Our (new) Yard – June 2022

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A quick walk around our back yard…on my way to a walk before the heat of the day.

There are still a few roses. I’ll water them and hope that the blooms will linger. There are still buds but the heat could be problematic for them.

There are pines and hollies around the deck with steppingstone paths through the beds to the lawn. The lower patio is very private and will be in the winter as well. We see the neighborhood tennis courts and pool over our fence from the 1st floor but the basement level, where my office is located, is a green walled oasis. I love it already.

There are a few plants blooming – they probaby need water too – and there is grass growing into them. I need to find my gardening gloves and clear out the undesirable intrusions into the flower beds.

My sister bought us a glass bird bath that has a solar cell in the base that glows at night. Our first addition to our yard. I can see it from my office window.

There is a swallow nest over the patio – under the deck – and we are avoiding the area in an effort to not upset the parents as they are frantically feeding their hungry young.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 2, 2022

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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.

What if all roads went underground? – Thought provoking…wish there were ways to make it a more practical solution since the aesthetics of a world that has more natural surfaces (rather than roads) is very appealing.

Endangered Whopping Crane Hatches at Smithsonian National Zoo Site – The egg was found on an abandoned wild nest in Wisconsin and given to a pair of whooping cranes in the zoo that had produced 2 infertile eggs. The live egg was put into their nest on 5/18 and the baby crane hatched on 5/26!

BLM, Forest Service, Five Tribes of The Bears Ears Commission Commit to Historic Co-Management Of Bears Ears National Monument – Wishing the best for this endeavor.

Fifth of global food-related emissions due to transport – The takeaway message for us in the US: eat locally! This summer I am visiting the local Farmer’s Market weekly…maybe next year I’ll join a CSA.

Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ melting at fastest rate in 5,500 years – Thwaites Glacier (nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier…Florida-sized) and Pine Island Glacier were studied. The ice shelf holding the Thwaites Glacier could collapse withing 3-5 years.

Finding mini frogs: these aren’t babies, they’re just little – And they hatch as frogs…no tadpole stage. They live in leaf litter…humid and moist but not near water.

New safe-sleep guidelines aim to reduce infant deaths – New guidelines have been coming out from time to time at least since my daughter was born over 30 years ago. When she was a baby, the recommendation was for babies to sleep on their tummy…very different from these current guidelines.

2021 Share the Experience Photo Contest (National Park Foundation) Winners – Special places…full of great experiences.

Los Angeles becomes the latest city to hire ‘chief heat officer’ – Miami and Phoenix as well as cities in other countries (Athens, Greece; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Monterrey, Mexico; Santiago, Chile) have similar positions.

One in 500 men carry extra sex chromosome, putting them at higher risk of several common diseases – A surprising result…most of the men were unaware they carried an extra X or Y chromosome. Those that are XXY had higher chances of reproductive problems. Both XXY and XYY individuals has higher risks of type 2 diabetes, deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Our New Neighborhood – June 2022

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There are two ponds with a ~0.5 trail around them in our Missouri neighborhood…three bridges (one at both ends and between them). One of the tangential paths from the loop passes by our back gate. I took an early morning walk – taking photos in the great morning light. A squirrel posed for me on one of the bridges.

I was glad the mowed areas are not ‘golf course’ like…lots of clover mixed in with the grasses.

There is a mallard with a broken wing that I’ve seen several times. The first time was the day the movers arrived. It was wondering around our backyard and my husband opened the gate so that it could return to the ponds. It was swimming in the water or on a muddy island in one of ponds the other times I’ve seen it. It probably cannot fly well enough to move to another location.

The edges of the ponds are not mowed….so there are plenty of taller grasses, seedlings, wild onions and other plants that make it interesting.

I stopped just before I made the last turn to my house to photograph one of the larger trees….and its reflection.

