Gleanings of the Week Ending September 29, 2018

The Amazing Ancient Fishes of Africa – Cool Green Science – Lungfish, butterfly fish, bichir, bonytongue…most of them are air breathers!

Thinking beyond yourself can make you more open to healthy lifestyle choices -- ScienceDaily – Maybe we need to psyche ourselves to make better choices!

Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Successfully Deploys Landers to Asteroid Ryugu's Surface and Bouncing robots land on asteroid 180m miles away amid mission to fetch sample for Earth • The Register  – Exciting stuff from a rover on an asteroid! And the return mission in 2020 will be exciting too.

Molecule with anti-aging effects on vascular system identified -- ScienceDaily – A ketone body was identified that is produced during fasting or calorie restriction. It appears to delay vascular aging.

Free Technology for Teachers: A Good Resource for Learning About the Science of Food – 14 short videos about food research.

Scientists investigate how DEET confuses countless critters -- ScienceDaily – Evidently DEET interferes with organisms’ response to odors thus confusing the organism rather than repelling it!

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Birds with Yellow Plumage – National Geographic Blog – I always enjoy the bird photographs

BBC - Future - How to use seawater to grow food – in the desert - An experiment in Jordan to farm with solar powered desalination of Red Sea water for greenhouses cooled as part of the desalination process. Jordan currently imports a high percentage of its food…if this type of farming can be cost effective the country might be able to feed itself and even export some foods.

How leaves talk to roots -- ScienceDaily – When I was in college taking biology courses in the 1970s – micro RNA was not in our vocabulary!

Well-Preserved Roman Road Uncovered in the Netherlands - Archaeology Magazine (more details at https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/09/roman-road-artifacts-found-during-digging-for-a-new-motorway/ ) – New finds like this are always a little surprising…things that were there for a very long time but covered over by a few feet of soil.

Fall Harvest

My freezer and refrigerator are overflowing with foods from my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). In the freezer I have a build up of items that I couldn’t eat quickly enough from the beginning of the season: zucchini and garlic scapes from the beginning, some kale that I chopped up in the food processor and then frozen in a sheet, tomatoes. Each week has brought more bounty, so I haven’t drawn down on much once it went to the freezer. Sometimes I manage to finish off everything from the share the week after I got it.

Right now the refrigerator is very full. My strategy is to eat the parts that will spoil most quickly, wait a little for the winter squash…but not too long (I already have 2 in the refrigerator)….and try not to freeze anything else. That looks tough with two crispers, two plastic bins, and squashes overflowing into the other part of the refrigerator along with 2 pounds of freshly harvested sweet potatoes.

What not to like about 3 kinds of peppers and scallions and tomatoes and tatsoi and Romaine lettuce and Napa cabbage and fennel and onions and collards and butternut squash and acorn squash….it’s just the volume that is the challenge.

I made a yummy ‘pudding’ this morning in the food processor with half of a leftover (cooked) acorn squash: acorn squash, 1 tablespoon almond butter, ¼ cup soy milk, a little honey. I sprinkled cinnamon on it right before I ate it. Yummy!

3 Free eBooks – September 2018

All three of the selections this month are multiple items. The first is a series of books from the late 1700s about insects; the second and third are magazines that are within the past few years.

Panzer, Georg Wolfgasng Franz; Sturm, Jakob. Favnae insectorvm Germanicae initia, oder, Deutschlands Insecten. Nürnberg:In den Felseckerschen Buchhandlung. 1796. A series of books available from Internet Archive here. They are in German but the plates (my Jakob Sturm) are the draw. Lots and lots of insects!

Morfield, Angie Daly (editor). Missouri Conservationist. Missouri Department of Conservation.  Available from the department website here. The monthly magazine about conservation in the state. If you are a resident of Missouri a subscription to the printed magazine is free! I am looking at it online at this point…learning about the plants and animals of Missouri prior to my daughter moving there. Lots of great pictures of various parts of the state.

