January Composting

Egg shells, apple cores, popcorn (the kernels that didn’t pop), a potato and collard stems…not a lot to go back to the pile these early weeks of the year. I picked a sunny day earlier this week to take what I had collected from the kitchen. I put on my boots since we’d had enough rain, I expected it still might be muddy in places. As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad, but I tried to stay on the grass as much as possible.

After dumping the fresh stuff, I used a pitchfork to turn the pile the best I could. There are a lot of pine needles and leaves…no need to add ‘browns’ right now. I can add all the food waste I generate until spring and just turn it under. In the spring, I’ll move the bin to a new place and put the parts that haven’t totally decomposed yet to it while distributing the compost around the yard.

Squirrels and our Bird Feeder

Back in December I hung some garlands of suet and seeds on our deck for the birds; the birds didn’t find them fast enough. We fed squirrels. Within a few days, all that was left of the suet and seeds were the twine garland, straw bows, and hulls.

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We’ve always had squirrels in our yard but now – in January - they seem fatter than I remember. They like to explore our deck from the railing – probably hoping for more suet and seeds. I’m not providing more.

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I have put out the bird feeder with seeds. It’s several years old and I only fill it in the winter. It is supposed to be squirrel resistant and it has proved to be effective in past seasons. I finally caught a squirrel in the act…and the feeder with its seeds won the round! It has springs that are pulled downward by the squirrel’s weight (not birds) and there are metal ‘flowers’ that cover the holes where the seeds are available. Note the top flange of the feeder is below cap on the top…that indicates that the metal mesh with roosts and flowers is pushed downward. No holes uncovered to the squirrel.

After the squirrel thoroughly explored all sides of the feeder, it jumped down and the springs returned to normal uncovering the holes to give birds access to the seeds. Good design!

YE Thinking: Favorite Images

Looking for a way to summarize my year in pictures for this last post of 2019, I selected 3 favorite photos from each month – not an easy task for me. Many of them are from at home…some from other places close to home…then Socorro NM and Carrolton Tx. It’s been a good year! Enjoy the slide show….celebrating 2018!

YE Thinking: Reducing Plastic

It’s impossible to stop using plastic completely – but I am reducing in every way that I can. Plastic on our land or in our water is not a good thing and it is a totally man-made problem that is becoming more apparent every year. Here are my strategies for reducing my plastic footprint at the end of 2018:

Buy products in containers that are not plastic (i.e. milk in cartons rather that plastic jugs, lemon juice in glass jar, peanut butter/preserves in glass jars).

Always have reusable shopping bags handy. This was probably the first strategy I implemented, and it’s been over 10 years ago now. It was very easy for the weekly grocery shopping. Doing it for the quick trips of one or two items - and to stores other than the grocery store – happened over time. I now carry a small bag in a stuff pocket attached to my purse.

Put produce in reusable produce bags. The challenge is that the labels spewed out by the scales don’t stick to the fabric…so I have a pad of paper to stick them too and the checker easily scans them when I am checking out.

Avoid single use plastic utensils. Go with plastic that can withstand many passes through the dishwasher or stainless flatware. My husband and I have travel sporks that we use for picnics on road trips.

Make your own body wash with slivers of soap with water in a plastic bottle (I have a bottle from purchased body wash that I like for it’s shape….it will last for several years replenished from time to time with bar soap slivers!)

Stop buying soft drinks and bottled water. I have been surprised at how easy this is to do for me. My husband is still working at it. It’s a healthy choice too. I carry my travel mug almost all the time – usually with just ice water. Another plus – it can reduce ‘grocery’ costs.

In the end – plastic is unavoidable. I try to choose plastics that are easier to recycle in our community.

• Our recycling does not take clamshells like salad comes in so I rarely buy salad in that form. I buy the bundled organic full leaves (or plant) and put it in one of my reusable bags….or in a container that I can recycle (like a plastic bag).

• I buy popcorn in a plastic bag rather than plastic container since I am more confident that the grocery store where I return clean plastic bags gets them recycled than the vendor that processes the multi-stream recycling picked up at our curb.

• If there is an option to buy something I use frequently in a larger container (both plastic), I buy the larger container. My rationale is that larger containers probably get through the recycling process and into the correct bin (i.e. plastic) to be recycled.

One strategy that has helped me reduce the amount of plastic we are using is to look at what we put in our trash or recycle bins. I am fast approaching the point that I’ve done what I can do until packaging changes and I have more choices – choices that don’t include plastic.

