Ten Little Celebrations – July 2019

July 2019 was a busy month with two weeks of the months a way from home and volunteering. We’re in the thick of summer!

4th of July. There is the holiday celebrated with fireworks and food and family early in the month. I was in Texas rather than at home.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. It’s thrilling to see a heron that I don’t see all that often…a serendipity sighting during a hike to celebrate.

Easy drive through Arkansas. I celebrated that the road through Arkansas on my way back to Maryland from Texas was a lot better than I expected – good road, no construction, no accidents.

Marigolds. I savored the flowers available for cutting when I go to pick up my CSA share every week. Marigolds are among my favorites….but the sunflowers and amaranth and zinnas are good too.

Pittsburgh to Springfield MO in a day. It was a long drive with my husband and I caravanning. We both celebrated when we arrived – tired but otherwise unscathed.

At home again. After being away for 2 weeks (not concurrently) I had several days celebrating just being at home again.

Prius Prime. I celebrated my car that has excellent range and is easy to drive. It still feels a little new and it’s 2.5 years old! These recent road trips have added quite a few miles.

Surviving a very hot Wings of Fancy shift. I celebrated that having something cold at each break (grapes, popsicle, Gatorade) and drinking lots of water enabled me to be fine at the end of the shift….and even relaxed in my air conditioned car on the way home.

Summer campers making butterfly Zentangles. Celebrating sharing an activity with campers….enjoying their creations as much as they did.

Toad under the oak tree. There is a toad that is making its home in the day lily forest under the oak tree. I celebrated that our yard is providing suitable habitat (there was a very small black rat snake there too…which I am choosing to celebrate too…but I didn’t take time to get a picture).

Zooming – July 2019

I probably use the zoom on my camera for most of my pictures. It allows me to frame the picture the way I want and to ‘see’ the environment better than I can with just my eyes. Sometimes I am at the limit of what my camera can do. For example – the tiger swallowtails are particularly numerous in my back yard this summer and I kept seeing then flying under the maple tree where my compost pile is located. I used my camera like binoculars to see that the swallowtails were ‘puddling’ in the compost pile after a rain. They must have been enjoying the nutrient rich water!

There was a smallish robin that fluttered down from the maple and sat in the grass – just looking around for a few minutes before returned to the tree. It didn’t look or find a worm! Probably a fledging.

On the hottest day of the summer (so far), a wasp got a drink from our bird bath. Sometimes I find wasps that have drowned in the bird bath but so far it hasn’t happened this year. Maybe they are getting better as just getting the drink that they need.

Now enjoy the slide show of other zoomed pictures from this month:

• Plane tree

• Fireworks

• Pocket prairie plants

• Yellow crowned night heron

• Great egret

• Female cardinal

• Fawn

• Goldfinch

Red-Bellied and Downy Woodpecker Juveniles

A week ago, I saw two juvenile woodpeckers come to the bird feeder handing on my deck.

At first, I saw an adult Red-bellied Woodpecker coming to the feeder, get seeds then fly back to the maple tree.

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Soon it became obvious that there was a fledgling because it followed the adult bird to the deck. The fledgling got as far as the railing and then flew back to the maple without attempting to get seed from the feeder. A few days later, I heard the fledging again and it seemed to still be following the parent…with a little more skill.

There was a juvenile Downy Woodpecker at the feeder on the same day as I saw the fledgling red-bellied woodpecker. It is a Downy rather than Hairy Woodpecker because it has black spots on the white outer tail feathers.

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I had seen a juvenile downy woodpecker back on June 9th which must have been from an earlier brood. It had the same clumsy flight pattern as the one I saw on July 19th.

The woods behind our have been good places for the woodpeckers this summer!

Blue Jay Feathers

One morning when my husband and I were working in the yard, we noticed quite a few blue jay feathers in the grass beside our house. I picked them up to photograph. They were not in great shape so had probably be on the ground for a few days.

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Some of them had bands on only one side…probably indicating which side of the bird they came from. This group has bands to the left of the rib.

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And these feathers have bands on the right.

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There are too many feathers for this bird to have survived probably. We have quite a few blue jays that come to our yard for the water and the trees. Sometimes singly but more often in small groups. During some seasons they are very noisy but recently they have been coming through silently. Smart birds since there must be a predator around.

Battered Squirrels

On two days that I was home and observing from my summer office window in June – I noticed two squirrels that looked like they had survived a predator. The first one sprawled on the deck railing long enough for me to realize some fur on top of it head/neck was missing, and the fur looked matted.

I zoomed in. It looked like the injury might be healing already.