Carey, Victoria (editor). Country Style: Australia Coast to Coast. Several issues of the magazine (2015 and 2016 vintage) are available from Internet Archive here. I liked the photographs of gardens and houses….and animals. They have a large ad for Fancy Feast cat food in every issue!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2018

Every month when I look at the notes I’ve made for each day of little celebrations – I enjoy them again. Many times, it’s hard to pick just 10 for this blog post. Here are the picks for September 2018:

Volunteering on the last day of Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit – It was good to be there for the good-bye day…and know that the next exhibit will open again in April. I enjoy being in the butterfly house and interacting with visitors…it’s a happy place.

Window cleaning – I am surprising myself at how satisfying cleaning the windows (taking the panes apart and cleaning all surfaces except the one on the outside) on a rainy day can be. Instead of spring cleaning – I’m doing fall cleaning! I celebrated the difference clean windows make.

A monarch butterfly emerging – Caterpillars crawled up from our front flower bed to make chrysalises at the top of the window frames. I finally managed to notice one that was still emerged - hanging from the bit of chrysalis still attached – and then crawling up onto the lentil to finish drying. Celebration!

Yummy zucchini bread – I made a double batch of zucchini bread from squash frozen earlier in the summer. We enjoyed it for days. I celebrated the spicy flavor…helped me feel ready for fall.

Howard County Conservancy volunteers and staff – With the training for fall field trips, we always have a pot luck lunch and this one – for me – was a celebration of those people (and that they are all such foodies)!

Elementary School Butterfly – What a celebration when the first Monarch butterfly emerged from a chrysalis I took to the elementary school! I wasn’t there for the excitement but got the description from the teacher. They even found another chrysalis on the fence around their school garden while they were releasing their butterfly.

Haircut - I told the stylist – with some trepidation - that I wanted it short….and celebrated the results.

A birthday spent at Longwood - This is a great place to spend celebrating a family birthday…better than a too-sweet cake!

Yard work – Just as the window cleaning – I celebrated the results. It’s good to know that I’m ending the month in relatively good shape when it comes to the yard…before a lot of leaves have fallen.

Lacewing larvae – Celebrating seeing (and recognizing) a new-to-me organism (looks like lichen since it covers itself with pieces of the stuff)!

Zooming – September 2018

The zoom on my new camera (60 vs 40 optical zoom…and then comes the digital zoom too) makes it even easier to stand well out of the flowerbed, get a good angle, not scare the butterfly or bee. It’s easier to hold myself steady using the viewfinder rather than the screen like I had to previously. Sometimes I use the monopod…but other times I find that I can simple hold myself steady enough that the camera image stabilization does the rest.

The images I selected this month are from several places: Longwood Gardens, home, Brookside Gardens, and Howard Count Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm. Some of my favorite places to be.

Enjoy my picks of zoomed images for September 2018!

Fall Yard Work – Part II

The rain held off last week, so I got 2 rounds of yard work. I’ve already posted about the first one. The second round started with me taking the kitchen scraps and a torn-up pizza box back to the compost bin. I noticed an Eastern American Toad on the way back to the front of the house. I managed to get close enough to get a picture of it with my cell phone before it hoped away.

I finished getting the day lily leaves cut from the front flower bed along with some weeds; that totaled about half a trash can full.

I decided to try the leaf blower to collect and slightly shred leaves. It worked great on the drive way and the gutter at the street but just OK on the front yard. Some of the oak leaves on the yard were too damp to be picked up easily. The leaves from the bag the filled up the rest of the trash can to go back to the compost bin. At the compost bin, I mixed everything up and made holes to connect the layers with the pitchfork…then watered the pile since I wasn’t sure how soon it would rain again. Cardboard and paper shreds soak up the water and help the compost ‘cook.’

The next activity was picking up sticks from around the oak tree; it self-prunes so there are always sticks around it. I collected an armload of sticks and took them back to the brush pile. I don’t put them in the compost because it takes so long for them to decompose without somehow reducing them to small pieces. One stick had a flower like fungus growing on it.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I took a closer look at the oak tree trunk again and discovered a largish ant. I think it is a False Honey Ant.

