30 years ago – October 1991

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Looking back at the pictures from October 1991 – it was a pleasant month. Work was still challenging but not as overwhelming as it had been in the previous months. One of my sisters came to visit with the priority to enjoy activities with my two-year-old daughter. We went on a steam train trip near Gettysburg, visited a toy store in Ellicott City, and bought apples at a local orchard (my daughter ate an apple on the spot to the delight of the owner).  I remember the outing to Mount Vernon vividly. We had lunch in the restaurant with my daughter in a highchair (antique style) pushed up to the table; she was thrilled with the arrangement and enjoyed the meal tremendously…charmed the wait staff. Then we opted to not go through the house…enjoying the grounds thoroughly. She hugged a big tree that George Washington had planted!

My sister was moving into a new house and had packed everything before her visit…and then moved almost immediately when she returned to Texas. It was a busy month for her. Another sister was pregnant with her second child and had some difficulties early in the month which were quickly resolved to the relief of the whole family. My parents were still working and trying to help everyone through the flurry of the month.

The leaves started to fall later in the month and my daughter became more enthusiastic than ever about being outdoors. Leaves and acorns are easily picked up and enjoyed. Her favorite movie was ‘Little Mermaid.’ She finally made the connection between saying numbers and counting things; that was the big ‘light bulb’ moment of her development in October 1991.

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We borrowed a special costume for my daughter’s Halloween – a flowerpot for the body and headpiece with big yellow petals for around her face. It was very cute but not something she liked very much.  At that point in her life, she was not eating candy so there was little joy for her that Halloween!

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Great memories from 30 years ago…

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 16, 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.

How to Easily Catch Spotted Lanternflies Using a Water Bottle – These insects have invaded Maryland, but I haven’t seen them yet. Maybe this is a reason to put an empty plastic water bottle in the car – just in case.

Exposure to deadly urban heat worldwide has tripled in recent decades, says study – On of the topics in the schoolyard field trip for 6th graders was heat islands – it’s a good example of the impact of climate change around the world.

Smoky Clouds That Form Over Wildfires Produce Less Rain – Drought…forests burning…and then less rain. Aargh!

8 Fall Nature Experiences to Enjoy – There are so many things to enjoy in the outdoors during the fall – as the heat of summer fades away.

Exploring The Parks: 10 Historic Sites To Visit This Fall – More ideas for fall activities. I’ve been to all the sites they list that are on the east coast…but not necessarily in the fall.

NASA and USGS Launch Landsat 9 – The first Landsat was launched in July 1972 – the year my husband and I graduated from high school.

A new solid-state battery surprises the researchers who created it – Solid state electrolyte and an all-silicon anode – faster charge rates at room to low temperatures. There is a lot of battery research going on now …coming up with batteries that will help achieve the grid storage and transportation needs of the future.

Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change And Say Governments Are Failing Them – It’s not just young people that have this anxiety. Everyone I know has climate change anxiety….and say governments are failing us all.

Wind energy can deliver vital slash to global warming – It’s a component of the technology we need….it can’t solve everything alone but we have it ready to deploy now – and should just do it as quickly as we can. And it’s cheaper than using fossil fuels!

Yale Climate Change Maps 2020 – Results from a spring 2020 poll about climate change.

In the Middle Patuxent River – 2

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Before the students came to our water quality stations at the Middle Patuxent near King’s Contrivance, I did a little macro photography with my phone, clip on lens, and Bluetooth clicker. There was big rock at the edge of the river (very damp) that was covered with green. Moss or liverwort (not sure which).

Nearby there was a wing from an insect. I did a little research after I got home  and decided that it might be from a Dot-lined White Moth. They are a small moth with a wingspan of 25-62 mm. The wing was laying on the sandy rock surface.

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There were also a few plants growing along the bank. It was easy to take these pictures without bending over at all!

A few minutes…and I liked what I captured!

In the Middle Patuxent River – 1

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Another morning in a local river last week – the Middle Patuxent near King’s Contrivance. There are pathways from the neighborhood streets nearby to connect to the Kings Contrivance Loop that are lined with the big trees of the easement along the river.

A part of the Loop trail parallels the river for a short distance and there is a root supported path down to the river in one spot. The river was more silt than cobbles…more big trees had fallen in from the bank since the last time I was there (pre-pandemic). Still – being in the river is a wonderful outdoor experience every time. There are gentle sounds of the water moving…trees ruffled by little breezes. It was a cloudy day but enough light filtered through the canopy to make patterns on the surface of the water.