A few days later, another squirrel was on the deck (or I think it was another one) with a much larger area of missing fur that looked infected. There was also a wound near its nose.

There seem to have more than our usual number of squirrels this year. Did a juvenile hawk decide the area was easy pickings for a meal but was not adept enough to get its prey? At least twice?

Gorman Farms CSA

I am overwhelmed with the weekly bounty of vegetables from the medium share from Gorman Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). My freezer is full because I have made two road trips from Maryland to Springfield, Missouri since the season started – eating very little at home during those two weeks. Now I am closer to home for the rest of the season and anticipate keeping up better week to week…so much good food to eat! I love green smoothies for breakfast (frozen greens, frozen banana, soymilk, peanut butter) on hot summer mornings and there are plenty of frozen greens in the freezer. The farm also has pick-your-own flowers and herbs. Marigolds (the orange flowers in the picture) are pretty….and edible. I ended up just putting them in the center of the table as a little bouquet.

Each week the message board at the CSA highlights some of the veggies. This week the shishito peppers and tomatillos are new to me. My plan: roasting them and making green salsa.

The share board lists the contents of the share for the week. The picture below is the board from this week. There was a choice between purple and white onions ….and I picked purple since I had white ones left from last week. The melon choice was watermelon or cantaloupe. I picked cantaloupe because I had just bought a watermelon in the grocery store. From the choice section I chose turnips since the last ones I got were great for snacking. I’ll cut them to use for dipping the tomatillo salsa. There were enough reusable bags in my totes to contain the summer squash, cucumbers, eggplant, and tomatillos for weighing… I am avoiding single use plastic entirely when I pick up my share.

The cabbage white butterflies were thick on one segment of the cut-your-own garden and I went to check what plant was attracting them – catnip! I cut some for my cat and he enjoyed the CSA share this week too!

As in past years – the CSA is providing great food…and the satisfaction of eating produce grown very close to home in a sustainable way.

Fawn in the Backyard

Back in mid-June not long after I moved into a new home office that doesn’t get as much afternoon sun (and get hot) during the summer, a fawn moved through the backyard and stopped log enough for me to get a picture. I didn’t see any other deer around but maybe the doe was just out of my field of view.

The fawn still had lots of spots but was sure footed enough to not still be in the ‘hiding’ stage of its life. A few days before I had seen a doe move through the yard with a large belly that seemed to move a lot; I wondered if she was in labor and hoped she made it back into the forest before giving birth.

Our area has a significant overpopulation of deer that is impacting our forests and yards; we are plagued by deer tick borne Lyme disease. For those reasons, I am in favor of the deer control measures the state and county governments are implementing…but I enjoy watching them move through our yard from my office window and have resigned myself so never having the day lily buds fully bloom.

Fledglings through the Window

I moved my home office to a room that does not get as much direct sun on summer afternoons…and discovered I have a better view of our bird feeder through the window. One of the first birds I noticed on the feeder was a downy woodpecker that seemed to be coming very frequently.

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And then came the explanation…the parent was showing the way to the feeder to a fledgling! It could have been more than one fledgling because these pictures were taken over several hours….and then I haven’t seen the birds again. Perhaps they are finding plenty of food in the trees behind our house. They are – after all – woodpeckers.

A few days later – I saw a titmouse that was very tentatively perched on our deck railing. It didn’t go to the feeder but succeed in fluttering off toward the maple tree…maybe back to the nest.

Fast forward almost a week and I saw 2 types of fledglings: 1) There were parents and fledgling Carolina Chickadees at the bird feeder (there were several smaller and somewhat clumsy birds with the two adults)…moving too fast for me to get a picture. 2) A crabby fledgling on the deck railing in the rain. I think it was probably a Catbird fledgling. It didn’t go to the feeder but flew off to the sycamore.

Overall, it’s been a busy month at our feeder. In some cases, it was probably the first meal away from the nest for the young birds…and certainly fun to watch from my summer office window. I enjoy these kinds of distractions!

June Yard Work – Round 1

I was out in my yard by 7:30 AM one morning this week. My husband had requested that I pull all the milkweed in the front flower beds. I agreed even though it probably means that there won’t be a Monarch (caterpillar) nursery at my house when the butterflies arrive in our area. There were day lilies and black-eyed susans growing around most of the plants so pulling them would not leave the ground bare. I took before and after pictures of three areas. Having the milkweed gone makes quite a difference!