The highlight of the morning in terms of wildlife started out as a mystery. I was looking at the lichen on the oak tree and noticed a piece that moved! It wobbled a bit but stayed on the trunk. When I put a leaf in front of it, the movement stopped completely.

I’ve marked the first picture. Can you see it in the others? It is a lacewing larva! I’ll be looking for these little critters from now on. They have great camouflage.

Cloudy Day at Brookside Gardens

Last weekend we went to Brookside Gardens to photograph hummingbirds. The garden area they frequent still had lots of blooms.

I photographed other parts of the area: some favorite sculptures,

View fullsize

View fullsize

Seed pods,

View fullsize

View fullsize

A rabbit eating breakfast,

Mushrooms under the roses,

And at artsy shot of an orange flower with a spiral shaped bud.

The best observations of the morning were bumblebees nectar robbing. The bee makes a hole in the base of the flower and then drinks the nectar. The shape of the flower would be a tight squeeze for these bees. Still – this is a case where the bees are not acting as pollinators since they bypass the flower structures entirely.

But hummingbird photography was disappointing. The lighting was not as good as the previous visits and there were not as many birds coming to the flowers. I only managed 3 pictures worth sharing.

So – the nectar robbing saved the day!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 22, 2018

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.

Curiosity rover surveys a mystery under dusty Martian skies -- ScienceDaily – What makes Vera Rubin Ridge so hard?

The Environment's New Clothes: Biodegradable Textiles Grown from Live Organisms - Scientific American – ‘Growing clothes’ that are sustainable – very different form the current fashion industry.

Change your diet to save both water and your health -- ScienceDaily – Research that looked at the water footprint (the volume of freshwater to produce goods) relative to types of diets. It turns out that many of the foods that take a lot of water to produce also are overconsumed – in the EU where the study was done and maybe even mores o in the US.

How the People of Pompeii Really Died - The Atlantic – New technology looked at bones and teeth of the 19th century plaster casts from Pompeii. Two surprises: they had good teeth, and many died of head injures rather than suffocation.

A Great Brown Storm Is Raging on Jupiter – It’s not like the red spot. They come and go and Jupiter. This time NASA’s Juno spacecraft is there to monitor its progress and show more of its structure.

One big reason why women drop out of doctoral STEM programs: The fewer women in entering class, the less likely they'll stay -- ScienceDaily – This study ruled out grades and funding as the main reason….the academic climate for women is not only harder to measure, it’s also harder to change.

First evidence that soot from polluted air is reaching placenta -- ScienceDaily – There is a health cost for burning fossil fuels…and it begins to impact us before we are born. Previous research had linked air pollution with premature birth, low birth weight, infant mortality, and childhood respiratory problems. This research was focused on determining if the particles in the lung – breathed by the mother -  can circulate through the blood to the placenta.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Gamebirds – National Geographic – Peacocks are considered game birds!

Total of 21 new parasitoid wasps following the first ever revision of their genus -- ScienceDaily – The first revision since 1893…and using specimens from 20 natural history museums.

Something Blue | The Prairie Ecologist – Blue sage…insect magnet.

Our Oak Tree

We have an oak tree in our front yard beside the mail box. It was a very young tree when we bought the house in October 1994.

It’s grown a lot in 24 years.

View fullsize

View fullsize

We appreciate it’s shade on the front of the house in the morning. This year it has some Virginia creeper growing on the trunk. Maybe it’s just the wet year. I’m leaving the vine – since it’s a native plant – but may cut it next year. The tree looks very healthy but had no acorns this year; maybe the a cold snap last spring caught the tree at the wrong time.

View fullsize

View fullsize

The tree has more lichen and moss on it now. The extra moisture may contribute to the density but it’s typical of mature tree trunks in our area to have these companions. I like the contrasting greens of the moss (very bright) and the lichen (soft green).

