Springfield Yard and Xeriscape Garden

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Last time I was in Springfield, the priority was getting my daughter moved into a new house – exhausting work. This time I am savoring the yard. I walked around several times….marveling at how beautiful it is, noting a few things that need to be done but nothing critical. It is relatively low maintenance. I am starting to think about the various areas as mini gardens.

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The Driveway Garden has two hollies flanking the extra parking area – a male and female. The female tree is full of green berries which will be red by winter…pretty and food for birds as well.

The Back Garden has a dogwood that may be problematic (some dead branches and overall not looking healthy) but underneath the Queen Anne’s Lace is blooming and some other plants (that will also provide food for birds. I’ve been watching a small rabbit nibbling on the plants around the brick patio every morning when I nibble my dark chocolate in the garden room. The hosta plants have already finished blooming. There are some legume type plants that are blooming behind some evergreens and a stand of poke weed that will have purple berries in the fall. There is a wood hydrangea that still has dried flowers from last year along with light grene flower clusters on the ends of this year’s growth. Overall – a lot of shrubs, trees and perennials…very little grass.

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The Side Garden has evergreens on one side of the stone walk and ferns on the other. I might move one of the yard chairs to this always shady area.

The Magnolia Garden is under a huge magnolia tree. There was some damage to the leaves from the extreme cold from last winter that I noticed last time I was here but those leaves were dropped and the tree looks wonderfully lush at this point - full of shining green leaves, developing seed pods and waning flowers. There are a few ferns and hosta under the tree. My daughter cleared away the thick layer of magnolia leaves and is planning to encourage (or plant) more of those types of plants under the tree.

The Front Garden is dominated by some big trees. The river birch and oak are the largest. The oak was probably planted when the house was built in the 1950s. Many other houses in the neighborhood have a large oak in the front.

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There is also an oak leaf hydrangea between the house and the big trees that is blooming; it’s a great shade loving plant!

We took a walk in the neighborhood to a city park that includes a Xeriscape Garden maintained by volunteers. Kudos to the people that do the work there! It is a mini-botanical garden. The arum seed clusters are attention getting! The variety of plants there would make it worth visiting any time except (maybe) the winter. I was pleased to see that goldenrod was included. There was also some sculpture among the plantings.

Overall – the gardens of the yard and the nearby Xeriscape Garden are something to look forward to see during future visits.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 24, 2021

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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.

Night Sky Celebrations Across the National Park System – We’re not doing this kind of traveling this summer….but maybe we’ll do several of these ‘star parties’ in summer 2022.

Tooth loss associated with increased cognitive impairment – Another reason to not neglect going to the dentist! It’s not just about preserving cognitive impairment either….quality of life is a big motivation as well.

Top 25 birds of the week: Seabirds – From around the world…a few I’ve seen in North America.

Mucus and mucins may become the medicine of the future – There is still a lot to learn about how this might work….but it appears that this is an opportunity to treat disease by enhancing the mechanisms already used by the body. Maybe one of the first uses will be for eye drops to treat eye infections rather than the antibiotics used today.

Protect Pollinators – reform pesticide regulations – Hopefully the action requested by these scientist from around the world will happen…our ecosystems are having enough challenge dealing with climate change. Many pollinator species won’t survive the continued threat of status quo pesticide use.

Keeping your composure: Creative Ways to Compose Your Photographs (part 1, part 2, part 3) – Always good to browse through these kinds of tutorials…pick up some new ideas, celebrate the things you are already doing.

What to do with food waste? – It doesn’t appear than there is any one strategy that will work broadly. I’m glad I have already dramatically reduced food waste and then have a large enough yard to have a compost bin.

Waterfalls of North Carolina – A few years ago, my husband and I made a waterfall themed trip to New York. It seems that North Carolina would be another state that has a lot of opportunities for waterfall photography. Maybe next spring?

Creativity Myths – A recent ‘letter’ on The Painter’s Keys website.  I enjoy the twice-weekly blurbs that appear in my inbox (free subscription) and often follow the ‘click here to read more’ link.

Exposure to light with less blue before sleep is better for energy metabolism – I already change the color balance on my PC screens to ‘nightlight’ between sundown and sunrise. Maybe we will do more eventually based on this and subsequent research. It is probably true that no one should be watching a television screen just before going to bed!