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I took some pictures of leaves that had fallen recently and were plastered to the sandy beach near the water. Soon there will be a lot more.

And then the students arrived and it was a flurry of activity while we collected and identified macroinvertebrates…decided that, based on our sample, the water quality was poor but not dead. There were macroinvertebrates in good numbers…but skewed toward species that are tolerant to pollution. Some of the students were surprised at how easy it was to step in water just over the height of their boots! They good naturedly made their way to shore, took boots off one at a time to pour out the water.

And then the time was up - the students headed back to their buses and the river was quiet again. I climbed back up the bank on root ‘steps’….glad that the abundant green on both sides of steep bank was NOT poison ivy!

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Neighborhood Walk

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It’s early fall in our neighborhood. There are a few leaves that are turning and falling. I found a pretty one at the base of our oak at the very beginning of my walk. The tree is struggling with the infection that is impacting (eventually killing) many oaks in our area and has already dropped about half its leaves. It will linger for a few more years. The one across the street has lost almost all its leaves already and I wonder if it will not survive the winter.

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As I walked toward the storm water pond, I noticed another oak that was mostly green…except for one branch of yellow leaves.

The pond was too peaceful and quite – no frogs or red-winged blackbirds making morning songs, no turtles coming out to warm up in the sunshine. There was no algae or floating water plants and I wondered if the treatment used to control that ‘problem’ killed the other life in the pond. They are not mowed as far down the slope as they did at one time, but it seems like it would be better to let the vegetation grow a little further up the slope.

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There were plants going to seed…some with candelabra type branches supporting their fluffy seeds.

There were two types of goldenrod. Do you see the out-of-focus bee at the right side of the second picture? I didn’t notice it until I got home and looked at my images on a big screen….glad I captured the image since it shows the value of these late blooming plants to pollinators.

The willow has a tall branch that is dead – lower ones that are still green with slender branches gracefully sweeping the bank and hanging over the water. There are shelf fungus growing up and down the dead trunk.

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There are a few plants still blooming. One was down in the grass and the picture I took looks like it has an arching fuzzy boa spilling from the flower! In reality the fuzzy boa is an out-of-focus grass seed stalk.

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One of the houses has several Rose of Sharon buses planted on the pond side of their fence. I liked the extra wrinkles of the purple one (not completely unfurled).

The milkweed stand at the back of the pond was a disappointment. It was still there was overgrown with invasive pear seedlings that have grown rapidly over the summer. Maybe they will mow the area later in the fall to try to control that invasion for next season although the pear will come up from roots as well as the milkweed.

Overall – a worthwhile walk on a coolish weekend morning before many other people were out in the neighborhood.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 9, 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.

Earth is dimming due to climate change – Decades of measurements of earthshine indicate that the Earth is becoming less reflective with warmer oceans (and fewer bright clouds).

Kilauea Resumes Eruptions At Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park – Exciting times on the big island…

In UK, Interest in EVs Spikes Amid Fuel Shortages – There have been stories about Ford and GM strategy recently too….lots of indicators that many people will be buying EVs sooner rather than later if enough are produced.

NASA lander records the largest ‘Marsquakes’ ever detected – The lander has been on the surface since 2018!

Dental care: The best, worst and unproven tools to care for your teeth – Hmm….I wonder how much this research will change what dentists advise?

Baby Poo Has Ten Times More Microplastics Than Adult Feces – A scary result…and no ideas on how to reduce exposure (and we don’t know exactly what harms it might cause)….just more research needed. Very frustrating.

Coastal Northeastern US is a global warming hotspot; 2 degrees Celsius of summer warming has already occurred – From Maine to Delaware…the area is warming faster because of climate change linked alterations in the ocean and atmospheric conditions of the North Atlantic.

2021 Nature Conservancy Photo Contest Winners Highlight Global Wildlife and Nature – Beautiful…and thought provoking. My favorite was the artsy one at the end…a high key image.

Paradigm shift in treatment of type 2 diabetes to focus on weight loss – There are probably other chronic ‘diseases’ that have become more prevalent over the past few decades that could be improved with weight loss….but it is hard to lose weight…and keep it off. It requires permanent lifestyle changes.