I pulled the plants trying to get at least some of the root. There will probably be other milkweed plants that will come up since most of the plants came out with only a bit of the root right under the stem. Milkweed can grow new plants along their horizontal roots (i.e. a ‘stand’ of milkweed might all be the same plant). I also learned last year that cutting milkweed just causes it to grow branches. Hopefully I can continue to pull the tiny milkweed plants that emerge, and the front flower beds will look more traditional this summer.

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After I was done pulling milkweed and grass from the flower beds – I carried the pile back to the forest. Before I went indoors, I took some pictures:

An insect on a leaf.

A tiny mushroom in the grass.

Flower parts and drowned insects in the bird bath. I cleaned the birdbath and refilled it before I went inside. It’s more visible now that the milkweed is gone.

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Ten Little Celebrations – May 2019

May has been a busy month with travel and prep for more travel…lots of volunteer gigs and home maintenance too. As usual – it was easy to identify something to celebrate each and every day. Here are 10 that I’m highlighting for the month.

Plantain chips. I made my own plantain chips using a plantain from the conservatory at Brookside Gardens. It was a spring celebration of Thanksgiving – good food from a local harvest.

Caterpillar on the hickory. I was hiking with second graders looking at habitats…and what lives in them (paricularly insects). When we came to a young hickory tree that had been planted on earth day, it had some holes in the leaves. It was a small enough tree that we could carefully look under the leaves…and we found a caterpillar! It was one of those serendipity momets…the children were pleased with their find and I celebrated sharing their experience.

Clean car mats. My husband and I both took the mats out of our cars and hosed them off – no more salt and mud that had accumulated over the winter! We picked a sunny day so they could mostly dry out in the driveway after we hosed them off. I am celebrating a cleaner car interior.

Good weather for 4th grade field trip. Earlier in May we were having a lot of rain…and I wondered how the back to back field trips were going to dodge the deluge. At this point I am celebrating not having a single rainy day field trip (even thouh I am prepared with a super rain poncho). The 4th grade field trip was a close call….it didn’t rain and we managed to step around the mud puddles.

A whole day at home. Between volunteer gigs and travel, there were very few days that I could just be at home. When it happened – I celebrated the day to recouperate.

Horseshoe Crabs. I had never seen horse shoe crabs in action like I saw in Cape May. They are recovering after overharvesting….an ancient creature filling its niche in the web of life. Something to celebrate.

Light on flowers. I missed most of the azaleas blooming this spring…but managed to get some spotlighted in the dappled light along the path near the stream at Brookside Gardens. I celebrated the photographic experience.

Pre-schoolers are Belmont. I’ve only managed to do one field trip with pre-schools so far this season. What fun they are! I talked to them about trees. We pretended to start out as seeds and grow into a forest…then have the breeze ruffle out leaves (fingers)…and then we talked about trees and wind. Some groups fell down in a heap when the really strong winds came! It’s easy to celebrate the outdoors with pre-schoolers.

Rainy day with butterflies – Mother’s Day. It rained on Mother’s Day and the morning started slow in the Wings of Fancy conservatory – the butterflies weren’t very active and there were not early visitors. I celebrated by taking some butterfly pictures with my phone. And then the ramp up of activity began. It became a busy morning.

White morpho butterflies. The brilliant irridescent blue morphs are probably the most popluarl butterflies in the Wings of Fancy exhibit. I celebrated the butterflies that are new or not quite as common. The white morphos are one of the special ones I’m celebrating this year.

Our Front Yard

The milkweed is up in the front flowerbed. Hopefully some monarch butterflies will show up soon to lay eggs on it and my monarch nursery will be in business for this year.

The day lilies are still just green – no bud stalks yet. I’ll try to cut the buds before the deer eat them (enjoy them in vases indoors) and just leave the greenery behind. There are some black eyed susans that should offer some yellow to the beds once the temperature is warm enough.

The smell of mint rises as I pull weeds – I try to leave the mint behind.

There are plenty of weeds and grass to pull in the front flower beds. It helps to have the day lilies shading out some of them.

The ninebark bush has some blooms this year and seems to be healthier. Maybe the deer did not eat it as much this past winter.

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I have one iris that is about ready to bloom. I cut it to take inside a few days after this picture was taken. The other irises have leaves but no stalks yet. They do seem to be recovering from whatever ate most of the rhizomes year before last.

Virginia creeper is growing on the oak. I’m leaving it for now because I like the contrast it makes with the day lily leaves around the base of the tree.

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Over all – I’m slowly making progress to get the front flower beds looking lush with greenery and weed-free. The Next chore will be trimming the bushes. There is one I will wait on; it has a catbird nesting in it.