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

The county trimmed the lower branches from the street trees in our neighborhood and our oak was no exception. I took a picture of the scars where larger branches were cut. They show how the tree responds.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

One that was particularly interesting had some curly fungus growing in it. The surface was not as vertical as most of the other cuts; perhaps more water is retained…and the fungus found a niche.

Overall – the oak is one of my favorite trees. I wish they had planted it further back from the street and the drive way…and not elevated the mulch around it; it’s a lesson learned for future houses and trees. At this point, I just enjoy that this particular oak where and how it is.

Fall Yard Work – Part I

Yesterday I got a head start on fall yard work. My first target was the front flowerbed with common milkweed (no caterpillars left) and lots of day lily leaves. I took a before and after picture. It’s not entirely cleared yet but the bird bath near the porch is more visible. I tried to leave the black eyed susans to finish seed production for next year. I pulled tulip poplar sprouts and a largish poke weed that has grown low enough that it wasn’t obvious how big it was until I started looking for its main stalk.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I took some rocks and shells out of the flower bed and put them on the corners of the porch to get cleaned by rains.

My second target was the day lily foliage around the oak tree. I took a before and after picture again. That filled up the trash can with greens for the compost bin.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I stripped the larger stems of leaves since I’ve learned that the stems don’t decompose very rapidly…better for them to go in a brush pile than in the compost bin where the leaves were going.

I carried the arm load of stems (some of them milky with milkweed sap) to put just outside the the compost bin with the pitch fork in the other hand. The compost bin has been decomposing. I turned it – stirred it. Decided a lot had decomposed but I could still just add more on top since there is still plenty of room in the bin.

I put the kitchen scraps on top and carried it around to the compost bin located the back of the back yard. It was a little heavier than I expected…but I managed.

I put the ‘greens’ in to the bin followed by some brown sycamore leaves cleaned from the stairs up to the deck (reducing the hazard on the stairs) and the paper shreds from house.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I didn’t water the compost pile yet since everything was so wet from recent big rains. The paper and leaves were dry, but I used the pitch fork to some holes through the layers and reduce the height of the additions to the pile. If it doesn’t rain again in the next few days I might check to make sure it is moist enough to ‘cook.’ There is still a lot of fall yard work to do…but I felt good about the progress I made in two hours.

Paper Wasp

In one of my forays into my front flowerbed to check Monarch butterfly chrysalises, I noticed a wasp on a poke weed flower stalk. It was moving all over the stalk, investigating each open flower. I had my camera…and took a series of pictures. The pictures were easy enough to identify it as a Common Paper Wasp Polistes exclamans using the Maryland Biodiversity Project website. I learned from their database that it is a species of the southeastern US that appears to be expanding northward. I looked around for the nest but didn’t see one. We still have some time for the larvae to develop but as the nectar plants die back, only the young queens will remain – in a protected spot to over winter.

Enjoy the paper wasp acrobatics on the poke weed flowers slide show!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 15, 2018

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.

BBC - Future - How China’s giant solar farms are transforming world energy – Giant solar farms that, when viewed from the air form Giant Pandas. All over the world…but in China particularly…there are more and more enormous solar farms. It’s good for the immediate future but there are still issues with what happens when the solar panels need to be recycled (i.e. in 30 or so years).

New research shows how children want their food served -- ScienceDaily – I didn’t find this a challenge…my daughter always enjoyed her food. It seems more likely to be challenging in places like school cafeterias or other institutional settings.

Photos Show the Icy Glacier Landscape of Northeast Greenland – Life lurking in the ice waters. It’s a difficult place to dive.

Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance (Rutgers NJAES) – Maryland is not that far from New Jersey so this list works for us – although I wish they would mark the plants native to North America. I’d rather plant natives.

How This Popular Garden Plant May Spread Parasites That Harm Monarchs | Smart News | Smithsonian – Aargh!!!! We need to be sure we are not planting tropical milkweed in areas where it is not native….the orange butterfly weed – which is also a milkweed – is native across most of North America and a good plant to have in the garden for Monarch butterfly caterpillars.