A Leisurely Trip to Kansas – Another post that includes pictures of a rough green snake. I’ve been on the lookout for them since my son-in-law sent a photo he took with his phone!

eBotanical Prints – September 2021

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21 botanical print books browsed in September and added to the list. They were published over almost 300 years (1793 to 1981). The most recent volumes are documentation of threatened and endangered species. The earliest (Icones plantarum rariorum - Vol 3, sample image) was a volume from a series I had found before – but somehow missed this volume. There were some beautiful illustrations of plants I’m familiar with: tulip poplar, jack-in-the-pulpit, deciduous magnolia, maples, oaks, holly. There were also two volumes of plant imprints…geological botanical prints. I found several volumes that were fruit focused…more to come of those finds in October. Overall – a lot of variety in the September 2021 volumes.  

The whole list of 2,229 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the September books is at the end of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the September eBotanical Prints!

Plantae novae vel minus cognitae ex herbario Horti Thenensis V1 * Wildeman, Emile de * sample image * 1904

Plantae novae vel minus cognitae ex herbario Horti Thenensis V2 * Wildeman, Emile de * sample image * 1908

Les phanérogames des terres magellaniques  * Wildeman, Emile de * sample image * 1905

Threatened and endangered plants of Nevada : an illustrated manual * Mozingo Hugh Nelson * sample image * 1981

Illustrated manual of proposed endangered and threatened species of Utah * Welsh, Stanley; Thorne, K. H. * sample image * 1979

Aquatic plants of Illinois; an illustrated manual including species submersed, floating, and some of shallow water and muddy shores * Winterringer, Glen Spelman; Lopinot, Alvin C. * sample image * 1966

Budding Life: a book of drawings * King, Jessie M. * sample image * 1907

The century supplement to the dictionary of gardening, a practical and scientific encyclopaedia of horticulture for gardeners and botanists * Nicholson, George * sample image * 1901

Pomologie française : recueil des plus beaux fruits cultivés en France V1 * Poiteau, Antoine; Turpin, Pierre Jean Francois * sample image * 1846

Pomologie française : recueil des plus beaux fruits cultivés en France V2 * Poiteau, Antoine; Turpin, Pierre Jean Francois * sample image * 1846

Icones plantarum rariorum - Vol 3 * Jacquin, Nicolao Josepho * sample image * 1793

The family flora and materia medica botanica V1 * Good, Peter Peyto * sample image * 1847

The family flora and materia medica botanica V2 * Good, Peter Peyto * sample image * 1847

Garden trees and shrubs illustrated in colour * Wright, Walter Page * sample image * 1913

Experimental pollination; an outline of the ecology of flowers and insects * Clements, Frederic Edward; Long, Francis Louise * sample image * 1923

Minnesota trees and shrubs : an illustrated manual of the native and cultivated woody plants of the State * Clements, Frederic Edward; Butters, Frederick King; Rosendahl, Carl Otto * sample image * 1912

Botanical and palaeontological report on the Geological State Survey of Arkansas * Lesquereux, Leo * sample image * 1860

The flora of the Dakota group, a posthumous work * Lesquereux, Leo * sample image * 1891

The nurseryman's pocket specimen book : colored from nature : fruits, flowers, ornamental trees, shrubs, roses, &c * Dewey, Dellon Marcus (publisher) * sample image * 1872

A report on the trees and shrubs growing naturally in the forests of Massachusetts V1 * Emerson, George Barrell * sample image * 1846

A report on the trees and shrubs growing naturally in the forests of Massachusetts V2 * Emerson, George Barrell * sample image * 1894

Patuxent Research Refuge – Misc.

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Of course, there are other things besides waterlilies, milkweeds and goldenrod to see this time of year at the South Tract of Patuxent Research Refuge. I did some experimental photography with some grass seed heads and asters…liked the results.

The cattails are exploding with fluff. If it doesn’t float away fast enough it becomes matted around the stalk.

Many plants are going to seed in the meadow.

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In the forest there are hits of color…just a few leaves at this point. Green still dominates.

There was an old jumble of trunks…some upright and others leaning over…with shelf fungus in profusion.

There is a bird blind around a collection of feeders but I wasn’t quiet enough to walk up to it without all the birds taking flight. I managed to notice finches on the feeders and mourning doves below.

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Sometimes something appears that I don’t expect – like this fire hydrant in the meadow. It isn’t that far from the visitor center but far enough that I would have thought one closer would be more useful and it was surrounded by wild vegetation – a little surprise. It was rusted enough that I wondered if it was still functional.

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Overall – every time I got to the refuge, I notice something that I haven’t seen before!

Patuxent Research Refuge – Milkweed and Goldenrod

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The milkweeds are going to seed and the goldenrods are blooming at the South Tract of Patuxent Research Refuge last week – typical fall meadow views. The milkweed seed pods have burst open and are spilling their seeds to the wind. The seeds have the possibility of starting new stands of the plant next year. The stands that are healthy now will come up from the roots already well-established next spring (i.e. no seed sprouting required).

