Gleanings of the Week Ending March 5, 2022

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.

Scientists develop long lasting anti-fogging coating for plastic surfaces that 'self-cleans' – It seem like the current antireflective coating on my glasses is a little ‘sticky’ – making my glasses collect particles easily…need cleaning frequently. It would be great to have something that is self-cleaning! Somehow I doubt this would eliminate the need to clean my glasses but it would be good to get back to the way glasses were before the fancy coatings!

Rare Baby Ghost Shark Caught in New Zealand’s Chatham Rise – What an odd-looking animal. There is a 3-minute video that shows adult sharks.

Deer Mice: Get to Know North America’s Most Abundant Mammal – So small we might not notice them most of the time. A good overview of deer mice. They are vectors for Lyme disease and hantavirus….but provide food for hawks, eagles, and owls…coyotes and foxes.

Lichens Are in an Evolutionary Race Against Climate Change – They can be found almost everywhere…but are very slow growing. That slow growth makes it more challenging for them to adjust to changing temperatures.

Nearly 300 Million Visited National Park System in 2021, But Most To Just 25 Parks – I’ve been to 17 of the 25!

An insulin patch that sticks inside a person’s cheek – I’m sure most diabetics that must take injections would welcome an alternative.

Covid-19 Community Levels – In case you haven’t seen it already – this site has a map of the US with the counties color coded. The county where I live and the counties around it are green.

Bronze Age burial mound discovered in England – In Oxford…under traces of St. Mary’s College built in the 15th century.

Surprise small-cell lung cancer discovery suggests new treatment – New work from University of Virginia Health System (which was designated a Comprehensive Cancer Center on Feb. 1).

An Ornate, 5,000-Year-Old Stone Drum Is the U.K.’s Most Significant Prehistoric Art Find in a Century – Found buried alongside skeletons of 3 children cuddled together.  

eBotanical Prints – February 2022

21 botanical print books browsed in February and added to the list. The month continued the browsing of Peter Henderson’s “Everything for the Garden” catalogs that I started in January. It’s easy to image people looking at these catalogs in the winters of the first half of the 1900s and planning their gardens. There are books dedicated to conifers and lilacs, two from Yokohama Nursery, and two about wild gardens. The last two books in February were the start another series…the rest will be in the March group.

The whole list of 2,331 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the February 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

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

Everything for the garden, 1926 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1926

Everything for the garden, 1928 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1928

Everything for the garden, 1932 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1932

Everything for the garden, 1934 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1934

Everything for the garden, 1936 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1936

Everything for the garden, 1938 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1938

Everything for the garden, 1940 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1940

Everything for the garden, 1945 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1945

Everything for the garden, 1948 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1948

Everything for the garden, 1950 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1950

Everything for the garden, 1951 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1952

Everything for the garden, 1952 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 952

Hortus Veitchii : a history of the rise and progress of the nurseries of Messrs. James Veitch and sons * Veitch, James Herbert * sample image * 1906

Veitch's manual of the coniferae * Kent, Adolphus Henry; Veitch, James Herbert * sample image * 1900

The Lilac * McKelvey, Susan Delano * sample image * 1928

Descriptive catalogue of flowering, ornamental trees, shrubs, bulbs, herbs, climbers, fruit trees (1909-1914) * Yokohama Ueki Kabushiki Kaisha * sample image * 1914

The Yokohama Nursery Co., Ltd  - 1898 * Yokohama Ueki Kabushiki Kaisha * sample image * 1898

Taming the wildings * Durand, Herbert * sample image * 1923

The Wild Garden * Robinson, William * sample image * 1883

Refugium botanicum V1 * Saunders, William Wilson; Reichbach, Heinrich Gustav; Baker, John Gilbert; Fitch, W. H. * sample image * 1869

Refugium botanicum V2 * Saunders, William Wilson; Reichbach, Heinrich Gustav; Fitch, W. H. * sample image * 1872

Unique Aspects of Days – February 2022

Snow on turkey tails. I always look for turkey tails/shelf fungus when I am hiking…and enjoy photographing them. This month was my first time to photograph them with snow!

Finding some new office tools – Microsoft PowerToys. My office environment is well established so it is very unusual for me to look for new tools and unique for me to find more than one new tool that makes what I do easier. Microsoft PowerTools was a great find. The tools I am using frequently now are Image resize and Power rename.