New color-generation mechanism discovered in ‘rainbow’ weevil -- ScienceDaily – The researches from Yale propose that this mechanism might be useful for screen displays to enable the same true image from any angle and to reduce signal loss in optical fibers.

What Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos Reveal About Copper Age Medical Practices | Smart News | Smithsonian – There have been papers coming out about additional discoveries from the remains found in the Alps in 1991 over the years --- there was a lot we could learn and new technologies have come along to enable more than anyone thought about at first.

Night-time habits of captive flamingos -- ScienceDaily – The forage and roam! Evidently, they are more active at night in the wild as well. During the day they tend to rest and preen…that’s when courtship displays happen as well.

Muscle Clocks Play a Role in Regulating Metabolism | The Scientist Magazine® - Circadian rhythms are not just from the brain! There are timekeepers throughout the body. The peripheral clock in muscles was confirmed in 2007 and it turns out that it is important to glucose metabolism. There is still a lot to learn about all the body’s timekeepers!

BBC - Future - Are hot springs the future of farming? – Maybe there is not one strategy that is the ‘future of farming’ – but this is an interesting idea that we may see in places where it can be done effectively.

Magnolias

This time of year, we are seeing the last of the magnolia blooms for the year. I like the white blooms with the velvet brown underside of the leaves.

Even when the flowers start to fade, their deepening color is appealing. These two flowers were on a Southern Magnolia tree at Brookside Gardens that did not look quite healthy. I hope this bloom time was not its last. It often seems that stressed trees make a huge push to make seeds.

And then there are the seed pods. There are variations with the different varieties of magnolias, but I always imagine that the seeds look like red M&Ms. I mentioned during a pre-school field and one child told me – with a very serious face – “except they don’t have an ‘M’ on them”! My favorite pods are on the sweet bay magnolia because they are more seed – less pod and the specimens near where I hike with students are low enough for them to easy see them.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Butterfly Macro

When I use my phone for photography I resist using the zoom (since there is not optical zoom available…only digital) and just try to get close to what I want to photograph. Sometimes that it enough – like these to pictures of small Monarch caterpillars in my front flowerbed. They are still small enough that the black bands are dominating the yellow ones!

The clip-on macro lens is something I use frequently too. It requires getting even closer and a steady hand to focus. The touch samples at the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy  Discovery Station provided an excellent opportunity to take a macro look at butterfly wings.

The clear wing has a small patch of white scales but otherwise the wing is membrane stretched on a copper colored structure.

The blue morphos show the variation in blue from the incident of light even at the macro level. It is just barely possible to make out individual scales with the macro lens.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

eBotanical Prints – August 2018

I perused 22 botanical books in August. They just seem to add up over the course of each month; I keep expecting to come to a time when I am not finding news ones – but it clearly hasn’t happened yet.

There was a lot of variety in the types of books in August.

Some more art-like…others showing flowers and seeds and leaves

Color and pen/ink and photographs

Publication dates from 1645 to 1943

Some of the books had so many beautiful images, I had a hard time picking the one sample image to feature.

Enjoy the August Botanical print slide carousel. Check out some of the eBooks using the links below the pictures.

Groups of flowers : drawn and accurately coloured after nature * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1817

A new treatise on flower painting, or, Every lady her own drawing master * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1818

Groups of fruit : accurately drawn and coloured after nature, with full directions for the young artist * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1817

Ferns of Kentucky * Williamson, John * sample image * 1878

Beautiful Ferns * Eaton, Daneil Cady * sample image * 1886

Icones plantarum rariorum * Schwegman, Henricus; Schneevoogt, G. Vorhelm * sample image * 1793

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V1 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V2 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V3 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V4 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Histoire des végétaux fossiles, ou, Recherches botaniques et géologiques sur les végétaux renfermés dans les diverses couches du globe * Brongniart, Adolphe et al * sample image * 1828

Wildflowers of Nova Scotia * Miller, Maria; Smith, Titus; Forrester, Alexander * sample image * 1840