Travel Day

A week ago, I got up in Texas and got ready to fly home to Maryland. As I got my breakfast, I noticed that the sunrise was spectacular. I quickly grabbed my camera to take some pictures from the backyard. The colors were changing fast. There was a little breeze that caused me to notice the windchimes and I decided to take a silhouette of them with the colors of the sunrise in the background.

Looking back toward the house, there were some hazy clouds that reflected the color. What a great start to my last day in Texas!

My strategy for the trip was to pack small bags rather than large ones. I was flying on Southwest so there was no charge for checking two of them. I carried my back pack and tote on the plane. The tote was holding a red poncho that I wore on the plane (and is a good substitute for a blanket). The strategy worked well for this trip. It’s great to not have to lift heavy luggage.

It felt good to get home later that day. I always savor being ‘home again’ after being away for a week.

Foggy Morning

One morning recently, it was warmer (in the 40s and warming to the 50s) and the forest was full of fog.

The forest layers look different. The forest’s edge that is only a neighbor’s yard away disappears in the mists making it harder to determine distance. Rather than lemon light of just after sunrise, everything is shades of bluish gray.

The forest does not look as friendly in the fog. The birds were staying quiet even though it was their normal time to be active.

There is a coldness to the scene that belies the warmer temperature and is not comfortable – except from the warmth of my office – which is where I was standing to take both pictures through the window. It was a good morning to enjoy being indoors.

Zooming – November 2018

The last day of November. The month has been a busy one and I enjoyed selecting 13 images from when I enjoyed the zoom feature of my camera the most. The picks include fall leaves, a sunset, cranes grooming/snoozing/waking up, screwbean mesquite seeds, agave, a pruned prickly pear stem, barrel cactus thorns, cranes in the early morning, cranes in golden light with snow geese, northern mergansers in action, the moon, a snow goose feather, and some milkweed seeds.

And now we forge ahead into December and another month with a lot of the calendar.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2018

At the beginning of November, we had a short burst of color before the leaves fell off the trees. I celebrated a glorious fall day…wishing the season had not been so short this year.

HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) graduation was this month after accumulating enough volunteer hours since finishing the class last spring.

And then came the Festival of the Cranes with so many little celebrations:

Seeing sandhill cranes in flight – being close enough to their fly out to hear the first few high-power flaps of their wings.

Seeing two barn owls circle above the field where I was standing. It was a first for me….so beautiful and ghost-like.

Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. It was my first visit to the place and it’s hard to choose the high point maybe it was the screwbean mesquite the herd of pronghorn playing a running game with our caravan or seeing a shrike with a meal.

Hooded Mergansers. It was not the first time I had seen the birds (there were some on a local (Maryland) pond we visited during our 5th HoLLIE class). But they were not displaying like the birds we saw during the Festival of the Cranes.

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. What an amazing place….and great hosts to the Festival of the Cranes. I am already planning to go again! There are so many sights and sounds to celebrate here.

Home again. I celebrate returning every time I am away for longer than a couple days.

Bald Eagle seen from my office window. The morning we left to drive to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, a bald eagle flew over the forest behind our house while I was shutting down my laptop for the road trip. It continued over our house. Since I saw a pair of eagles soaring a nearby shopping center recently, I think perhaps their nest is somewhere in the forest along the Middle Patuxent River near us. What a way to start the Thanksgiving holiday!

Thanksgiving….celebrating the day…realizing how much I am thankful for.

Sunrise and Sunset

One day last week I had serendipity photo ops first thing in the morning and just as the day was ending. In the morning I looked out the front of the house and saw three deer munching on the day lily leaves around our oak. By the time I got my camera, there were only two left. I trimmed the leaves more than a month ago as they began to look ragged and was surprised that they grew back. They are probably some of the most tender green leaves around right now. The day was cloudy and wet so even though the sun had been ‘up’ for about an hour, it was still relatively dark.

Near sunset I noticed the color reflected on the clouds. They were moving rapidly so the shapes were changing. Our sycamore was already in silhouette with the vibrant color in the background.

A few minutes later the clouds still looked very orange. I zoomed to some distant tulip poplars that still had a few leaves.

Back to our sycamore in silhouette – the cloud has the shape of some creature with two big eyes and a toothless mouth…maybe a little like Jabba the Hutt.

Then the color was down in the trees. We don’t have a clear few of the sunset since there is a forest to our west. It was a nice end-view for the day.