We are experiencing lots of high temperatures this week so all my walks will be on mornings when the temperature is still pleasant. I am anticipating that the short walks are going to be ‘favorites’ for my post-move life.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 18, 2022

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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.

Archaeologists Uncover Hundreds of Colorful Sarcophagi at Saqqara—and They’re Not Done Yet – The seeming endless interest in Egypt…sustained by continuing new finds.

8 cool wild cats you probably don’t know – So many wild cat variations!

Fjords emit as much methane as all the deep oceans globally – When storms churn up water in fjords….oxygenating the fjord floor…methane emissions spike. If the water mixed more frequently the methane emissions would drop because anoxic environments at the bottom of fjords would disappear.

Tree rings are evidence of megadrought – and our doom – Tree ring data indicates that the 22-year period from 2000 through 2021 was the driest and hottest in the last 1,2000 years for the North American Southwest. There was another 22-year drought from 1571-1592 that was nearly as dry but not as hot as the current drought. And the water distribution allocations were made based on a 22-year period between 1900 and 1921 that we now know was an anomalously wet period for area! Not good signs for the future.

A 3400-year-old city emerges from the Tigris River – Drought lowered the Mosul reservoir. There was a quick survey…discovery ceramic vessels with 100 cuneiform tablets…and the conservation measures to project the site as the water rose again. The site is now completely submerged.

Fifty years later, Kim Phuc Phan Thi is more than ‘Napalm Girl’ – One of the most iconic photos of the Vietnam war…still makes be as emotional now as the first time I saw it. She says – To confront violence head-on…’the first step is to look at it.’

Two articles about the flooding in Yellowstone: Repairing and reopening Yellowstone National Park won’t be easy and Extreme flooding devastates Yellowstone, forcing the closure of all park entrances – Very sad….also scary.

Wildlife bedtime: weird nesting habits of North American wildlife – Black bears, black-footed ferrets, jumping spiders, bald-faced hornets, and red-sided garter snakes.

How Vivian Maier, the Enigmatic Nanny Who Took 150,000 Photographs, Found Her Place in History – Street photographer…that only became known after a storage locker of her photographs/negatives was auctioned off when she couldn’t make the payments on it.

Zapping orange peel oil into new, pleasant aroma compounds – I’ve always liked the smell and taste of orange peel (I buy organic oranges and use the whole orange!) but evidently the compound that is in orange peel, limonene, can be the starting platform for other scents as well.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 11, 2022

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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.

Dramatic Short Film Explores the Secret World of Microscopic Plankton – Video and photographs…the beauty of the very small.

“Legacy Pollution” to be cleaned up in seven national parks – I am pleased that it is being cleaned up…chagrined that taxpayers are paying for it rather than the oil companies.

Dandelion chemistry: diuretics and the tires of the future – Redeeming qualities of what we normally consider weeds that are menace! I’ve come to appreciate them more over the years because they are edible (my grocery story has the leaves in their organic section occasionally) and their roots are deep enough to hold soil better than turf on a slope.

Infant formula: the superfood you never think about – One of my grandmothers discovered she was unable to breastfeed her babies….and that was well before commercial formula was available. Whatever recipe she used to create ‘formula’ worked. I suspect that one of the ingredients was evaporated milk. Her 9 children thrived…some into their 90s. What happened in the US recently with infant formula reminds us how dependent we are on modern technology that has become increasingly complex…and sometimes without enough redundancy/alternatives when failures occur.

Ancient tree in Chile could be the world’s oldest – A cypress that could be more than 5,000 years old.

Hot-blooded T. rex and cold-blooded Stegosaurus: Chemical clues reveal dinosaur metabolisms – Honing the analysis of how quickly they could turn oxygen to energy.  

Ancient ochre mine uncovered in Wyoming – Around 13,000 years ago, Paleoindians mined hematite at the site…and used it to produce red ochre.

Photos of the week – May 27, 2002 – Spring prairie flowers/seeds from the Prairie Ecologist.

