things with them besides eating them raw in salads. I am freezing the small ones whole, making salsa (some to freeze), and probably going to freeze some larger tomatoes – whole - with the top core cut out. Last year I discovered that freezing whole tomatoes in Ziplocs was the easiest for me and it was handy to take out the number of frozen tomatoes I wanted for soups or sauces.

As we moved further into August, the peppers started. I like the colorful snack peppers; they are perfect for salads because they are so easy to prepare – just cut the tops and bottoms off and chop the rest (seed and all)! I like the bell peppers too…the hot peppers not as much.

It’s easy to incorporate lots of veggies in my August meals!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – August 2016

August has been hot and humid…punctuated with thunderstorms and downpours of rain. There has been plenty to celebrate:

Lots of tomatoes – Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides so many different kinds – heirloom, cherry, yellow, red, orange…and I am celebrating the bounty for almost two meals a day. Last week we got a bundle of basil and I’ve had it on the counter all week; I add it to salads and sauces so frequently that I don’t think I’ll have any left to dry at the end of the week.

Homemade salsa – I had a jalapeño pepper from the CSA and combined it with tomatoes, cilantro, dried onion flakes and lemon juice/pulp in the food processor. Yummy. We’ve eaten up the first batch and I’ll be making a second one soon. It’s good food worth celebrating.

Lemon Vinaigrette – I discovered a new favorite salad dressing. I’m celebrating the change – even though I still keep a supply of my previous favorite: Green Vinaigrette.

Clean cabinet doors -  I found some Murphy’s Oil Soap that we’ve had for years and cleaned the cabinet doors. There are times that ‘cleaning house’ becomes a celebration of the place we live and this was one of those times.

Home in the 1990s – I scanned pictures we had taken as we moved into the house we live in now…and the rest of the decade. Seeing the pictures again were a celebration of that time of our lives.

New Kitchen Floor – The new floor makes the whole room look new to me. I’m celebrating the end result…and that our decision to ‘do it now.’

Wood Floor – We got the wood floor in the foyer refinished and matching wood in the office to the side of the foyer and the powder. Wow – the whole area of the house looks very clean and full of light, bigger than it looked before. Now we are thinking about where else we will put wood flooring…while we celebrate the success of this project.

Goldfinches – Every time I see the goldfinches enjoying the zinnia and sunflower seeds it is a little celebration of color and motion.

Monarch butterfly – There are not very many Monarch butterflies in our area so the one I did see near our house was a celebration.

Tree hike – The tree hike at Belmont was something I committed to do months and months ago so when it finally happened this month, it was a milestone of 2016 to celebrate.

New Flooring – Part II

I posted about the first two days of our new flooring last Thursday morning. The project was completely finished by Thursday evening and we moved the furniture back into the room on Friday morning. Our cats were leery about leaving the basement where they had been sequestered since Tuesday morning and been terrified by the noises overhead….but food and treats being moved back to the normal place in the kitchen were enough to entice them upstairs. The new floor made the kitchen a ‘new’ place for them and I think it did for me a little as well. I still am surprised at how much the new floor changes the look and feel of the room --- and it all for the better.

The wood floor in the entry, my husband’s office and the half bath is wonderful too. We’ve moved the furniture back to his office but not all the computers – so far. The room looks large! We bought a new mat for his office chair – one that is smooth on the back rather than with little nubs for carpeting. I need to remember to take the knots out of the sheers before we move too many other things back into the room.  The items on the shelves were covered with plastic during the sanding; even the Darth Vader came through in find shape!

Now that the project is done – I’m asking myself why I waited so long to have it done!

Photographs through a Window – August 2016

August has been hot, humid – punctuated with thunderstorms. Photography through the windows of our house has still be good. The doves are still around – coming for water at the bird bath frequently.

There always seems to be a wasp that leans too far into the bird bath and ends up drowning. I watched one for several minutes and saw that even when it maneuvered itself close to the side, the wasp could not get enough leverage from only 2 or 3 of its legs touching the side to lift itself out of the water.

There has been an uptick in gold finch visits. The bird bath is popular with them just like it to the doves.

But the gold finches like the zinnias

And the high narrow perch of the hanger for the bird feeder (empty during the summer) that the doves are too big to enjoy.

There was a molting American Crow on a neighbor’s roof.

We had more butterflies around in August. The zinnias were visited by spicebush swallowtails and

Tiger swallowtails.

The tiger swallowtails are probably our most prolific large butterflies because we have so many large tulip poplar trees in the forest behind our house (tulip poplars are host plants for the tiger swallowtail caterpillars).

August was a good month for through a window photography!

New Flooring – Part I

After living in our house over 20 years, we are getting new flooring in two areas:

• Our kitchen, breakfast area, pantry, and laundry room
• Foyer/coat closet (refinish), office, and half bath.

The new wood materials for the office and half bath were delivered on Monday so that it would be at the temperature of the house when it was installed. They were put in the office where they would be installed in a few days.

The crew to replace the kitchen and surround area arrived at mid-day on Tuesday and proceeded take out the old flooring (even though at first they were going to simply install the new Congoleum tiles over the old builder installed sheet vinyl….not what we paid for!). The old flooring has been pieced together and was not very high quality to begin with.