Miniature potted rose for Valentines. I was thinking of potted tulips or hyacinths when I went shopping (not realizing that it was too early for both of them)…but found a miniature rose instead. It’s a unique purchase and my husband and I are enjoying it in our kitchen window. It already has a new bud opening. I’ll plant it outside after the last frost.

Frost crystals. I have been thrilled to discover how many kinds of frost crystals there are. At some point they will become familiar to me, but February 2022 is my first concentrated effort to look at them frequently enough to see the variations!

People smoking in the grocery store parking garage. Not all unique experiences are positive. As I came out of the grocery store one morning, there were two separate people standing near their cars smoking and working on the phones. They were on the side of the garage closest to the store – maybe using the store’s Wi-Fi or maybe they were waiting for someone that was shopping. I could smell the smoke from one of them as I walked to my car and loaded my groceries even though I was still wearing my mask! It reminded me of years ago when people smoked around the entrances to office buildings, but isn’t something I’ve experienced in recent years…and it hasn’t happen on subsequent shopping trips. I glad it was a unique experience for 2022 (so far).

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 26, 2022

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.

After a shaky start, airborne wind energy is slowing taking off – Another way electricity might be generated in the future…but still a lot of work to be done.

Crews working to cull 600-900 bison from Yellowstone’s herds – I guess this happens every year at this time…even though in the rationale to cap the Yellowstone herd at 5,000 animals involved the mistaken idea that the bison were spreading brucellosis to cattle herds (research has shown that it is elk that spread the disease).

What damaged that tree? Probably not what you think – I guessed correctly….but only because I had seen something similar on a tree during a naturalist led hike…and they had identified the animal that make the marks!

The mystery of Mexico’s vanishing stream oaks – A great piece of trivia: Mexico has more species of oak tree than any other country! The article is about trying to save one of those species.

Three in four people worldwide support a ban on single-use plastic – Wide support…but no clear path on how we can do it. As a consumer – I try to avoid single use plastics, but some products don’t come in any other kind of packaging!

Seeing ‘green’ can ease confusion, anger in navigating hospitals – It’s not just hospitals that could use more natural views and ‘green.’

Top 25 birds of the week: waterbirds and seabirds – Terns, scoters, herons, gulls, cormorants, ducks, spoonbills, kingfishers, sandpipers, plovers, grebes…enjoy the photographs!

Warming temperatures are turning Antarctica green – Another indicator of how fast the Earth is changing….and that even Antarctica is not immune.

Drought depletes a reservoir in Spain, revealing a ghost village – The dam was installed in 1992 so this is not an old reservoir. The US is having similar drought related problems with Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam installed in 1935.

After 25 years at sea, shipwrecked Lego pieces are still washing ashore on beaches in England – Plastic is very durable…the pictures of the small Lego pieces still look pristine. Some of the pieces sank…some floated…they are all moving around and, very slowly, breaking down either in the ocean or on the beaches of Cornwall.

Daniel Giraud Elliot’s Bird eBooks

Daniel Giraud Elliot was a founder of the American Ornithologist Union and its 2nd President in 1890. I browsed through 7 of his well-illustrated books about birds from the later 1800s. Taxonomy has changed over the years, so they are not the ‘references’ they were when first published. But - they are historically interesting…part of the the uptick in documentation of the world’s flora and fauna in the 1800s. I looked at the illustrations as ‘art’ and wondered how many of the bird species depicted no longer exist. Enjoy the sample images…and take a look at some of the volumes via the provided links.

A Monograph of the paradiseidae or birds of paradise (1873)

A monograph of the Pittida, or family of ant-thrushes (1895)

Thinking about our previous houses…and the next one

I am thinking about the houses my husband and I have lived in during our almost 50 years of marriage. The first one was in Plano, Texas – purchased about 5 years after we got married. It had almost no insulation and single pane windows…4 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen/dining, living room and 2 car garage. It was all electric. It was brick and siding; I painted the siding and under the eaves (and learned that I never wanted to do that again!). The hot water heater was in the garage and was the only item we had to replace in our 5 years in the house.