What can and can’t be recycled – Thinking about recycling….now that I am moving to Missouri, I need to figure out the rules for curbside recycling. I already know there are some differences from Maryland.

Type 2 diabetes accelerates brain aging and cognitive decline – A scary result since there are so many people with type 2 diabetes….and currently doctors don’t have brain based biomarkers for type 2 diabetes or treatment strategies that target neurocognitive declines.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 4, 2022

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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.

Under Water and Under Pressure – 100 national parks are coastal…and are already taking action to mitigate sea level rise.

Where do ‘Hawaiian box jellies’ come from? – Evidently the box jellies appear close to shore like clockwork 8-10 days after full moon. This research reveal that the jellies are spawning during that time…and where they are when they not close to shore. This is important for providing better information to ocean swimmers and beach goers…trying to avoid stings. Another benefit…learning to keep the food web balanced to control box jelly numbers in Hawaii and other tropical localities.

Stirring up a mid-Atlantic bloom – Lots of nutrients flowing into the water from the coastal watersheds during spring rainstorms.

Vancouver requires gas stations & parking lots without EV chargers to pay $10,000 per year – Interesting idea…hope it increases the number of chargers and the trend to EVs!

Photography In The National Parks: More Favorite Places For Photography - We’re not going to be traveling to any of the western parks near term….so I enjoyed them through these photographs: Crater Lake, Redwood, Yosemite, Great Basin, and Lewis and Clark (Washington state portion).

Maya tooth treatments may have prevented infection – In the Mayan world - holes were drilled to attach stones to teeth; an analysis of the sealant used for 8 teeth from across the Maya empire (AD 200-900) revealed that most sealants included ingredients from pine trees that have been shown to fight the bacteria that cause tooth decay.

Top 25 birds of the week: Forest Birds – I always like bird pictures….

Scientists recreate Cleopatra’s favorite perfume – Recreating Mendesian perfume…the result so far has been a strong, spicy, faintly musty scent that tended to linger longer than modern fragrances…with ingredients like desert date oil, myrrh, cinnamon, and pine resin.

Grand Canyon of Texas – I remember (tent) camping in Palo Duro Canyon in the 1970s on the way to Colorado…being very hot and worried that our tent was too close to a red ant bed! At the time, I didn’t realize that it is the second largest canyon in the US (behind Arizona’s Grand Canyon).

Why humans get less sleep than other primates – A different type of sleep research…teasing out the differences in sleep of humans and other primates….and between non-industrial human populations and industrial human populations. It turns out that in the human populations…the hours of sleep are about the same but the perception of getting enough sleep is higher in the non-industrial populations than the industrial ones!

Our Maryland Neighborhood

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I took an early morning walk in our neighborhood – down to the water retention pond…savoring the familiar sights and sounds. The first was our oak near our mailbox. It was a much smaller tree when we moved to the house over 25 years ago. I planted day lilies around its base about 10 years ago; they never get a chance to bloom because the deer eat the buds like candy but the leaves make a lush collar for the tree that keeps the mowers from damaging the trunk.

I took pictures of some of my favorite trees against the morning sky/shadow – maple, ginkgo and oak. The maples are thriving while the oaks are declining. The builder planted one of each near the street originally.

The ginkgo is near the street in one of the yards along the way to the pond. It leans a little toward the street.

At the pond, cattails were thick with old and new growth, the red winged blackbirds and green frogs (rubber band sound) were noisy, and I appreciated once again that the slopes are no longer mowed.

I managed to photograph a female red winged blackbird and a rather scruffy looking fledgling that she was feeding. The fledgling stayed down in the cattails more than the adult.

I took a picture of the oak overhead as I sat on the bench near the pond. It is a lot like ours…more dead branches than it should have.

The arborist that worked on our sycamore and plum talked about the oaks dying…that making sure they are watered is about all you can do to help prolong their life; it looks like all the oaks in our neighborhood are experienced a slow death. The Virginia Creeper that is growing on our tree makes it looks greener than it would be on its own!