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2019

April has been a busy month – only at home for a week out of the month and not all at the same time. There was plenty to celebrate with spring in full swing and the travel to see it in different places.

Certified Zentangle® Trainer (CZT) class. There were so many perspectives of the CZT class to celebrate: the beauty of the creations everyone was making, the conversations, the food…the challenge of being a student…the Zen.

Train ride home. I don’t go many places where taking the train is feasible…but the CZT class was one of them. I celebrated the low stress hours going home…a fitting finale to the class.

4th and 5th grade field trips. The early April field trips happened with great weather and the students enjoying being outdoors to learn about the Patapsco heritage (land, water, and rocks) and BioBlitz. It’s always inspiring to see their curiosity and enthusiasm --- celebrating a spring field trip.

Getting to Dallas. I had to travel to Dallas quickly and it was easier than a thought it would be. And I celebrated that I was less stressed by the rapid change in plans (maybe the Zentangle class providing an added benefit.

Spring days. Noticing the rapidly developing blossoms of spring is fodder for many celebrations – oxalis is probably one of my favorites right now. It blooms when the sun is shining!

Rainy day (spent indoors). After busy days – having a rainy day spent indoors is something to celebrate…with homemade soup for lunch!

Josey Ranch Pocket Prairie. A little bit of prairie – carefully tended by volunteers – in a Dallas suburb! Right now it is a celebration of spring wildflowers.

Cedar waxwings. Birds are migrating and there are serendipity sightings of birds that don’t stay around the area long. I celebrated seeing a small flock of cedar waxwings last week.

Botanical reminders of my grandmother. Many flowers in my parents’ Carrollton yard were planted by my grandmother…good memories to celebrate.

Home again. Providence, Rhode Island to home to Carrollton, Texas to home to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and Smith Island to home. I like to travel…but coming home is celebratory too.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Rainy Day Drama

Last weekend – we had a very rainy day. It was good sleeping weather. We listened to the rumble of thunder and saw occasional flashes of lightening. Everyone was glad to get things done indoors rather than be out and about. We made a pot of soup for lunch and were settling into after lunch activities when my dad discovered water dripping through the ceiling near a skylight. Break out the towels and plastic bins – quick!

It took some slight adjustment of the bins to catch all the drips. Then the drama was over until Monday morning when the roofer than had recently replaced the roof could be called.

Moving the Compost Bin

Last week we had some warm days and I moved my compost bin. It is so hard to turn the whole bin of material adequately, that it’s better to just move the bin periodically and get a good mix of the materials (and take the ‘finished’ compost out for other distribution). The stakes that I’d used to hold the cylinder of rigid plastic up were leaning toward the center too. I decided to move the bin just a few feet away on a bare patch of dirt – still under the red maple.

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I got side tracked looking at the haze of yellow in the forest: spice bush in bloom.

And the baby ferns in the mossy area under the deck.

And a shell that had collected some water (probably need to turn it over so it doesn’t become a mosquito nursery).

And some robin nests (neat enough to be from this year) on the deck support beams.

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I pulled the stakes out from inside the bin - then lifted the plastic and repositioned it. I put the stakes back in using some branches from the brush pile to cross brace too. Then the material that still needed to decompose was moved with a pitchfork to the newly placed bin. Lesson learned: pine needles and egg shells take longer to decompose than kitchen scrapes and shredded leaves/paper!

I found something that had sprouted in the compost as I spread the compost from the bottom of the bin around under the red maple in front of the brush pile. Maybe a beet top from last fall’s harvest?

Blooming Trees in Our Yard

About a week after our trek to the National Arboretum – I walked around our yard to take pictures of our trees in bloom. The maple is not quite as bright red as it was earlier…about done with its blooming for the year. The forsythia our neighbor planted at the edge of the woods is blooming behind the maple. The misty yellow of the spice bush is still weeks away.

The cherry tree in our front yard is blooming profusely. There were several kinds of bees (I presume bees….some of them were too small for me to see for sure).  In previous years our cherry tree lagged the peak bloom at the tidal basin and the arboretum in Washington DC by at least a week…and that seems about right this year as well.

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We also have a plum tree and, even though the flowers are smaller, they keep their pink color all the way through the cycle rather than becoming white like the cherries.

The spring blooming trees are a clear indicator of the season change…warmer days to come. The colors are a welcome break from the browns of winter. Next comes the delicate spring greens as leaves begin to unfurl.

Tree Bud Project – Week 3

It’s Friday – I’m updating the status of the branches I brought inside 2 weeks ago (previous posts: week 1, week2). This will be the last post. The flowers and leaves are wilting because the small branches can’t get enough water to the new growth.