Browsing Natural History Magazines – April to June 2021

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I browed the The American Museum of Natural History’s magazine available on Internet Archive published in 1985 to 1993 over a 3-month period. The topics of the articles are wide ranging…something for everyone interested in Natural History. I picked one image from each volume…noticing that I am more skewed toward birds that the magazines are.

I am looking forward to browsing the volumes from 1994 to 2010 that are also available via Internet Archive….when I get the time.

 I posted about  the 1966 to 1984 volumes that I browsed back in March previously.

Springfield Botanical Garden – Part 2

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The day lily garden at the Springfield Botanical Garden offered many colors and sizes of day lilies…many with water droplets from the early morning rain. I enjoyed photographing them…trying different types of compositions.

There was a butterfly on some zinnias planted in a bed neat the lilies. This has not been a good year for butterflies in Springfield or at my home in Maryland.

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A dragonfly perched on a dried stalk…kept coming back to the same one. I was thrilled to get a zoomed picture. It looks a like a female Widow Skimmer….but not a perfect match - the dark patches on the tips of the wings does not fit although this is the underside of the wing and the pictures I was using for ID all are from the other side.

It was getting hotter, and we closed the loop back to the car. There was a line of cars coming into the garden as we were driving out. Our visit was well timed!

Springfield Botanical Garden – Part 1

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This was my second visit to the Springfield Botanical Garden….and we parked in a different place…saw the garden in a different order than before. It’s a large enough place that I didn’t see the whole thing either time.  The morning was still cool and there were not many people around when we first got there. We started out near the flowering shrubs, white garden and mosaic. I’m paying more attention to native plants these days and the gardens seems to be skewing in that direction as well. There were lots of showy clumps of cone flowers and wood hydrangea. There didn’t seem to be as many butterflies around as were there during my previous visit in July 2019.

We spent more time walking through the hosta garden….very shady with water features….the garden furniture was too wet to enjoy. It’s probably the most pleasant garden area during the hottest hours of summer days!

We went in one entrance and out another…walking toward other gardens via the South Creek Greenway Trail. Those gardens are the topic of in tomorrow’s post.

Road trip from Maryland to Springfield, Missouri

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I started out on another road trip last week…heading to my daughter’s house in Missouri and then, after a few days, continuing to Dallas, Texas for a family wedding celebration. This post is about the first part of the road trip. The trip was planned shortly after I got back from the last one….before the dramatic uptick in the COVID-19 cases in southwest Missouri due to the delta variant. As I started out – I realized that I felt less secure on this road trip than the one I made in April/May. During the previous trip, the cases were beginning to trend downward across the country and the number of vaccines per day was high. I anticipated by July that many areas of the country would have enough people vaccinated to have very low numbers of cases and instead things have gone in a different direction – a drop off in people getting vaccinated and the delta variant becoming the dominate strain in the pandemic. And very few people are still wearing masks anymore! On this road trip, I am avoiding indoor spaces when I can – and wearing a mask otherwise. That meant I took my food with me for the road…and put on a mask when I went into the rest stop buildings. Until I got to Missouri – I was about the only person I saw wearing a mask. In Missouri, more people were wearing masks at the rest stops…but not everyone. The news about what is happening with the delta variant is beginning to get out to the general population – hopefully.

It stopped at almost all the rest stops along the way. At the very first stop – South Mountain – a trucker that arrived at the vending machines about the same time as I did, bought my soft drink before I could get my credit card out! His generosity and the pleasant conversation for a few minutes brightened my perspective for the rest of the trip. It also was wonderful to see a pollinator garden and a tiger swallowtail.

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The next stop was Sideling Hill – still in Maryland. I noted that the periodic cicada damage was still evident on some the trees. The big road cut is always impressive; I took a picture from the building walkway and then from the parking lot – waiting for a truck to go by to get a size comparison.

Then there were 4 stops in West Virginia. The state had turned off the hand dryers in the rest stops and filled the paper towel dispensers. I enjoyed the drive through the state – clean rest stops, highway in good condition, light traffic, curvy and scenic. The most interesting rest stop was one with sunflowers (not blooming yet). Most of them were short enough that I could look down in the center of the plant where the flower bud was beginning to form; there was one very tall plant that had grown through an open area of the building overhang!