Brookside Gardens – May 2022 (2)

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Continuing the sights from a stroll through Brookside Gardens last week…

The Flamingo Flamboyance exhibit near the visitor center and conservatories is looking lusher that the pictures on the garden website.

The big leaf magnolia (I think….didn’t see a sign for it) was blooming! It was the first time I had seen the flowers – probably the botanical high point of this last visit to Brookside. Most of the time the big leaf magnolias in the forest have branches so high off the ground that it is hard to see the flowers.

The weather is still cool enough for the rose bushes to be full of blooms. The pergola has been rebuilt recently so the wisteria/climbing roses are severely trimmed…full of promise in the upcoming years with the improved structure.

Overall – the walk around Brookside was full of reminders of how much I’ve enjoyed the place over the years….so glad I had a few hours to savor it one more time before we move away.

Brookside Gardens – May 2022 (1)

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My daughter and I took a stroll through Brookside Gardens when she was here last week; we both savored it – anticipating that it would be a long time before we were back…or maybe it would be the last time. There was plenty to see…starting with the spring bulbs in the parking lot rain gardens. I noticed that the new growth in the stand of horsetails near the visitor center is a lighter green.

The new growth of ferns contrasts with the greens around it. The glossy green bushes in the background are camellias that are completely done with their blooms.

The rhododendron blooms are past their peak. There were some flowers that had been knocked off by the rains of the previous day.

The spiral walk in the 2009 anniversary garden is less distinct with the spring growth than it was in the winter.

The new sculpture made from the trunk of the sycamore that had to be cut down (uphill from the conservatory) is well done – representing some of the trees that are prevalent in our area: oaks, pines, maples.

My daughter hadn’t seen the other more recent sculpture…liked it as much as I did.

It’s easy to like flowers – big and small…lots of them to enjoy this time of year.

We didn’t go into the Tea House since there was a yoga class in progress. I settled for a cypress (with reflection) picture from the path.

Another new-to-me feature of the garden…that I photographed near the visitor center: mobile sculptures. They stand out now…will even more in the winter!

More about our visit to Brookside tomorrow….

Unique Aspects of Days – May 2022

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The majority of unique aspects of May involved our move….but I also treasured the ones that could have happened independently.

Paper or bubble wrap. After a few days of packing, I discovered I like paper better than bubble wrap most of the time. I thought when I starting packing that I would use both --- whatever I had --- and was surprised that the paper ‘won.’ As an added bonus – I bought paper made from recycled materials and it can also be recycled after our move!

Finding the top to my cake container. I had lost it several years ago and thought maybe it had somehow been discarded….but I found it again as I unloaded the old China cabinet. I’d already packed the other part so I’ll endeavor to get then back together in my new kitchen.

Last macro series of the Maryland yard. As I walked around with my macro lens…I realized that next month I’ll be doing it in a whole new place!

Selecting a real estate agent/starting the process to sell our house. While not totally unique since we have sold 3 houses previous…it was the first time in almost 28 years!

Arranging for our house to be re-carpeted. It is the first time we’ve ever replaced all the carpeting in a house.

1st box packed from the garage. I was surprised at how much of the garage fit into just a few boxes.

Getting the karate kick bag out of the basement. It was quite an effort with sand in the base…much easier to move once the sand was out.

Finding an iris that was getting ready to bloom in the chaos garden. Usually I forget they are there and the garden is not in my normal line of sight.

Male goldfinch at the feeder. I haven’t been watching the feeder as closely since we started preparing to move…so I was thrilled to glance out at the perfect time to see the bright yellow bird. I’ve seen them occasionally in previous years but this is probably my only sighting for this year.

Broken molar. It was my first broken tooth since my dentist has generally anticipated problems. I discovered when I went to the dentist that it was actually a large filling that had cracked. The solution was the same….the molar got a crown!