In the Fall Yard – November 2018

We finally got some vivid leaf colors in the trees behind our house. The usual vibrant yellows of the tulip poplars were almost missing since those leaves turned brown quickly before they even left the big trees this year.  The pines were shedding some needles too.

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A rain came, and a lot of leaves fell from the trees within a day or two of achieving good color. I let the leaves dry for a day or two then went out to rake. The temperature was in the 50s and the sky was clear. The trees still had a few leaves…but most were on the ground.

My plan was to rake leaves that were on grass into areas where deep shade prevented grass from growing. The area between the compost bin and the red maple and then back to the forest is a great location for piles of leaves from the rest of the yard.

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I didn’t put any more leaves in the compost bin because they were just raked…not shredded. I discovered that a lot of the pine needles had fallen with the rain, so I got a trash can full of them and put them into the compost. How nice to have pine scented compost!

Through the window….a flicker

With the leaves falling off the trees, it’s easier to see and photograph birds. Last weekend a female Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted) flew into our maple and I managed to get my camera fast enough to take two pictures through my office window. My computer glasses do work so well through the camera viewfinder, so I relied on the camera to focus. The bird turned slightly to show off the red blaze on the back of the head.

I don’t see these birds as frequently as our resident cardinals although the flickers might be here all year. They are hard to spot in foliage and grasses. I’m always thrilled to see them around.

Red Maple

Our red maple has not been as spectacular this fall as it usually is. The rains and temperatures in September and October kept it green for a very long time and when it did start to turn red most of the leaves looked muddy rather than the rich red they usually display. The leaves began to fall before they were fully red.

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The leaves on the tree at the very end of October finally changed to red…and then there was a lot of rain on November 2 and most leaves fell.

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Now I’m hoping for some dry days to make the leaves easier to rake into the forest….

At least the maple put on a short show. The tulip poplars seem to be going from green to brown rather than putting on a dazzling yellow show as they do most years.

Happy Halloween!

My husband and I remembered to put our Halloween decorations out yesterday….and we’ll take them back in tomorrow. Both the witch and the pumpkin are about 20 years old!

Bald Eagle

I made a quick stop at the Kings Contrivance shopping center after a training session for field trips last week and spotted some soaring birds over the parking lot. The birds we most frequently see soaring over our neighborhoods are turkey or black vultures. These 2 birds caught my attention immediately because they had white heads and tails. I put my purchases on the roof of the car and tried to get a picture.

The picture isn’t great…but it was good enough to identify that the bird was a bald eagle. A woman had noticed my hurry and picture attempt and looked to see too. She came over and watched the birds for a few minutes with me….as did some others. It was a ‘bald eagle moment’ of community.

When I got home, my husband said he had been reading about a pair of eagles in our area so maybe these two have made their home in the forested corridor of the Middle Patuxent River.

I’m always thrilled to see bald eagles because they were so rare when we moved to the east coast a little over 30 years ago. There are a lot more of them now. Hurray for the birds and our successful removal of environmental toxicity that had made it hard for them to reproduce successfully.

Composting at Home – October 2018

After 3+ months of use my compost bin no longer looks pristine.

I have started piling small sticks around it to cut down on the rain drop splatter from the bare soil under the red maple. The maple roots are very dense and close to the surface…the shade very deep…nothing grows very well there and the soil is eroding down to the maple roots. It has been a good place to put the bin and I’ll leave some of the compost in place with sticks to hold it ---- and hopefully encourage more vegetation to grow. The brush pile is having that effect further down the slope.

We are just beginning to have leaves on the ground – oak and sycamore mostly.

I’ve been using the leaf blower in reverse with a bag attached to catch the lightly shredded leaves. The process works best when the leaves are dry (a challenge recently with all the rain we’ve been getting) and on hard services like the driveway, street gutters, and deck. I’ve discovered that a little shredding goes a long way speeding decomposition.

I typically add the veggie scraps from the kitchen on top then turn some leaves over it. Recently I’ve had more because fall veggies tend to have seeds and skins compost. I’ve also admitted to myself that I don’t eat nearly as many potatoes as I used to.

Even though we’ve been getting rain, the compost probably needs to be watered to ‘cook’ as quickly as possible. The shredded leaves can absorb a lot of moisture, so my plan is to add water with every bag of leaves. The hose barely reaches from the faucet to the compost’s bin location. I’ll have to think about where else I might put it that would be easier to reach and not too close to the house.