Flore universelle * Letellier, Jean-Baptiste * sample image * 1848

Livre nouveau de fleurs tres-util pour l'art d'orfevrerie, et autres * Cochin, Nicolas * sample image * 1645

Das Blumenbuch * Koch, Rudolf, Kredel * sample image * 1930

Garden Flowers in Color * Foley, Daniel J. * sample image * 1943

The botanist's repository, for new and rare plants V 10 * Andrews, Henry Charles  * sample image * 1797

Neue Bilderfolge 1920 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1920

Katalog 1916 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1916

Katalog 1915 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1915

Delectus florae et faunae Brasiliensis * Mikan, Johann Christian; Knapp, Johann et al * sample image * 1820

Sturm's Figures of plants V1 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

Monarch Buddy

I started preparing for being a Monarch Buddy the week before school started (post about the prep here). By the time I delivered the larvae and leaves to the school at the end of the second day of school, I’d had further adventures.

The monarch egg that I’d gotten from the school garden on August 31st, hatched on September 3rd! I was checking it so frequently that I managed to take a picture before it ate its egg case! Compare the size of the caterpillar and its egg case just above to the straight pin used to hold the original leaf to a fresh leaf.

Twenty-four hours later the tiny caterpillar had eaten some holes on the fresh milkweed leaf and had visible stripes. It was still very tiny when it went to the school.

Wednesday morning, I had 2 of the 4 caterpillars making chrysalises. I was panicked because I wanted the school to have at least three caterpillars and I had only 2 (and 3 chrysalises).

I went outside and found no caterpillars – just lots of chrysalises. Then – in the tender top leaves of a milkweed – I found a tiny caterpillar about the size of the one that had hatched on the 3rd. I was thrilled and quickly set up to take it to the school later in the day. I ended up with two very small caterpillars, one medium to large caterpillar, and 3 chrysalises….and a gallon Ziploc of milkweed leaves that – hopefully – will feed the caterpillars of a few days at the school.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 8, 2018

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 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: The LBJs and Top 25 Wild Birds Photographs of the Week: The Cranes and Top 25 Wild Birds Photographs of the Week: Birds in Flowers – Birds and more birds…starting the gleanings off with images of fast moving wildlife!

Natural refrigerant replacements could reduce energy costs and conserve the environment: Implementing replacements of CFCs and HCFCs could help UN signatories to uphold international agreements on carbon emissions. -- ScienceDaily – One of the ways new technology could help sustain the planet.

BBC - Future - How to drink from the enormous lakes in the air – I was intrigued by the variety of ways to collect water from the air coming out of labs and into production. Some are for very poor and rural areas…but others might be popular for home owners that currently buy bottled water because they don’t trust their municipal water supply.

Cake Art Features Realistic Flowers Made from Buttercream Frosting – The decadence of it all….I’m not a big cake eater, but if I was this type of cake would be what I wanted for my birthday!

Ancient farmers spared us from glaciers but profoundly changed Earth’s climate -- ScienceDaily – The advent of farming altered the climate enough to avoid the beginning of an ice age as the Industrial Revolution when the burning of fossil fuels caused the further uptick we are today.  A quote from the article: “we have maybe stopped the major cycle of Earth’s climate and we are stuck in a warmer and warmer and warmer interglacial.”

Two studies that suggest that some common medical practices may not be as worthwhile as previously thought: Widespread use of statins in healthy older people to prevent heart disease not recommended in new study: Any protective effect was limited to those with type 2 diabetes aged between 75 and 84 -- ScienceDaily and Experts advise against routine testing for prostate cancer: But for those men who seek counsel from their physicians, shared decision making is essential -- ScienceDaily

Photo of the Week – September 6 | The Prairie Ecologist – The August installment of the author’s square meter photography project. The two praying mantis shots (Aargh…non-natives European and Asian).

BBC - Future - Five memory hacks to make you smarter – A post well-timed for the start of school!

Roman Basin Recovered from Germanic Grave in Holland - Archaeology Magazine – It is made of bronze and was found in pieces that were put back together. It’s an appealing shape…which the article would have given more information about its size.

