Milkweed Flowers

I started out the season with a lot of milkweed plants. The went from sprouts to green globes of buds

To pink tinged buds, and

Opening flowers.

The bees love the flowers and often there are more than one bee on each globe in June.

There was one bee that seemed worn out from all the foraging.

The frustrating part of it all this year is that we don’t have any monarchs after those first few that were probably released by local schools. The leaves on the milkweed were pristine without any Monarch caterpillars to eat them. My husband did not like the plants in the front flowerbed to I cut them down over a few days and ate the flowers (they need to be rinsed twice in boiling water to remove the toxicity…and then I ate them in a salad rather than smothering them with butter and eating them hot).

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2017

As I look back over the month, I realize that there was a lot to celebrate.

Home. At the beginning of the month I had just returned home from helping my daughter move from Arizona to Pennsylvania. As usual – returning home was celebrated. I like to travel but coming home again always feels wonderful.

3 box turtles. I didn’t do a lot of hiking in June but was thrilled that it seemed like there were a lot of box turtles around…and I celebrated seeing so many. There were two along the path between Mt. Pleasant and the Patapsco River and the third was in the cemetery at Belmont.

Receiving the Carol Filipczak Award from Howard County Conservancy. Celebrating recognition for volunteering that is love.

Daughter on the east coast. Having my daughter living in the same time zone (rather than in Arizona) is something I am celebrating this month.

Kenilworth Gardens. Lotus, waterlilies, dragonflies, turtles, birds, magnolias…so much to celebrate.

Milkweed flowers. I had so many milkweeds come up in my front flowerbed that I had to cut some of them down….but I cut the globes of flowers first and enjoyed them in a stir fry (after boiling them twice to remove the toxins). Celebrating the taste of wild food!

Peach preserves. Not sure why – but I couldn’t resist it in the grocery store and I am celebrating the decision. I’ve spread it on toast and whisked it into a homemade salad dressing. Yum!

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy. Having butterflies flying around while I’m volunteering at Brookside Gardens…a constant celebration. So beautiful.

CSA. I’m celebrating the fresh veggies from the Gorman Farm Community Supported Agriculture. It’s easy to eat enough veggies when they taste so good!

Photography with summer campers. I am already celebrating the photography with summer campers that I’m doing for the 3^rd time this summer. I’m in the prep stages but am anticipating the flurry of having 15 or so campers (at one time…a total of 5 groups eventually) all enthusiastic about photographing the natural world around them is going to be one of the highlights of the summer.

Celebrating the CSA Season

The season for our local Community Supported Agriculture (Gorman Farms) has begun! I selected to pick up my share on the first day available each week and went during the first hour of opening. A lot of other people did the same. Cars were coming and going almost constantly while I was there – not crowded but a steady flow.

I cleaned out the crispers in my refrigerator before I went and was glad I did. There is a lot of green with a few hints of red: lettuce, chard, garlic scapes, tatsoi, pac choi, scallions, kale, and oregano. I chose an extra head of lettuce as my overage item this week since I decided to just enjoy big salads – maybe take off a pound or two while eating the bounty of early summer lettuce.

I saved bins from buying salad greens during winter so I have plenty to use for storing the cleaned lettuces from the CSA for at least a week.

The first meal was a big ‘garden’ salad.

The second meal will be scrambled eggs with garlic scapes – one of my favorite meals after the first CSA distribution of the season. This is my 4^th year for enjoying CSA produce and garlic scapes are one the favorite ‘new’ foods the CSA has provided.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 20, 2017

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.

Million-Dollar Prize Hints at How Machine Learning May Someday Spot Cancer – Hopefully this type of technology will reduce the number of false positives that have been so common as we’ve used advanced imaging to find cancer (too many times when biopsies have been done and it has not been cancer). Note that the winning team was from a Chinese university. No country – even the US – can rest on past innovation for their future.

How farmers put apples into suspended animation – 9 in 10 apples bought in the US are grown in the US. This article talks about how apples are stored so that we have them throughout the year rather than just in the fall.

Frosty Monarchs – This was a post from earlier in May…but it has great picture of the milkweed egg. We had some cooler temperatures here in Maryland after the milkweed came up; there was frost on the rooftops but the it must not have gotten to freezing at ground level since the milkweed was unscathed.

Antarctica’s Blood Falls Helps Unravel the Inner Workings of Glaciers – Briny water flows (i.e. in liquid form) flows under the ice of the glacier!

Golden years are longer and healthier for those in good health in middle age – When I read the headline, my first question was - what did they define as “middle age”? The answer was ages 40-59. It was a 40 year study with 18,714 participants. It makes the point that living healthy in mid-life is important to health later in life.