Ferns under the Deck

Our deck is over a story off the ground and it always in deep shade. I planted some Christmas fern a few years ago and it is almost overwhelmed with the splash from between the decking above. I think this is the first place I will put compost (as mulch) when it is ‘done’.

I thought he shade would be ideal for the fern and that it would propagate itself. But the muddy mess is not good for anything growing there unless I can find a way to improve the situation. Having mulch instead of mud should be an improvement.

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On the other end of the space under the deck there is some moss growing and maybe some little ferns. I’m not sure. I’ll spread some around them when I disperse my compost. The deer don’t seem to be bothering them so far.

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A Few Minutes Observing…a female cardinal

Taking pictures through my office window with my new camera is a bit more challenging than it was with the old camera; getting the lens camp off takes too much time. But there was a female cardinal that stayed perched on the gutter long enough for me to get a portrait.

It was a cool breezy day and the bird’s feathers are fluffed…the crest is a little rumpled too (a bad crest day?).

I noticed some leaves in the gutter; it’s not clogged yet but it could get that way with more leaves flying in the next few weeks.

Right now – most of the leaves visible from my window are still green…with a few patches of color. The tulip poplar leaves go to yellow and

The maple will go to red. Eventually.

And that was my few minutes observing through the window!

CSA Share

The Gorman Farms CSA season is about done but I am enjoying everything in the shares we are getting. A recent share filled the ceramic top of my stove. There are carrots with more top that carrot – but I like the tops in salads and soups; as soon as I got them home I cut the tops off, cleaned them and put them in a plastic bin with the parsley. I’ll eat the carrot tops first since they won’t last as long as the parsley. The carrots themselves will be eaten with hummus for snacks. They were very muddy. Heavy rain and mud has made harvesting more challenging than usual in our area.

I haven’t tried the watermelon radishes yet but I have enjoyed them in seasons past. We’re still getting a couple of onions every week which fits well with the way I cook. I’m a little behind on the winter squash; at some point I’ll cook them all and freeze the pulp to use like pumpkin. There were three tiny versions of butternut squash in this share; supposedly they are even sweeter and cook faster because they are small. The purple cabbages are small – struggling in the soggy fields probably. The peppers are holding strong; there were bell, banana, and roasting peppers in the share. And then there are sweet potatoes…several pounds every week; I’m saving the ones that are cured to eat after the CSA is over for the year. There was quite a selection at the overage table and I picked the fennel; I’ve developed a taste of it…since joining the CSA several years ago; I’d never tried it before that.

Good eating in October!

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are coming up all over. The moisture we got in September evidently provided optimal conditions for the fungi to put up fruiting bodies.

On the way home from Belmont last week, I stopped along the road to photograph an embankment with visible mushrooms.

As I got closer I discovered some that were not quite as visible. There were at least three different kinds. The largest ones, that were in all stages of development, were what I saw first. The started out as white then began to darken and crack like meringue. Finally, the cap splits. There were some that were still just pushing up – still almost concealed by pine needles.

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There was one that was almost the same color as pine needles.

And puffballs that were in all stages of development.

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When I got home, I noticed a large one at the base of a neighbor’s tree. I put my macro lens beside it to show the size and then took a picture of the surface with the lens; it looked like a topography map with rifts between the brown patches!

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Cooler Days – Little Fall Color

Here it is the end of September and most of the leaves are still on the trees and green. The ones that have fallen are brown.

Our oak is a good example of that. Looking at the ground it looks like half the leaves have fall but the tree still looks like it has plenty more. (The ruler in the picture is me learning to take better documentary pictures for trees.)

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In the back of our house, the red maple has no red leaves. Usually it starts out with a few that show up surrounded by green. But right now it’s still a wall of green although there are leaves on the ground that are brown.

The tulip poplar usually has some yellow leaves surrounded by green. Some of the leaves look like they might be turning but even the zoomed image looks like a wall of green.

There are some green tulip poplar leaves that have fallen in recent heavy rains…but overall the tree still has a lot of green leaves attached.

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The sycamore has been dropping brown leaves but still has a lot of green ones on the tree. It’s usual the first to drop leaves. This year some are staying on the tree but there are still more green than brown ones.

We’ve gotten a lot more rain than usual in September (almost 11 inches rather than the historical average of 4.6 inches) and the trees may be impacted by that. There is a lot of mud even in the grassy areas of our yard.

The end of October is generally the time the leaves fly from the trees, so I am still anticipating fall color. It just seems that there are too many brown leaves on the ground already.