When they left Tuesday night, the refrigerator was in the den (plugged in – fortunately) along with the stove, the washer and dryer was in the garage….the space was ready for the installation of the tiles. There was a fine coating of dust on everything in the den…work for after the project is finished.

Wednesday morning, the crew to work on the kitchen arrived shortly after 8. After more stapling, gooping the seams of the material for under the tiles, and measuring – they were laying tile by 10.

Less than an hour after the kitchen crew arrived, the one for the foyer area arrived. The furniture from the office was moved into the living room, the drapery knotted up to be out of the way, the carpeting was taken out, and the saw was set up in the front yard. They were working on laying the new flooring in the office by 11…after hanging plastic on the spaces leading to the kitchen and the living room. I closed the doors to the rooms upstairs and we’ll just have to thoroughly vacuum the carpeting in the upstairs hallway.

By the end of the day on Wednesday:

The kitchen was finished. The crew worked for 12 hours straight to get it done. This morning we will be cleaning up and moving the table back into breakfast area.

The foyer area had the new wood installed in the half bath and office. Everything was sanded. We'd selected the stain from the sample grid. Thursday would be stain day!

Stay tuned for part II for this post…after the project is finished. I think it will probably come out on Sunday, August 21 (keeping my fingers crossed).

Almost Hidden

Sometimes I take pictures and capture something unexpected – like the katydid in a day lily taken back in July.

Or the tiny spider in a black eyed susan (during the ‘Black Eyed Susans in the Morning’ photo shoot).

Sometimes I take the picture knowing that there is something more – like this tiger swallowtail almost hidden behind a sunflower. I had been taking pictures of the butterfly on the zinnias just beforehand…and decided to do the hide and seek picture just to be different.

And then there are the milkweed bugs that are hiding on just about every milkweed seed pod I find – but they are rarely positioned to be completely visible!

Deck Garden Challenges – August 2016

This August has been very hot and dry – punctuated with downpours. The deck garden is dominated by green since the day lilies finished their bloom cycle in July. The hose says arced up the stairs and across the deck all the time because the downpours are not frequently enough.

I use the bird bath to decide when to water. Certainly when it starts to dry up the pots are dray too. So far – the bird bath water has not been around long enough for any mosquito larvae at all. There are always dead wasps floating in it.

The pleasures of the August deck garden are smaller than the day lilies – things like zinnias,

A cantaloupe vine (no fruit…but lots of flowers), and

A sweet potato vine (I’ve already harvested some of the leaves for a salad).

The butterflies and birds are noticing the zinnias and sunflowers….that’s another reason to keep the deck garden watered in August.

Zinnias

I can remember my grandmother planting zinnias in her vegetable garden – to give the mostly green vegetation some extra color. They work well for me in pots on my deck now. I enjoy photographing the flowers…and have picked some of my favorites from recent weeks. I’ve been experimenting with using the zoom on the camera rather than getting close. It makes a nicely blurred background (green from trees) and sometimes there is a surprise insect (an early instar of something that is almost clear on the underside of the rightmost petal). At the highest magnification - past what the lenses of the camera support and essentially cropping in the camera - the image has a painterly soft-focus.

Sometimes the background is black because of the way the light is – or isn’t.

I try to get above the flower so that inside shows.

The one with multiple rows of petals also has a spider web! All of the flowers that have petals attract butterflies. Tiger swallowtails are the most frequent visitors.

Once the petals begin to fall off, the seeds are beginning to form and that means that the goldfinches will visit more frequently.

I let them eat their fill. There are always enough left in the seed heads to crumble into the pots for another round of zinnias next summer.

Chaos Garden

The plot of ground in the back of our house that is not covered by the deck that is a story of the ground is my chaos garden. It is a haphazard production. The two hydrangea bushes that we planted almost 20 years ago two blooms on them this year after being almost killed by a late frost and heavy deer grazing last year. In early July they looked wonderful against the white brick of the exterior of the basement. A closer look showed the green tinges on the petals.

By early August – the flowers are fading. Many times they will dry on the bush. I bring then inside in the autumn for dried arrangements.

A close up of the leaves show deer are still around this year too.

The cone flowers come up every year on one side of the plot – and attract butterflies. On the day I was doing the photographs for this post last week there was a persistent spicebush swallowtail. There is some honeysuckle that photobombed a couple of pictures. I periodically pull all the honeysuckle to keep it from taking over.

There is a sycamore that came up in the corner of the plot furthest from the house and I have left it there to shade the big dining room and master bathroom from the sun in the afternoon. It has helped make the house easier to cool – but having a tree as large as the tree will be in another 10-15 years might be problematic. Sycamores have peeling bark…leaves that continue to get larger and larger throughout the growing season.

The garden also has two types of milkweed which I planted to help Monarch butterflies but that are enjoyed by lots of other insects as well. The common milkweed had all its mid-range leaves eaten by something. The lemon balm grows all around both milkweeds.

There are also several clumps of chives. I harvest just enough to use immediately. Somehow herbs that are cut fresh always taste better!