Today’s College Students Aren’t Who You Think They Are: NPR – It’s good to see this. I’ve been hearing anecdotal reports from my daughter about college students at the universities where she has been/is. It’s good to see that her observations are wide-spread…that it’s the ‘new normal’ and services provided by institutes need to evolve to support these students.

Longwood Gardens – Part IV

Of course – there is a lot more of Longwood Gardens outside that in the conservatory. We walked out of the conservatory a few minutes before the 11:15 presentation of ‘Fountains Then and Now’ – and found seats in the front row on the terrace in front of the conservatory. Last time we had visited the gardens, the fountains were being renovated so we savored that a lot of what we remembered is still there plus there are high jets of water from air canons and nozzles that move to make arcs of water than move with the music. Afterwards we walked down to see the fountains closer and looked back toward the conservatory from the terrace of the big fountain. Under that terrace they now have some history of the fountain machinery….a little bit about how they got the water pressure needed originally and today. Part of the gardens (the Tower and Eye of Water) was closed off in preparation for the fireworks that were schedule for the evening (sold out long before we decided to visit) so the only perspective I got of the tower was from afar.

Then it was time for lunch. The air temperature was much hotter when we emerged from the café. We enjoyed the dahlias – and bees.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

The garlic chives in the demonstration garden were popular with the bees as well.

View fullsize

View fullsize

There was a funnel spider with a web full of water droplets.

We walked past the fountains again to the formal garden rooms. I noticed some stone walls and realized that they probably told the geology story of the place.

I always like the stairs with water in the Italian Garden…but it was so hot – with no breeze - by the time we were there that the shade and water did not restore draining energy.

We walked along a boardwalk in the meadow full of joe pye weed and goldenrod on the way back to the visitor center. We cooled off walking around the gift store before starting the drive home.

Longwood Gardens – Part III

The water lilies are in a courtyard surrounded by the Longwood Gardens Conservatory. There are several shallow ponds and then beds around the edges with water loving plants. The courtyard is closed in the winter – everything there requires warmer temperatures that the Pennsylvania winter.

Even the lily pads and leaves of water plants are different than the native water lilies we see elsewhere.

View fullsize

View fullsize

The day was cloudy which makes for excellent waterlily photography because the water often looks black. I was surprised it was bright enough to create any reflections. The variety of blooms - colors, structure, stage of development…always something a little different to photograph.

And then there are the bees. This time I observed some bees that entered through the side of the flower center and then exited through the opening at the top!

Tomorrow – the gardens away from the conservatory. They were profuse and colorful.

Longwood Gardens – Part II

My favorite plants to photograph in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory are orchids, fiddleheads, and hibiscus.

The only time I used my clip-on macro lens for my phone was to attempt to capture some very tiny orchids. This was good practice for photographing native orchids which are very small in our part of North America.

Then I noticed the different kinds of slipper orchids. They are probably my favorites. There was a couple in the room with us that had been growing orchids for years and they told me that the slippers are often the easiest ones to grow…good to know if I ever get the yen to grow orchids. They warned me that the hobby can be addictive.

Another bit of orchid-lore from them: some orchids have a butterfly mark in their center!

Fiddleheads are always fascinating to look at closely. They are always spirals – sometimes spirals within spirals - that will eventually unfurl into the fronds of ferns. Often there is a fuzz covering the spirals that will be green – maybe shiny – when they are totally unfurled. The fuzz in white

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Or brown (tree ferns). I am always surprised at how large the primitive plants can be – realized that earlier in earth’s history, ferns were the ‘big trees.’

View fullsize

View fullsize

There were some that were unfurled enough that the ‘fidddle’ was more of a ball of green.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I managed to see and photography several that were the spirals within spirals. Maybe these are ideas for a Zentangle tile!

Finally – hibiscus. I like their huge petals, the blends of color, the gentle curves, and the complex centers.

Tomorrow – I’ll post about the Longwood water lilies.