Macro Photography in our Maryland Yard – May 2022

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I made a last macro photography foray around our yard in Maryland --- enjoying the fullness of spring. I started with the usual moss and lichen on the trees in front.

In the front flower beds, the nine-bark bush was in bloom and the pyracantha that I thought had died several years ago has come back from the roots/is blooming.

In the chaos garden, the irises are thriving along with Virginia creeper. Under the deck, there is a fiddlehead of a Christmas fern unfurling.

I decided to not move the dried flowers from daughter’s birth over 30 years ago. They are now in a hollow of the brush pile since I have already cleaned out the compost bin. They have more color in the macro views than I expected!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 21, 2022

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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.

Amazing Photo of Wisteria Trees Looks Like a Fireworks Display – Pictures from Japan’s Ashikaga Flower Park.

New Mexico Wildfire Spawns Fire Cloud – A pyrocumulonimbus cloud formed; the vertical plume reached the tropopause….an altitude of about 12 kilometers.

Heatwaves are altering our everyday lives – The new normal but we aren’t very well prepared for it; there are some obvious adaptations that are needed – particularly to electrical networks. No one wants infrastructure to fail at a critical time.

Well-preserved iron age arrow discovered in Norway – The arrow was recovered from a glacier…iron arrowhead, sinew, tar, thread, shaft, and feather fletching was preserved. It is about 30 inches long.

Rigid waterproof coating for paper aims to reduce our dependence on plastic – Interesting…would be great if it could speed the transition away from plastic for food packaging particularly. The article said the chemicals break down over time into harmless components…but didn’t say how long that took.

Chemicals that linger for decades in your blood – So many chemicals introduced in my lifetime are probably still in my blood. I can remember the spraying of DDT for mosquitoes in the ‘60s….one instance particularly of the straying truck going down the farm road near my grandparents house as we played in the back yard. How much of my exposure do I still have…did I pass along to my daughter?

Ultraviolet light reveals radiant hidden beauty of flowers – A project during the COVID-19 pandemic…beautiful results.

Archaeologists Unearth 3,000-Year-Old Giant Statues in Sardinian Necropolis – Over 7 foot tall…with almost emotionless expression, blocky nose and deep-set eyes. The two found most recently were boxers but about two dozen others have been found since the mid-1970s: 16 boxers, 4 archers, and 5 warriors.

Top 25 birds of the week: May 2022! – Bird appreciation….a source of beauty in the world.

Disparities in natural gas leak prevalence in US urban areas – Why can’t pipeline companies do better…not wait around until regulation requires them to do it? We should be more critical of the companies that they are not actively reducing leaks in their pipelines.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 7, 2022

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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.

A Watershed Moment: Key Findings About Potential Drinking Water Contamination – The sources of contamination are varied….but the list of primary sources is relatively short.

Better residents’ health after switch to electric buses – A study from Sweden. Improved health is a benefit of electrification of transportation!

Should people get rid of their yards? – Somewhat depressing conclusion: “Most people would rather make an aesthetic choice with their lawns than an environmental one.” My plan is not to eliminate the yard in my new house but to minimize it over time with the addition of bushes along the fence and extending beds around trees and around the house.

We talk the fastest growing green jobs with LinkedIn Sr. Editor – The “job vs the environment” is changing. The “green economy’s ability to expand job opportunities is too significant to ignore.” This growth in green jobs is like the 1970s for computer related jobs – a lot of new types of jobs and many of them will extend for the duration of a career starting now.

Discover the Microscopic Wonders of Olympus’ 2021 Image of the Year Awards – Taken with light microscopes…lots of finesse preparing the specimens.

Known to be toxic for a century, lead still poisons thousands of Midwestern kids – Two things I learned from this article about the state I am moving to: Missouri is one of the four states in the Midwest that is struggling to alleviate lead poisoning in children…and it is the number one producer of lead in the US. Hope they are making progress.