The second house was in Springfield, Virginia – the result of our both getting career advancing jobs in the area and the organizations paid for the long-distance move. We moved in July and the air conditioner broke down about 2 weeks afterwards. The house had been built in the 1950 but insulation and storm/double paned windows had been added. It was our first house with a basement – and that was where the washer/dryer hook ups were. It had 4 bedrooms (one in the basement), 2 bathrooms, kitchen/dining, dining/living, den in basement, and a carport. It had a gas furnance, water heater and stove. I was thrilled to have big trees in the yard – oak and beech so large a person could not reach around them! I trimmed the boxwood in November … made boxwood wreaths with the trimmings. There was a dogwood that grew beside the patio. We had the roof done and the siding painted during our three years in the house.

The next move was across the Potomac into Maryland because my husband’s commute had become painfully long from Virginia his new job in Baltimore. The house was newer…built with good insulation and double paned windows. It was a Colonial with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs; living/dining, half bath, kitchen/breakfast area, and den on the first floor; finished room downstairs for an office; and a 2-car garage. It was our first house with a deck rather a patio. It took longer to get into the house after we bought it since the people selling it were buying a house and there were delays. We rented an apartment for about 6 months; that difficulty clouded the 7 years we spent in the house. We moved to out of it before it was sold.

Our fourth house is the one we are in now – for over 27 years. The house was only about 3 years old when we bought it…a Colonial again. It has 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and a loft upstairs; living/dining, office, half bath, kitchen/breakfast area, laundry room, and den on the first floor; a single large finished room and bathroom in the walkout basement; 2 car garage; large deck with part being roofed/screened. I love the view of the forest behind the house from my office window.

And now – we are in the beginning stage of planning for a second long distance move and a fifth house. This time the rationale is to live closer to our daughter/son-in-law (so moving from Maryland to Missouri). We are getting started this week: getting an estimate for some house painting, having a charity pick up a porch full of small furniture/household items we no longer need, and taking a carload of stuff to the county electronics and metal recycle. The things I want in my next house are a mix of what I’ve had in my previous houses:

  • All electric (like my first house) or a path to get there

  • Big trees (like my second and fourth house)

  • Window over the sink (like all four houses)

  • A 2-car garage (like three of the four houses)

  • Being able to live on one floor (like my first house)

  • Double paned windows and good insulation (like the last two houses)

  • A laundry room on the same floor as the bedrooms (like the first house)

  • A screened deck (like current house) or a garden room

  • A good view from my office window (like current house)

  • High speed internet (like current house)

There are some new things we are looking for this time too:

  • Being able to do astronomy from the backyard

  • Roof aligned and unshaded enough for solar panels

  • Within a 30 minute or less drive from our daughter

There will be a lot more about this project over the next few months!

Two Frosts

I watched the forecast for some cold morning temperatures and put a red glass plate out on the deck the night before the temperature for the next morning was forecast for 23 degrees. The idea was to get some frost accumulation on the glass for some macro photography. It worked - even thought the crystals were relatively small. One of my first attempts was an almost round structure…at two different magnifications.

Then I surveyed the rest of the plate and noticed crystals like feathers, spikes that branched off in all directions, other round collections of crystals that looked like a splash or explosion.

I couldn’t resist taking some pictures of the crystals on the deck railing. They were small; the pictures below are with my macro lens and then with my phone digitally magnifying that 8x!

The next morning was even colder – 17 degrees. At first, I thought there was no frost at all on the plate but when I looks more closely there were some very small areas of crystals. I immediately thought the crystals looked like small organisms in water (rather than ice crystals).

Then I spotted one that looked like a butterfly on a flower with its wings folded. The mind jumps to ‘looks like’ type thinking!

A little less magnification and the sheets of ice with spikes (I imaged cactus) are interspersed with the smaller organism-looking structures.

The temperature and dew point probably make a big different in the type of frost crystals that form. Photographing them has become my favorite February project! So far – each day has been unique.

A Winter Hike at Mt. Pleasant (2)

Continuing my outdoors photography at Howard Country Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant….

The nature center has a lot of windows and they have been upgraded to make them more visible to birds…prevent bird strikes. The upgrade enhanced the place as a nature center – featuring an owl, a curled up fox, cattails, and milkweed with a Monarch butterfly.

I did a close of two butterfly images on the glass (tiger swallowtail and monarch).

And then a macro shot to show the small holes.

While I had the macro lens on my phone – I took pictures of some of the rock façade of the nature center.