I had one rest stop in Kentucky before I got to the hotel near Frankfort, Kentucky. It looked like the thunderstorms in the forecast were going to happen for that last hour of the drive…but it just looked threatening. Only a light rain came down…no lightning or thunder.

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The next morning, I was away from the hotel by 6:30 AM. The cloud cover did not make for a pretty sunrise.

The next stops were in Indiana…and the time shifted to CDT. I stopped at a McDonald’s (needed a rest stop) but then highway rest stops. I bought gas but didn’t used that as a rest stop. I finished eating the carrots and grapes I had packed to eat as I drove.

The route through Illinois is short…only one rest stop…a Welcome Center. And then the bridge over the Mississippi River in view of the arch at St. Louis (no pictures while I’m driving!).

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The clouds looked ominous again as I drove through Missouri. There was more traffic (trucks, pickups pulling trailers) because I had joined I-70. The second stop had a Route 66 theme with pay phones (not functioning) as part of the display.

I made good time and was out my daughters by 2:30 PM and unloading my car. I unloaded the fragile household items (like larger framed pictures) to store her basement until my husband and I move to the area. I waiting until the next day to clean up all the packing material…fold it neatly to use for another load the next time my make the trek between Maryland and Missouri.

Breakfast on the Deck

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Now that the deck staining is complete, and we’ve moved the furniture back and hung the deck curtains to block the afternoon sun – I am having breakfast on the deck. My breakfast is in 2 parts: a first breakfast at about 7 AM which always includes dark chocolate (usual herbal tea to drink) and then a second breakfast about 10 AM which varies more. On the morning I took the picture it was crustless quiche with sunflower seeds on top with diet Pepsi.

I open at least one of the drapes so I can see the maple tree. The birds are generally active during the early morning – blue jays and grackles were the noisiest on the morning I took the pictures. The vegetation is so thick this time of year that they are heard more than seen.

Sometimes I take supplies to make a Zentangle tile after I’ve eaten the dark chocolate. On this morning I was surprised at how cool it felt….I opted to make the tile indoors.

Overall – the morning is the most pleasant time to be on the deck in the summer. Some outdoor time is a great way to start the day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 17, 2021

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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 'Zoom Boom' Can't Save the Midwest – People are leaving dense, high-cost urban metro areas…but very few of them are going to the heartland.  Maybe some of the areas will benefit from migration because of climate change. Or maybe the Midwest should simply focus on investments to help their economies and create places people want to live….do the groundwork to encourage people to move to the region.

Poison Mushrooms: How to Tell – From the Natural History Society of Maryland…good pictures.

The Avenues of America – An overview picture of Washington DC taken from the International Space Station.

The Invasion Of The National Park System – Quagga mussels, Burmese pythons, feral swine, household pets gone wild, tamarisk trees….and those are just the ones pictured!

Incredible Footage of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall Volcano – And there are people in many of the pictures to provide scale!

Major advance in fabrication of low-cost solar cells also locks up greenhouse gases – There are so many articles about technologies that sound promising toward creating faster pathways away from fossil fuels….hope a lot of them move forward.

Elephant Trunks Can Suck Water at 330 Miles Per Hour – Wow

Pyramid made of dirt is world’s oldest known war memorial – Located in Syria…and at least 30 people – male and presumed to be warriors – buried in horizontal steps.

COVID-19 pandemic has been linked with six unhealthy eating behaviors -- ScienceDaily – Eating disorders are one of the deadliest psychiatric health concerns and 6 of them have a correlation to the pandemic: mindless eating and snacking, increased food consumption, generalized decrease in appetite or dietary intake, eating to cope, pandemic related reductions in dietary intake, and re-emergence or marked increase in eating disorders.

How flooded coal mines could heat homes – Evidently the water in the mines could be tapped as a source of geothermal heating/cooling!

30 Years Ago – July 1991

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In June 1991, we had guests from Texas at our house. In July 1991, we went to Texas. I remember it vividly and was surprised when I looked back through my notes from the time to find that we were only there for 4 days. It seems like we did so much: went to the Dallas zoo, did a lot of water play with hoses and plastic bins big enough for each 23 month old girl to have her own, and explored several playgrounds where the swings were big favorites.

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It seemed like my daughter had a step increase in language and coordination…..and became a lot more opinionated about what she wanted to do. Maybe that last part was a precursor to her ‘terrible twos.’