Top 25 birds of the week: terrestrial birds – Always enjoy the bird photographs! This group includes a roadrunner….a bird I always associate with Texas but the photograph was taken in California!

Tests indicate bronze age daggers had a practical purpose – Evidently the daggers were thought to be ceremonial objects prior to this analysis.

Should we be eating three meals a day? – The number of meals may not be as important as consistency….and giving the body a long enough ‘fast’ time to rest.

The Great Barrier Reef through Time – Landsat Images used to illustrate recent research on the growth of the reefs as the ocean changes. Evidently the reef has been more resilient to past sea-level and temperature fluctuations than previously thought….but increased sediment input has been a bigger problem.

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge

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The Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge field trip was our second April visit to the place (I posted about our visit back in 2017: part 1, part 2). A new visitor center was under construction and the old one no longer had feeders (where we saw goldfinches last time) and the purple martin houses had been moved to another area, so we didn’t see them either. The field trip still started with a look around the visitor center grounds. It was a cool morning. There were several spring flowering trees (dogwood and redbud)…and birds flitting from the trees to the grass to the man-made structures.

We started around the auto tour route. There had been a lot of rain in the days before our field trip and the water level in the ponds was higher that I remembered. We also learned that because the area is tidal salt marsh, the water levels are not as easy to control as in some other refuges; the refuge management is challenged to maintain the marsh as sea-level is rising.

There were plenty of birds around: northern shovelers, red-winged black birds, green-winged teal, and mallards were a few I photographed.

There were relatively large numbers of great blue herons. They don’t nest at the refuge but come here for food.

There were also great and snowy egrets in mixed groups.

I took a sequence of a great egret landing.

There were bald eagles too. I photographed a scruffy looking juvenile settling on an almost submerged log.

The big surprise of the morning was a roost of black-crowned night herons. From the place we were standing…they were on the other side of large pond; they looked like fuzzy places in the trees…

I thought tent caterpillars at first! With binoculars and big camera lens, the birds were easy to identify. My husband provided a magnified/cropped image of one of the birds. There were over 70 birds roosting!

What a thrilling finale for a Bombay Hook field trip!

Phillips Landing Park

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My husband signed up us for 4 Delmarva Birding field trips as a last excursion to the eastern shore before we move to Missouri. The first field trip was at Phillips Landing Park near Laurel DE. It was a weekday so most of the other participants were retirees like us; we had two guides that were very familiar with the area…so we saw more than we would if we’d gone on our own.

Shortly after we started, my camera had a problem and I was challenged to work around it by using the eye piece rather than the screen for the rest of the morning….not what I usually do so my focusing/composition was not as good as usual even though the skew of pictures toward botanical rather than birds was probably about the same as it would have been with the camera working perfectly.

The plants are at the height of their variety in the spring with blossoms and unfurling leaves – the bright greens of mosses growing rapidly in the new warmth – unfurling ferns….good for photography although my eyes were itchy from the pollen laden air.

The high point of the botanical sightings: One of our guides pointed out a native orchid in bloom beside the path. They aren’t the large showy orchids of warmer climates; it takes a sharp eye to notice them!

There was an area near the path that looked like an egg laying site for a reptile….but something had found the eggs before they could hatch. There were eggshells among the acorns.

I did managed to photograph a few birds: courting cowbirds in the parking lot, a yellowlegs among the reeds, and a prothonotary warbler high in a tree.

The park was a good mix of habitat – watery area near the parking area (Broad Creek that flows into the Nanticoke River nearby) and a path through forest.

As we returned to our car, I saw a tiger swallowtail flit across the grassy area nearby. A good finale to a morning field trip!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 30, 2022

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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.

India’s fantastic freshwater fauna and where to find them – I was caught by the picture of the dancing frog at the top of the post. Other unusual animals featured in the rest of the post…some very different than what we see in North America.

Meat consumption must fall by at least 75% - And not just because of climate change. Health and economic effects also contribute to the rationale.