I’d put the lens back in my pocket before I walked over to the area near the Honors garden for some more close ups: an old pump with rusting pins holding the handle in place and the lichen growing on a split rail fence nearby.

On the way back to the car, I put the macro lens back on my phone and took pictures of the witch hazel blooming beside the drive to the old farmhouse. The ribbon-like petals are unusual and last a long time. It might be my favorite tree at Mt. Pleasant!

Overall – the two photographic highpoints of my time at Mt. Pleasant were the skunk cabbage and witch hazel!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 19, 2022

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.

Study recommends six steps to improve our water quality – The study focused on nitrogen pollution.

The cells that give you super-immunity – Memory B cells were first discovered in the 1960s….but there is still a lot we are learning about them as we analyze the data from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chicken Frenzy: A State Awash in Hog Farms Faces a Poultry Boom – Ugh! Hope North Carolina can figure out how to keep their groundwater and waterways from being polluted. It’s a beautiful state and it saddens me that the intensive hog and poultry production has not developed technology to be friendly to their immediate environment….or any place that is down stream from where they are located.

What’s the Weirdest Animal Courtship? Here Are 4 Candidates – A post that came out on Valentine’s Day.

Heart-disease risk soars after COVID – even with a mild case – Heart disease was already one of the chronic conditions common for a lot of people in later life… now with COVID, the numbers of people are going to increase and the age demographics are skewing younger.

Enhanced forensic test confirms Neolithic fisherman died by drowning – A skeleton from a 5,000-year-old mass grave on the coast of Northern Chile was analyzed with methods used for more recent bones to determine if a person drowned in salt water….and the method worked!

The mysteries of the Ponderosa Pine – The complex relationships between the health of pine forests and: birds, low-severity fire, squirrels, mushrooms, and carbon storage. Forests are complex!

The science of healthy baby sleep - A little history…and the bottom line: there is NOT just one correct approach to how infants should sleep.

Feeling dizzy when you stand up? Simple muscle techniques can effectively manage symptoms of initial orthostatic hypotension – There might be more validation that needs to be done across a wider demographic range…..hope this happens and if it works for a wide range of people so that doctors can immediately start encouraging their patients that have initial orthostatic hypertension (IOH) to use the simple moves before and immediately after they stand up.

Do you know the world weirdest wild pigs? – The post includes 5 of the 18 wild pig species. The only one in North America is the Africa Red River Hog – one was caught in a trap set for feral hog control in Texas (2019); there are evidently Texas game ranches advertising ‘hunts’ for red river hogs which indicates they have been intentionally imported and there has been at least one escapee from one of those ranches! Is there a free-ranging population of African River Hogs reproducing in the wilds of Texas?

J. Walter Fewkes eBooks

I browsed the books by Jesse Walter Fewkes available on Internet Archive recently. His work in the late 1800s - early 1900s is an early record of the archeology and anthropology in the American Southwest. He was one of the first to advocate for government preservation of the ancient sites. I’ve chosen three of his books to feature in this post.

Designs on Prehistoric Hopi Pottery (1919) – When I browse books like this, I am always gleaning ideas for Zentangle tiles. This one also brought back memories of participating in Camp Fire Girls when I was growing up; they included native symbols and geometric designs as part of the program which I enjoyed; it made the arts/crafts were appealing someone like me that was disappointed in any attempts at realistic drawing.

Hopi Katcinas Drawn by Native Artists (1904) – I wonder if Fewkes was one of the first to encourage these artists to document their own culture…emphasizing the aspects that were most important to them rather than using other artists from outside the culture or photographs that might be realistic but subtly emphasizing the aspects important from their own cultural perspective.

Tusayan Katcinas and Snake Ceremonies (1897) – The close of the katcina mask shows how elaborate they could be.

The views of the Altar of the Antelope Priests in 3 different locations were interesting. It’s an opportunity to see  similarities and differences…wondering if it was difference in the progress of the ceremony or variance due to location that caused the altars to look different. Are the parts that are the same the most important?

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 12, 2022

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.

Why the Dutch embrace floating homes – Maybe other coastal areas around the world should be looking at this kind of development…or mitigation strategy. Otherwise - there is going to be a lot of migration away from coasts that will become more and more prone to flooding in the decades to come.