We had two rounds of colds – before and after the trip to Texas. My husband did the best which was good since he was settling into his new job. My daughter had an eye infection along with her cold. I had an eye and ear infection that took 3 different antibiotics back to back; finally the last one worked.

The garden my mother-in-law had tended the previous summer was producing tomatoes, chives, dill, oregano and sunflowers. She died in Fall 1990 and we felt closer to her in the garden she had created than at the cemetery where she was buried.

Day Lily Portraits

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Day lily flowers are at their best outdoors in the morning….just after they open.

We have day lilies in three areas of our yard: the front flower bed near the garage, in the back in an area close the house that now gets too much shade for them to do well, and at the base of the oak.

Most of the buds are eaten by deer before they can open so I try to cut the flowers if they manage to open outdoors and the buds when they are large enough to continue their cycle in a vase. The images below show a bud that opened indoors on the first morning….and one that had opened the previous morning.

I like to try high key images with the day lilies indoors as well.

The flowers dry and fall off after they bloom. They retain some of their color and I like the curls, twists, and wrinkles.

I also photograph them with the clip-on magnifier for my phone…and the clicker to cause the phone to take the picture (making it easier to hold the phone steady). The color and texture look different when they are magnified. The pollen is visible if a petal did not cover it as the flower dried.

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16 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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16 months into the pandemic with vaccines available to anyone 12 or older…and the Delta variant is surging in some areas where the percent of the population vaccinated is low. Unfortunately - Springfield, Missouri is one of those places. It is frustrating that the deaths and the start of long term disabilities from COVID-19 that are happening now could have been avoided via vaccination….that the impact on lives of individuals and the economy (through increased health care and loss of productivity for those that became ill and didn’t fully recover) will be part of the legacy of (what I hope is) the late stages of the pandemic in the US.

I was at home in Maryland – a state with a high vaccination rate – for most of June. Even with Maryland’s stats, the Delta variant has me still wearing a mask any time I am in an indoor space like the grocery store (early morning when there are not many people around) or doctor’s offices (catching up on appointments I put off during the pandemic). We are still in takeout mode for restaurants and my husband wears a mask when he picks up our food. At other stores, we are doing curbside pickup. I wear a mask at the Farmers Market even though it is outdoors because it is difficult to keep distance while I am shopping. By this time, I had hoped we would be at the point of not needing masks, but the variants have changed the situation.

We are enjoying outdoor places: Brookside Gardens, Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant, Centennial Park, and Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. We choose times where there won’t be many other people around – usually in the mornings. I’m glad we’ve been able to avoid crowds/not wear masks since sometimes the temperature is warm enough that masks would be uncomfortable. Our yard is a great place to enjoy the outdoors as well; I enjoy yardwork in short bursts…when it’s not too hot.

Webinars have been a boon during the pandemic and this past month included one of the most thought-provoking: The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty. It was an interdisciplinary 4 days of sessions (Day 1: https://tinyurl.com/4t7zjv72 Day 2: https://tinyurl.com/2f9n4b72 Day 3: https://tinyurl.com/48rbba2k Day 4: https://tinyurl.com/5bbey7pr)).

I’ve been thinking about the most effective pandemic coping mechanisms for me…deciding that the variety of strategies I’ve developed over many years have all contributed. It is having many familiar strategies to choose from that is important….and utilizing them often – together or alone. There are some that are part of my daily routine: journaling, 12,000 steps,  browsing 4 online books, mindfulness/yoga, blog post, noting something I am celebrating, creating Zentangle tile. My office is arranged such that the view from the window is a wall of trees with a roof at one side where birds occasionally perch. My husband and I try to plan one ‘field trip’ each week – a garden walk, birding, hiking, astronomy. Overall…we’ve settled into a routine that is sustainable.

I have road trip plans for the next month….and will be taking precautions to stay well while I am on the road and visiting family.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 10, 2021

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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.

Fibromyalgia likely the result of autoimmune problems – Maybe this change in thinking (neurologic to immune system) will improve diagnosis and management of the disease.

How freezing changed the green pea – A little food history

Massive Antarctic Lake Vanishes in Just Three Days – A lot can be learned with observations from space…and once we see something interesting like this there is historical imagery that can provide a view from past years too.

Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Pandemic – The search for a better vaccine for TB….some history of the past 100 years of TB around the world.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Interactions! – Birds with others…of their own species and sometimes another bird species.