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My favorite picture of the morning was the very first one I took – with the dew still sparkling on the fluff and the seeds still neatly emerging from the opening pod.

Often the goldenrod and milkweed are mixed in meadow areas but there are some almost pure stands of the goldenrod. It is the hero in the fall for migrating Monarchs and other nectar feeding insects. Sometimes the plant gets blamed for allergies, but it is insect pollinated, rather than wind. People with fall allergies are more likely to be feeling the impact of ragweed pollen!

Patuxent Research Refuge – Waterlilies

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Last week, my husband and I spent a morning at the South Tract of Patuxent Research Refuge. It’s about 30 minutes from where we live. The weather was a sunny and cool – typical early fall and a great time to be out and about.…and there were waterlilies blooming!

The first ones I noticed were in an area where the water level had recently dropped, based on the number of lilypads that were out of the water rather than floating. There was also a lot more vegetation in the water in that area other that water lilies.

Toward the end of our walk, we were between two ponds and the light was right for reflections. I liked the light pink of this first flower…even though a lilypad bisected the reflection.

The next flower I photographed I remembered to apply the rule of thirds after I took the first image….and have to admit – I like the second one better!

The visitor center was open but we didn’t go in. We’ll be back to see fall foliage in a few weeks!

Near the Little Patuxent River

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On a recent morning – I headed out to the stream that flows under Broken Land Parkway from Lake Elkhorn just before it joins the Little Patuxent River for a volunteer gig – guiding a stream survey done by high school students. Near the bridge that crosses the stream on the Patuxent Branch Trail, there was muddy trail (poison ivy on each side…glad I had on long pants and high boots) to allow access down to stream. We set up our gear around three tables. There was not much dry area to set them up but the water was shallow. A partner and I guided 10 students to collect and ID macroinvertebrates from one of the tables while other volunteers did the same at two others. We had about 45 minutes….and then we got another group of 10 to do it again.

I took some pictures before and after the students arrived. The steam has a lot of vegetation on the banks but the stream has been eroded  - with some trees toppling over from being undercut by rapidly moving water. It is in an area where there is a lot of impervious surface. When it rains – the water rushes down to the stream where it carries away anything in the eroded channel; there is no connection to a flood plain that to slow down the water. It doesn’t take long for it to run off further downstream because we are in the Pediment rather than the Coastal Plain (i.e. there is always an incline for the water to follow).

The water quality was ‘very poor’ based on the types of macroinvertebrates that we found…however – we found quite a few of the types we found. The stream is not dead. Life holds on tight in this suburban stream.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 2, 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 oil-field ‘fugitive’ that can slip into the water supply – The methane leaks into ground water are yet another reason fossil fuel is problematic. The industry evidently can’t or won’t clean up…making moving away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible even more urgent – although climate change should be enough for the world to be doing that already.

Top 25 birds of the week: Brown Birds – Not all birds are colorful! Watching small brown birds can be just as much fun though.

Ancient Human Presence Revealed At White Sands National Park - Researchers Push Back Date Of Human Arrival In North America Thousands Of Years – Fossilized footprints in the gypsum sand playa deposits…dated to the Late Pleistocene.

Mexico’s Ancient Inhabitants Moved Land and Bent Rivers to Build Teotihuacán – Still more being learned from an archaeological site that has been studied for many decades. LiDAR is one of new technologies that is yields a lot of new information.

Poorly circulated room air raises potential exposure to contaminants by up to six times – COVID has prompted more detailed research on this topic…and the discoveries should be used to improve building ventilation systems to help control other air-borne diseases.

Why colorful food is good for you – I like the colors and flavors….it’s an added benefit that they are also healthy choices!

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Will Launch Into Orbit in December – Finally!

River research reveals scale of macroplastic pollution – A plastic bottle takes a long time to break down….450 years and requires UV light. With so many bottles getting into rivers around the world, it is important to understand how they travel…how they begin to breakdown. They are going to be around for a very long time and, right now, more are still entering the rivers.

Research shows more people living in floodplains – From NASA. Tragedies that are getting worse as population increases and climate change causes flood risk changes.

Making Beetles Pee Can Protect Your Garden – Maybe this is also a pathway to an effective way to control insects like aphids without pesticides!