Top 25 birds of the week: birds communications – Pictures don’t impart sounds…so the post is really about bird body language.

Meet the Eastern Phoebe, the flycatchers that coexists with humans – It’s always easier to hear this bird than see it! We have one that visits our backyard almost every morning this spring.

A community of seed savers has a recipe to revive rare varieties of collard greens – I became a fan of collards in my CSA share…now I am thinking that I might try planting an heirloom variety! I like them better than kale because the big leaves are flatter – easier to roll and the cut to make slaw…or as a last ingredient into a stir fry.

U.S. has warmed by 2.6 degrees F since first Earth Day – This was my first look at this metric. Maryland is bright orange (3 degrees increase) and Missouri is white (1.5 degrees increase). Maybe another aspect of my move to Missouri could be climate related migration!

The US will phase out incandescent light bulbs – Ban takes effect in 2023…but lots of people have already made the transition to the more efficient bulbs.

Picturesque clouds of Greenland – Cloud streets and vortices.

22% of new cars in Europe have a plug! – Hurray! Hope the US will catch up sometime soon.

Spatial maps of melanoma – Diagnostics…enabling more precise medicine. Tissue samples must be supplemented with multiplexed imaging techniques to diagnose and treat melanoma more effectively.

Zooming - April 2022

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I am featuring 12 pictures this month using the zoom feature of 3 different cameras (my phone which is digital zoom, my point and shot with optical zoom, and my bridge camera with even more optical zoom).

The point and shoot provided more than half the images: Sidling Hill, the Japanese garden and some of the spring flowers. The bridge camera was used for the spring looks at redbud and tulip poplar. The phone was used for the peacock horse sculpture (at a Kentucky rest stop) and the morning light picture. Using all three of my cameras in ‘zoom’ mode was a first!

Enjoy the slide show!

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2022

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April was a whirlwind month---with more than the usual amount of drama because of our plan to move to Springfield, Missouri. More than half the little celebrations I selected for the month have to do with the move:

Finding a house we liked and getting it under contract. It was new (and high anxiety) to do the contract with only seeing it virtually…thrilling to do the walkthrough to confirm that it was THE HOUSE for us.

A good driving day is always welcome, but we particularly celebrated one of the days heading home; perhaps a sunny, spring day is balm to the stress of the drive and the anticipated events of the next few months.

Home again is always something I celebrate. This time I savored the house that has been home since October 1994…realizing that soon I would be transferring the joy of homecoming to a new place.

Initiating contact then selecting movers. This was not a single day event, but I was pleasantly surprised at virtual inventories and other options. There are some things that have changed for the better since my last long distance move in 1983.

22 boxes packed in one day. I set a goal for myself to pack 20 boxes a day for a week and I achieved that goal! I celebrated the most on the highest day (22 boxes).

There were other things to celebrate in April…

Early morning at the grocery store. I love the quiet at the store before 7 AM with spring far enough along that it is light at that time…but still full of morning color.

A medical test that found nothing. Sometimes finding nothing is worth celebrating…particularly as we get older.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

A wealth of birds. There were 4 field trips over 2 days…and we celebrated that we saw so many birds – some species in larger numbers than we had ever seen before. Stay tuned for blog posts coming next week.

Japanese Garden. I enjoyed our visit the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield MO although the celebration came afterward as I looked at my pictures (too noisy from the mowers while I was in the garden).

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

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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.

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.

Springfield Botanical Garden – April 2022

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The tulips were beginning their big bloom at the Springfield Botanical Garden when I visited in mid-April. The sunny day made their colors pop. Much of the rest of the garden may be just waking up but the tulips are in their glory.

The Master Gardeners were out working to get the demonstrations gardens prepped for the season….it was a dry day between two days of rain.

We walked over to the garden’s Botanical Center….more tulips in the planters and a surprise: columbines! It was windy but I managed to get a passable photo.