The Finalists of the Bird Photographer of the Year 2021 Are Announced – Just found this post that came out back in April…enjoy a double dose of bird photos in this gleanings list.

Photos of the Week – June 17, 2021 – Spider photos from The Prairie Ecologist

Fire Destroyed 10 Percent of World’s Giant Sequoias Last Year—Can They Survive Climate Change? – Very sad….and this year there could be more fires.

6 Surprising Tales of Predatory Birds – The 6 birds featured are: pelicans, great blue herons, turkeys, crows, kelp gulls, and vampire finches.

Coelacanths may live nearly a century, five times longer than researchers expected – An ancient form of fish that evidently lives a long time, reaches maturity at about 55 years old and gestates offspring for 5 years. This slow life history has implications for conservation of the fish. I also wondered how many other species we know only from fossils had slow life histories compared to organism we observe today.

Cicada Aftermath

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The Brood X adult cicadas are gone; the outdoors is quiet in comparison to the way it was a month ago. The trees are showing the impact of the large numbers of cicadas that emerged this year…but not all the trees were impacted the same. Our oak seems to have the most small-stem breakage from the cicada eggs deposited under the bark…the larvae hatching and dropping to the ground. The stems split and the leaves past the split die. The condition is called ‘flagging.’

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Some of the leaves are already falling off the tree; they’ll be mulched into the yard the next time we mow.

There are other insects that enjoy our oak. I noticed that some of the leaves on the ground have holes in them. Without the cicadas, the leaves probably would have stayed green and on the tree for the rest of the summer.

The sycamore is impacted to a lesser degree.

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It appears from the yard that the small branches are falling off more quickly than the oak’s.

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I took some zoomed pictures of the sycamore branches. The color and shapes appeal to me.

Soon the aftermath of the Brood X will all be underground….the larvae beginning their 17 year journey.

There was a story in the news of some research into the blue jay and grackle die off recently….looking at whether the fungus that seemed more prevalent in the cicadas this year might have impacted the juvenile birds that ate them. The die off occurred in the same areas where Brood X emerged.

A Good Year for Virginia Creeper

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The Virginia Creeper seems to be growing lusher in our yard each year….maybe a step above the trend this year. I am letting it grow up the trunks of our sycamore and oak (planning to cut it back if it ever gets up too high in the tree and start interfering with the tree’s own leaves/food production).

The plant clings to vertical surfaces with disks rather than roots so I am letting it grow on the basement wall that borders the chaos garden – for now. The gentle arch and changing color of the leaves as they mature appeals to me.

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Supporting native plants in my yard has become increasingly important to me over the past few years – glad that I have native trees already present (oak, maple, sycamore, tulip poplar, black walnut). The Virginia Creeper is the ‘vine’ I am encouraging – it’s easier to love than the native grape that grows so rapidly and gets out of control…or the trumpet vine that needs more sun than I have and also tends to overwhelm everything around it. The Virginia creeper produces tiny seeds that provides winter food for birds and the leaves support several insect species. Virginia Creeper is the host plant for Virginia Creeper Sphinx moths. I’ll be looking for the caterpillars on the plants in my yard!

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens – 2

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Continuing the posts about our hike at Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC…today the topic is dragonflies.

I tried to photograph the insects from different perspectives than my usual…for interest rather than identification. The very last picture I took is an example; I can’t identify the species but the pictures is interesting because it appears that one of the hind wings is broken. The insect flew to the twig just before I photographed it!

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All my identifications are tentative. I’m not an expert but I try to group the photos that look to be the same species together.

There were lots of Blue Dashers in different positions.

I got both male and female Common Whitetail Skimmer.

There were Slaty Skimmers.

And a Widow Skimmer.

Note – The sites I used for identification are: Insect Identification (Maryland) and out DNR’s Common Dragonflies of Maryland. I enjoyed comparing the species I saw at Howard County Conservancy a few weeks ago with the ones I saw at Kenilworth:

Blue Dasher (Kenilworth)

Common whitetail skimmer (both)

Eastern pondhawk (Howard County Conservancy Mt Pleasant)

Ebony jewelwing (Howard Country Conservancy)

Slaty Skimmer (Kenilworth)

Window skimmer (both)

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 3, 2021

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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.