It’s Raining Blood and Feathers: Catching the Spring Raptor Show – There is so much going on in the spring…and it not just flowers and song birds.

Dragons on the Hunt – Komodo dragons bring down a water buffalo. (5-minute video)

Cost of Zika outbreak in the United States could be high – There is a lot of complexity….but even assuming a lower incidence rate that has been observed in other parts of the world and that only the southern tier of the US would be impacted…still results in high costs. Prevention costs money and treatment even more. The range from the models is $183 million to $1.2 billion. Another article on the broader topic of mosquito-borne illnesses: Researchers analyze what a warming planet means for mosquito-borne illnesses.

The Art of Botanical Illustration, Scientific Botany – Some of these botanists/artists I have found before…I’m going to check what Internet Archive and Hathi Trust have in their scanned collections for each of them.

Serene Photos Highlight the Tranquil Beauty of 100 Japanese Gardens – Eye candy…even better if you have a garden near you to visit.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 13, 2017

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.

Sounding Off on Noise – I’ve been thinking a lot more about noise since I started driving an electric vehicle. I notice and enjoy the quiet of the vehicle even though the noise from the well-maintained gasoline powered cars was something I accepted as ‘white noise’ for all the years of my life up to 2017. I would rather hear natural noises (birds singing, wind in the trees) that noise from a highway or airplanes overhead.

Albatrosses counted from space – Even nests inaccessible to humans (on the Chatham Islands off New Zealand) can be seen in satellite images from the WorldView-3 satellite. The numbers of nesting pairs were lower than expected. Several more years of observations will be needed to determine if it is just a poor year or the numbers of birds are indeed declining.

The Nature of Americans: A national initiative to understand and connect Americans and Nature – There is a lot on this site. I started browsing with the Major Findings and then Recommendations. It is well organized and intended to be actionable.

Foods that Lower Cholesterol – No surprises…but the review is good.

Guggenheim Museum Releases over 200 Modern Art Books Online for Free – I am enjoying browsing this collection on the Internet Archive.

Saber-Tooth Cats, Dire Wolves Found in La Brea Tar Pits Show Wounds from Ice Age Battles – Based on analysis of just under 2,000 bones that revealed signs of trauma sustained in combat….events of lives etched in bone.

2-ingredient no-sugar date caramel sauce – Yum! I made this in my small Ninja – very easy and yummy. I’ve used it as a dip for apple slices and spread on toast. A great treat and counts as a fruit and calcium.

Moose hair and birch bark – Taking a close look at an artifact that will go into the Native American Voices gallery at the Penn Museum later this month – after a bit of treatment in The Artifact Lab.

A first-ever find in Egypt: 4,000-year-old funerary garden at tomb entrance – Before now, this type of garden was only known from illustrations on tomb walls.

The secrets of the Coke and Mentos Fountain – A fun experiment….and chemistry lesson.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 11, 2017

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.

Making “Kate Tectonics” – A short video about the history of geology.

Melting Glaciers in Canada Now Major Contributor to Sea Level Rise  and Climate-driven permafrost thaw – It’s been so warm this winter in our area….and elsewhere as well.

Elite ‘Dynasty’ at Chaco Canyon Got Its Power from One Woman, DNA Shows – DNA analysis is having an impact on our understanding of prehistory. This is an example from Chaco Canyon.

How Tibetans survive life on the ‘roof of the world’ – The Tibetans manage survival in thinner are differently than the people of the Andean Altiplano.

Could you survive on just one food? – I wouldn’t want to…how boring. But is it interesting to think about the pluses and minuses of single foods. Potatoes turn out to be a viable choice – hence the Irish population boom that busted when the potato blight came along.

Waxwings really have wax wings – We don’t have enough berry producing plants in our neighborhood to attract these birds….wish we did.

Delivering on spider silk’s promise – I’ve been hearing about spider silk coming to the market (shoes, jackets) but it hasn’t happened yet and it may not except for specialty products where cost is not a key driver.

What you don’t know about the Vikings – An article with pictures from reenactments and artifacts – from National Geographic.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #77 – It’s been two years since the #76 was published…I hope they come out with more frequency. My favorite of this group is the Northern Pintail. I like the light on the wings…and the water droplets splattering from the feet.

What happens when a massive redwood tree falls – 10-12 coast redwoods have fallen at Muir Woods National Monument during past two months…lots of work for the trail crew…but also new forest homes in the now horizontal tree trunks.

Chicken Soup

Yesterday was blustery and cold. When we first got up there were a few snowflakes but the only place I could find that they were sticking was the skylight on the covered part of our deck (as seen from my office window). The day alternated between a gray winter day with short periods of brilliant sunshine.