Going to Seed

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This time of year, the plants are going to seed. I walked around our yard finding a few:

A dandelion puff in the grass – not a many as in the warm days of late spring and early summer…once the dandelion crescendo they continue flowering and making seed puffs through the warm months until frost.

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Many of the ferns have spores on the back of their leaves.

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Coneflowers look almost threatening with the spikes of seeds….a drape of drying petals below.

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We had a pyracantha at one corner of our house when we move here over 25 years ago – it died back but has now come up from the roots and has orange berries again this year – a pop of color beneath the huge bush growing above the re-emerging pyracantha.

The allium in the chaos garden has green seedpods. They’ll take a little longer to dry and pop open to let the black seeds escape.

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Zooming – September 2021

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The joys of a camera with optical zoom (rather than a phone with just digital zoom) --- I see more detail through the camera than I can see with my eyes! There were several times I was out and about looking for opportunities for high key and pushing the limits of the optics. Several of those experiments were successful enough to be included in this month’s collection.

Enjoy the slideshow for the September zoomed images!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2021

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Celebrating the waning of summer…the beginning of fall –

Brookside Gardens field trip. Spending a few hours at Brookside always results in at least one mini-celebrations. This month there were three: hummingbirds – bees – and roses.

New low weight for the year. With a whole month at home, I managed to control my diet….and achieved a low weight for the year --- 3 times (lower each time). I’m celebrating the achievement and working to continue the trend!

Easy flu shot. I celebrated how easy getting the flu shot was…no waiting, the pharmacy already having all my information.  And now I’m as protected as I can be for my next road trip.

Macro photography. Celebrating images capture with my phone, a clip on lens and a clicker!

Melons. The season for melons was winding down but we celebrated 2 tasty cantaloupes from the Farmers Market in September.

Early morning in the grocery store. I enjoy grocery shopping….and celebrate that I have the store almost to myself…a low risk return to ‘normal.’

Volunteering. Returning to volunteer gigs – doing outdoor programs with students.. it’s another celebration of going back to a pre-pandemic ‘normal’ that isn’t quite the same but just as satisfying.

Beautiful weather. Sunny days…cooler…a little breeze – this is the time of year that it gets easier to celebrate a day outdoors.

Ferns under the deck. I celebrated that there were more of them than I expected this year!

French fries. I have been dieting so carefully….it was a celebration to have French fries (and cut back enough on other foods that day to not make it a “weight gain” day)!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 25, 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: September 2021 – Such a variety of birds in the world!

The Love Stories of Sleepy Lizards – An Australian lizard…they are monogamous and have a surprising threat display. They have been studied for over 40 years.

Searching for the Fisher Kings – The Calusa of south Florida…a capital on a man-made island made of shell. Surviving the Spanish but not the British.

New Coal Plants Dwindle Amid Wave of Cancelled Projects – Good! We need to be ramping up generation of electricity with renewables….and dramatically reducing the methane released by the oil and gas industry in their extraction processes…and then begin to reduce our need for oil and gas in areas that can be electrified (like transportation and heating/cooling).

Explore Life Under the Microscope with the Winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest – Photomicrography frequently creates art from reality that it too small for our eyes to see without the magnification and specialized equipment.

August 2021 global climate summary – From NOAA. Two global maps (temperature and precipitation). Where I live, August was hotter and slightly wetter than the average (averages from 1981-2010 for temperature…from 1979-2020 for precipitation).

People synchronize heart rates while listening to stories – Thinking about the brain as part of physical body….looking at the brain-body connection more broadly.

Study Links Transportation Noise to High Rates of Dementia and Alzheimer's – From Denmark.

Indigenous Resilience Center Launched at the University of Arizona – My daughter did her graduate work at University of Arizona; I’m glad they are launching the center to find and implement culturally appropriate solutions to the challenges of climate change.

The chemistry of dahlia flower colors – Also explains why there are no blue dahlias.

Designs of Kyoto: a collection of design for silk and cotton textiles

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The two volumes of Designs of Kyoto: a collection of designs for silk and cotton textiles (volume 1 and volume 2) were published in 1906 and are available on Internet Archive. I’ve selected 2 sample images from both volumes.

I enjoyed the books – lots of nature themes and ideas for Zentangle patterns. Some of them looked very abstract – geometric – hits of realism. There is a modern quality to many even though they are more than 100 years old. Maybe nature images are timeless as long as the animal/plant depicted still exists in our world.

Silk and cotton are luxuries now – the inexpensive fabrics are synthetic creating a lot of ‘fast fashion’ with interesting fabric patterns….like these.