Top 25 birds of the week – June 2021! – The first picture startled me – a bird with a turquoise beak!

Beach Safety Tips: How To Avoid Being Bitten or Stung This Summer – I’m don’t go to the beach frequently…and then am usually more interested in shells and ghost crabs than being in the water! Still – the safety tips were interesting.

Concrete: The material that defines our age – With the collapse of the reinforced concrete building in Florida….this story seemed particularly timely.

Edible Cholera vaccine made of powdered rice proves safe in phase 1 human trials, study suggests – Reminded me of distribution ease of the polio vaccine sugar cubes back in the 1960s. In this case the special rice is powdered and sealed in aluminum packets that are then mixed with 1/3 cup liquid and drunk. Hopefully, the subsequent phases of the trials will be successful…it could save a lot of lives.

Yellowstone and Warming: An Iconic Park Faces Startling Changes – A few degrees makes a big difference….in National Parks too.

Scientists Find Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in More Than 100 Popular Makeup Products – I hope manufacturers of makeup will check their ingredients more carefully….make their products PFAS-free.

Canada is right to classify single-use plastics as toxic – I hope the US takes similar action. Industry should get on board with this idea and be innovative rather than taking legal action.  There is no ‘responsible plastic use’ for single use plastic. We consumers are too accepting that single use plastics are inevitable. It’s pretty easy for us to avoid singe use plastic bags, straws, stirring sticks, six-pack rings, plasticware….the one that is challenging for me is the hard-to-recycle food containers because of the lack of options in grocery stores and restaurant takeout.

Move Over Bald Eagle: Meet 12 of the World’s Coolest National Birds – Some are flashy…some are majestic….a little history of how they were selected aa representatives for their country.

Losing Ladybugs – Native and non-native ladybugs….you are more likely to see the non-natives now.

Florida’s Manatees Are Dying at an Alarming Rate – Starving because water pollution (nutrient runoff causing algal blooms) smothers seagrass. More than 10% of the manatee population of Florida has died so far in 2021. Very sad for other aquatic species that need the same habitat … and people too.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2021

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After being away from home in May…being in Maryland again rippled with little celebrations associated with home. Here are my top 10 little celebrations from June 2021:

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Scenic drive from Lexington KY to home. Light traffic, good highway, beautiful scenery….I took a picture to celebrate being back in Maryland.

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Farmers Market. I’ve been going every week and it’s a celebration every time. The piles of produce fresh from the local farms (and artisan bread) make it a happy errand…and then I enjoy the bounty in meals all during the week. It’s a great substitute for belonging to a CSA (which is not practical for me this year because of my traveling).

A good watermelon. There was a sign in the produce section of Wegmans for seeded watermelons. I always remember them from my childhood….sweeter than the ones without seeds that we find more frequently in stores today. I bought one – hoping it would live up my expectations. And it did. Celebrating a watermelon as good as I remembered!

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Yard work. An hour of work (several of them on mornings when it is still cool enough to be pleasant)…2 wheelbarrow loads to the brush pile or compost bin….celebrating a neater yard and satisfaction of encouraging native species.

Apple crisp. While I was away, my husband did curbside pickup for his groceries. He somehow got a huge bag of apples. Some of the excess apples made a great apple crisp…celebrating bounty (and not wasting food).

Howard County Conservancy Mt Pleasant. Every time I hike there, there is something new to celebrate – most recently dragonflies and a black-crowned night heron.

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Maryland sunrise and partial solar eclipse. Celebrating being in the right place at the right time to see it.

New crowns. I had anticipated that getting 3 new crowns was going to be uncomfortable but was pleasantly surprised that my expectation was way over the top; there was almost no discomfort during the drilling or sensitive areas afterward…. celebrated that it happened that way.

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New computer glasses. Hurray for seeing better…and the red frames.

The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty talks. There were 4 days of webinars….and I found many of them very thought provoking. I celebrated the content…and that they were made available by the sponsors of the virtual conference. (Day 1: https://tinyurl.com/4t7zjv72 Day 2: https://tinyurl.com/2f9n4b72 Day 3: https://tinyurl.com/48rbba2k Day 4: https://tinyurl.com/5bbey7pr)

Mini-Landscapes

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I enjoy photographing the mini-landscapes of my yard more that the larger ones; it’s hard to get enough distance from our big trees to get the whole thing. Photographing the small assemblages of plants to capture their world is a more satisfying project. I like the diverse shapes of ferns and violets and other small plants gradually covering stepping-stones under our deck.