It was a good day for making Chicken Soup with the leftover chicken from earlier this week. I started a pan with water, a chicken bouillon cube, and a cup of shredded summer squash from the freezer (left from last summer’s CSA). By the time I had cut up a few mushrooms to add, the squash had thawed and the liquid was bubbling. I added seasonings (not measuring…just added what I thought would be enough): onion flakes, my own grated orange peel, minced garlic, ‘original’ Pinch Perfect no-salt blend. I decided that cilantro would be good in the soup but it has more flavor if it isn’t cooked too much so I put it in the soup bowl and cut it up with scissors – with the plan to pour the soup over the fresh greens. Finally, I cut up the chicken and added it to the simmering soup. It took about 15 minutes…and was just what I wanted for lunch!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 14, 2017

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.

Why some companies are trying to hire more people on the Autism Spectrum – The pilot programs in companies like SAP and Microsoft are net positive – for the companies and the high functioning autistic people they employ.

Ancient Chaco Canyon population likely relied on imported food – There is physical evidence that timbers, pottery and chert in Chaco came from the Chuska Mountains which are some 50 miles west of Chaco Canyon; corn probably did too. The soils in the canyon and the its tributaries are too salty to grow enough to feed any sizable population.

Researchers record trillions of migrating insects swarming through the skies – A study monitored insects flying over southern England above 500 feet. There were a lot more than expected – insects that move north in the spring and south in the fall. 70% of the migration takes place in daylight hours. A similar study of insect migration has been started in Texas…and had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of invertebrate they are finding!

The Next Big Thing: Healthy Homes – Important to think about for long term health….and maybe not as expensive as it once was.

What have the world’s oldest mummies kept under wraps? – Digital reconstructions of 7,000 year old bodies from South America is in its initial stages. The mummies are deteriorating because of microbes that are more active as the climate of the Atacama becomes more humid.

2016: Compound Interest’s Year in Review –  I like this site…and have included some of these postings when they originally came out…but there were more that were interesting.

United Stated of Cookies – A cookie for each state….and the recipe for it. Maryland is the Berger Cookie.

Scientists can now make lithium-ion batteries last a lifetime – Sometimes small changes make a big difference!

How the world’s biggest cities are fighting smog – There are techniques to take smog out of city air…technologies to apply in parallel with reducing pollution at its source. In many cities – both strategies are urgently needed.

Twelve new tombs discovered in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt – Even with so much focus on archeology in Egypt…there are still new finds.

Rhythm of my Seasons

The Rhythm of my Days and Weeks were posted a few days ago. This post is about seasonal rhythms.

Clothes. I still move things from closet to storage and back twice a year (usually spring and fall…whenever the temperature changes enough). I don’t wear corduroy pants and sweaters when the weather is warm just as I don’t wear shorts, skirts and capri pants when it is very cold. Some things stay in my closet all the time – and they wear out the fastest.

Volunteering. Spring and Fall are when I spend the most time volunteering. Those are the seasons that the schools have most of their field trips and stream assessments.

Travel. My husband likes to do traveling in the spring and fall – and that is probably the time for most our travel…but it happens in the other fall and summer too so there might not be a season for travel.

Classes. There is more time for classes in the winter and summer. I’m always a little surprised that I enjoy them more in winter although I am not sure why.

Outdoor work around the house. There are chores that dominate in every season. Cleaning out and planting in spring. Watering and mowing in summer. Raking leaves in the fall. Shoveling snow in the winter.

Food. Pomegranates in December. Orange squashes and apples and pears and cranberries in the fall. Tomatoes and melons at the height of summer. Garlic scapes and strawberries in late spring/early summer. Yum (even though sometimes I buy them out of season because, these days, many are in season someplace in the world).

I still have not come up with any of my rhythmic habits that I want to change in 2017….but writing these posts has heightened my awareness of the rhythms…and confirming to myself that they are what I want them to be.

My First (and still primary) Cookbook

I still have my first cookbook. My grandmother bought it for me when I was in later elementary school. It has a copyright of 1963

And was ‘The New’ at the time.

It’s never been something I referenced daily but the cumulative use over 50 years has made a mark. The corn breads page is particularly crumpled from splashes over the years.

Some of the recipes are annotated. Sometime along the line I marked off nutmeg and lemon rind from the Apple Brown Betty!

Other pages that are marked with paperclips and spills are popovers and gingerbread. One of the first times I made the gingerbread was the day I had my wisdom teeth extracted; that was in 1973! This cookbook is a part of my life history because I carried it along everywhere I moved from the time I got it until now; it isn’t ‘stuff’ to go into a giveaway pile.