The cherry blossoms opened but stayed small – then started to show stress – the delicate white petals wilting.

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The tulip poplar branch lasted longer with more and more small leaves emerging from the bud.

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Four leaves emerged from one bud and one of the leaves unfolded before they all began to wilt.

The only branch that didn’t seem to develop at all was the black walnut. Maybe it was just way too early for those buds to develop even in the warmer temperature indoors.

Birding through a Window – March 2019

The birds seem to be moving faster this month – harder to photograph. There are a lot more robins about. Some seem to be looking around for nesting places and others are just passing through.

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Flocks of red-winged blackbirds fly through this time of year too. I took some pictures of a flock of birds high up in the tulip poplar trees behind our house one afternoon and discovered there were two types of birds in the group: red-winged blackbirds (black eyes) and rusty blackbirds with yellow rimmed eyes.

The titmice were too fast for me this month – but I managed to get a picture of a Carolina chickadee.

A mourning dove preened on the deck railing.

The most startling ‘birding through the window’ event of the month was a mourning dove that bashed itself against my office window. It left some small (about 1/4 inch) down feathers behind on the window.

The bird apparently recovered quickly because it managed to fly to a neighbor’s roof – sat for a few minutes (recovering) – and then flew on as if nothing had happened.

There was a similar incident a few years ago with a cardinal. I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often.

Tree Bud Project – Week 2

It’s Friday – so I am doing an update on the tree branches I brought inside a week ago. See the previous post here. All of them seem to be surviving in the vase of water. I’ve freshened the water every few days. All the pictures are with the 15x macro clip-on lens and my smartphone.

The cherry buds have opened into small white flowers! At first the buds just looked bigger.

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Two days later, the white tips showed beyond the green of the outer covering.

And the next morning the flowers were open! I took a picture of the back and front of the flowers.

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The plum is slower. Some of the buds have not changed at all and I am wondering if they were damaged by cold temperatures. Some look like they are larger. I hope they eventually will open.

The red maple has bloomed and is now drooping. They are wind fertilized…so won’t make seeds in the ‘windless’ house. At first, they looked very red – like little streamers from the bud.

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Then the bigger structure grew.

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And now they seem to be drying out.

The tulip poplar has been changing a lot too. At first more buds opened.

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Two days later all the buds were larger, and a tiny leaf had emerged from one of them.

Over the next few days other tiny leaves emerged and began to get larger. I noticed the tiny leaves while they were still folded inside the bud too. The bark of the twig seems to be a deeper color too.

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I haven’t noticed any changes in the black walnut branch. If the buds do open it should be spectacular with so many buds on the tip of the branch.

The sycamore buds haven’t changed much either although they seem to be a little larger and their color has shifted to green with some red overtones.

Stay tuned to next Friday for the next tree bud report!

Daffodils and Crocus

Our miniature daffodils are blooming. My mother-in-law bought the bulbs about 30 years ago and planted them in the garden of our previous house. I dug them up and planted them in the front flowerbed of our current house about 25 years ago. I’ve divided them several times. I like them because they are small and hardy – no falling over from the weight of snow or heavy rain for these flowers. They’re also a nice way to remember my mother-in-law every spring.

Crocus bulbs don’t last as long in our area. Perhaps the squirrels eat them, or they get too wet and rot in the soil. I only have one this spring….growing in a mulch of tulip poplar seeds.

As I was walking around the yard and making a list of yard work that needs to be done, I noticed a holly that has come up near a bush that has been slowly rotting over the past few years. Maybe I’ll trim the bush down to half its current size in the early part of the summer and provide more light to the young holly so that it can replace the old bush sometime soon.

I am using the weather as an excuse to procrastinate on the yard work….just enjoying the daffodils and crocus for the next week or so.

A few minutes observing Mourning Doves

One morning last week – I looked out my kitchen window on a warm breezy march morning and noticed two mourning doves on the railing of our deck…just beginning the mating dance. I ran upstairs to get my camera and started shooting the sequence below through my office window. The action takes place in just over a minute. The male has iridescent feathers on his head and neck. In the beginning, he is on the left….at the end he is on the right.  Afterward the female flew off first and the male stayed put looking out over the yard.

This is not the first time the deck railing has been a favorite place for doves mating. In May 2018 and April 2016, I managed to photograph a mating pair as well. In our area, the doves are probably the most substantial and numerous prey for the red tailed hawks and other raptors.

It was easier with my new camera and its continuous shooting feature. I also now recognize the early stages of the courtship so have a few more seconds to prepare.