Our Oak

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Looking up into our oak that grows near our mailbox, it looks like fall is well underway. The flags left from the periodic cicada larvae this summer have dropped their leaves and the rest of the leaves are turning now too. I’ll need to do a round of mowing soon to keep the leaves from getting too thick on the grass. The Virginia Creeper has grown a lot this year…reaching higher into the tree than ever before. It’s a native and climbs with suckers rather than rootlets; it only damages the tree if it gets too heavy; right now, it is well within the range that the tree can handle.

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That’s not to say that the tree is in great shape. Oak decline is happening all over the Mid-Atlantic. There are stressors are thought to weaken the trees: climate change, tree age, site conditions, history of disease. Our tree is probably 30-40 years old (the house is about 30 years old but the tree was planted as a sapling)…not very old for an oak. There is pavement on two sides of the tree (the street and our driveway) so soil compaction might be a problem. It has always had mulch and grass around its base and there are no exposed roots.

The stressors might have weakened our tree enough to make it vulnerable.  The way some of the leaves look is indicative of Bacterial Leaf Scorch. It will be years before the tree succumbs – finally starving (i.e. leaves turning brown and falling early…not continuing to produce food for the tree during the entire growing season). We’ll shore up its defenses by watering it during drought…keeping the fallen branches and debris picked up around its base. And eventually cutting the Virginia Creeper.

High Key at Conowingo

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On Sunday morning we left our house about 7:30 AM to drive to Conowingo – about a 1.5 hour drive from where we live. Below the dam is our favorite place to see bald eagles. This is not the best time of year, but it was a sunny fall morning – a good time for a short daytrip.  

There were some black vultures on top of a car parked near the entrance gate at Conowingo Fisherman’s Park. I had heard about it happening but hadn’t see it before. There didn’t seem to be many photographers along the fence however there were cormorants and gulls over and on the water. There were more cars than usual but apparently the owners were mostly there for fishing. We saw several with very large catfish (looked like the invasive flathead catfish). The spillways on the far side of the dam were active…but it didn’t seem like there was much water churn on our side of the river.

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I had just started surveying the abutment, rocks and island with my bridge camera mounted on a monopod, when the battery connection problem that I had experienced previously began. I had to take the camera off the monopod and remove the foot to open the battery compartment and try to increase the thickness of the paper wedge I had been using to hold the battery more firmly on the contacts. I put everything back together and it still didn’t work consistently. I was able to see an adult bald eagle on the abutment and a great blue heron on a spit of rocks and gulls flying over the water --- but the camera would not work for long enough to get a good picture. So – I gave up and pulled out my small Point and Shoot (Canon Powershot SX730 HS). I was very disappointed in what I could do with less zoom than the bridge camera. So --- I opted to try some high key pictures. My first subject was large sycamore with branches that hang over the water. The color variation in the leaves was more visible with the background mostly bright white although I did one with the water partially visible.

My favorite is the one below with the foliage in the lower right corner. I can image this in a presentation with some words in the upper left!

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Next --- I chose to photograph the electrical towers. I was not aware of the blue (vignetting) in the upper corners until I looked at it on the monitor at home….but I like the little bit of color!

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One of the towers on the island in the river contained a surprise that I didn’t see until it was on the larger screen: a bald eagle standing on a nest! It is not a good eagle shot…the bird is facing away and blurry….too far away for the Point and Shoot to get a crisp image. But it shows how the eagles use of the manmade structures!

Overall – I was pleased with the morning…even though it was quite different than I’d planned!

Macros – September 2021

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My smartphone, a clip on macro lens, and Bluetooth shutter control were the gear I used for the macro photos feathered in this month’s post. They are all from a short walk in Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant from the parking area and into the Honors Garden. The set up works very much like the bridge camera (with lens, diffuser, manual focus) in that I must get close to the subject and move the phone to get the focus perfect. It has the advantage of being a lot more compact than the other set up!

The rain from the night before had left everything with a sheen or droplets of water. Often the wet increased the richness of the colors…and the shine. The thin clouds provided good, diffuse light – a good day for smartphone macro photography. The cedar was on my way to honors garden.

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The seed pods on the magnolia were not flat enough to be an easy shot! The depth of field is very narrow with magnification.

I experimented with different perspectives of cone flowers

And asters. In the last picture, the depth of field gave me the blurring around the edges than I wanted.

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The birds nest fungus was in a mulched area near the parking lot. Some of the cups seem to hold water!

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Even grass seeds take on a different perspective in a zoomed image.

…And these are the best of the rest (note the insect hiding inside a flower)!