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One fern was thriving by a downspout when we moved the deck furniture near it (for the deck to be stained). The starburst shape of the fern…the heart shapes of violets. Now we’ve moved the furniture back to the deck and the fern is more isolated.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

I liked the wavy shapes of the fungus growing on a stump. This picture could be in a forest…but it is not. The stump was from a bush growing at the corner of our garage that I recently cut down! It’s a bit of serendipity to notice something interesting and beautiful in an unexpected place.

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I battle the deer for the day lilies. The deer usually win. The brown stems in this picture are the ones the deer got. I cut all the stems with larger buds to take inside. They might have been saved by their shorter stalks, the milkweed plant that was growing between them and the yard where the deer would be, and the house/bushes behind them.

New Computer Glasses

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I had noticed over the past few months that I was able to see the birds and cicadas fluttering in our backyard maple with my computer glasses…and my vision was not as great for the computer screen distance. So - it was not a big surprise that I needed new computer glasses when I finally got my eyes checked recently. It turned out that my eyes had gotten better since my last checkup(back in May 2019) – at least when it comes to distance vision.

I’d gotten brown plastic frames previously – thinking they were only glasses to wear around the house. Almost as soon as I got them, I realized I should have gotten more colorful frames, so I had already thought about colors before my appointment…just in case I needed a new prescription; red or turquoise were the top contenders. The technician showed me frames in both colors and the red ones appealed to me the most. Here they are with last summer’s straw flowers.

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I’m savoring crisp computer-screen-distance vision….and the color of my frames every time I see myself in the mirror!

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 26, 2021

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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.

Top 25 Birds of the week: Habitats! – Birds are everywhere (at least now/recent past). The decline in insect populations could make it problematic for many species to survive.

The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty (Day 1: https://tinyurl.com/4t7zjv72 Day 2: https://tinyurl.com/2f9n4b72 Day 3: https://tinyurl.com/48rbba2k Day 4: https://tinyurl.com/5bbey7pr) – A series of webinars chaired by Charles Cockell (I enjoyed his astrobiology course on Coursera back in 2015 and his “Life in the Universe Pandemic Series’ back in Spring 2020). The subject in these webinars is freedom beyond Earth with talks on everything from liberty in Martian settlements to war in space. This is not about the search for life beyond Earth, but it is about the human future beyond Earth and how human societies might evolve over time. The schedule for each of the days is in the comments section so it is easy to select segments easily.

Gigantic flying pterosaurs had spoked vertebrae to support their 'ridiculously long' necks -- ScienceDaily – Their necks were longer than a giraffe’s…and the vertebrae had internal structure not seen in any other animal. The discovery was made with a CT scan and petrographic sections through the bone.  

Linking Birds, Farmer Attitudes and Conservation – The approach is not as straightforward as it might seem…there are nuances and feedback loops that need to be considered to get a positive result.

A breathtaking treasure reveals the power of the woman buried with it : Research Highlights – Early Bronze Age southeastern Spain…heavy silver diadem, silver ornaments…pots with intricate silver plating and daggers with silver-plated handles.

Challenging Conservation Not to Leave Women Behind – An example from the Solomon Islands….globally relevant.

100-Year-Old Lungs Yield Genetic Samples of 1918 Flu Viruses | The Scientist Magazine®- Lungs of 2 soldiers and a civilian preserved in formalin….from the first wave of the 1918 flu…when it was not as deadly as the later waves.

Why Peru is reviving a pre-Incan technology for water - BBC Future – One of the world’s first efforts to integrate nature into water management on a national scale. Projects include protecting high altitude cushion bogs and shoring up ancient water storage (routing water in the wet season to natural infiltration basins). These are ‘slow water’ solutions…mitigations that should be studied for other areas that are drying out as the climate changes.

An Estimated 50 Billion Birds Populate Earth, but Four Species Reign Supreme | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – And the 4 species are: house sparrow, European starling, ring-billed gull, and barn swallow.

How humanity has changed the food it eats - BBC Future – Perspectives on the processing of food through our history (and pre-history)…and where we are now. It is still possible to make choices that are healthy for us…but a lot of ultra-processed ‘foods’ readily available that are not.