New Antarctic Penguin Colonies Discovered Further South than Normal – Good news for the Gentoo penguins - there is more space on Antarctica now; previously the areas were too icy for these birds. On the downside – there is less area suitable for penguin species that previously lived there and there might be less food available for them all as warming continues.

Three people with spinal-cord injuries regained control of their leg muscles – There has been a lot of research in this area over the past decade; perhaps we are coming to a point where rapid advances are going to be made.

Why to flickers knock on your house? – Not just why they knock but other interesting behavior…made me consider putting up a flicker box to give them a place to raise young.

Dog feces and urine could be harming nature reserves – A study providing rationale for requiring dogs on leashes and owners removing their dog’s feces in natural areas.

Top 25 birds of the week: February 2022 – My favorite this week is the Great White Pelican. Somehow pictures of birds from the front like this always give them a rather assertive appearance.

US household air conditioning use could exceed electric capacity in next decade due to climate change – Not good. Implementation of mitigation strategies need to ramp up quickly. As an individual homeowner, I am thinking: 1) increase efficiency (heat pump or geothermal, more insulation, solar screens on any window getting full sun sometime during the day, maybe upgrade windows/doors) and 2) solar panels on the roof with storage battery.

Threats from QAnon conspiracists force butterfly sanctuary to close – Sad. My husband and I visited the butterfly sanctuary on a rainy day during the Rio Grande Birding Festival in 2017; it wasn’t a good day for butterflies, but we always thought we’d come back on a warmer/sunnier day during some future visit to the area --- then the border wall and the conspiracists has ended it all.

More spice could help seniors avoid salt – Yes! Lemon pepper (the kind without salt in it) is one of my favorites…and any of the components that come under the heading of ‘Italian seasoning.’ I dry my own orange peel (any time I eat an organic orange…the peel gets processed and dried). It helps to use fresh ingredients too (i.e. avoid no-salt version from cans…they have never tasted good to me no matter how they are prepared).

Star Bright: What are Dark Sky Reserves? – Staunton River  (where we’ve been for ‘star parties’) is a Certified IDA International Dark Sky Park….maybe we’ll visit one of the Reserves post-pandemic. Right now – the closest one to us is the one in Canada (just north of Vermont/Maine).

Palmer Cox’s Brownies

Palmer Cox (1840-1924) was a Canadian illustrator and author who created a series of Brownie books (humous verse books with comic drawings of mischievous but kind-hearted small creatures). His creations were so popular that one of the first hand-held cameras was named after them (the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera). His unique house in Quebec was named Brownie Castle. The characters are in individual costumes, sometimes very stereotypical…but they work together on their endeavors. The books depict positive interactions of very diverse individuals! The plaque on his tombstone reads: In creating the Brownies he bestowed a priceless heritage on childhood.

I browsed 6 Brownie books over the past couple of months – freely available on Internet Archive/Project Gutenberg.

The Brownies: their Book (1887)

A Decade of Post-career

I left my career behind 10 years ago this month…and am still savoring the near total self-determination I have in how I spend my days. My self-discipline has always been very strong…and it still is. There are rhythms that I maintain reenforced by personal metrics (when I sleep/eat, hygiene, exercise, reading/writing) but there is plenty of time for activities that make the days, weeks, months, and years into a mix of old and new experiences that suit my wants and needs.

My daughter was already in graduate school at the beginning of the decade. I used her graduate school, post doc, and first job as part of the framework for my own exploration of new places: Tucson AZ, State College PA, Pittsburgh PA, and Springfield MO.  I got significant experience in packing up for long distance moves too. Now that she is engaged in her career and has purchased a house, she may live in the same place for longer. My husband and I enjoyed a trip to Hawaii with her – a follow up to her visit there on a geology field trip and then conference. We travelled to Florida for 2 NASA launches from Cape Canaveral…invited by my daughter for NASA programs she had supported: MAVEN (2013) and OSIRIS Rex (2016).

My parents entered their 90s toward the end of decade; I’ve endeavored to spend more time in Texas enabling, with my sisters, ‘aging in place’ – living almost independently in the house they’ve been in since the early 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, they were still doing some traveling although no longer driving long distances (they flew or let others do the driving): to visit us in Maryland at cherry blossom time in 2012, to visit my daughter in Tucson (with me and my sister doing the driving between Dallas and Tucson) in 2013, to Oklahoma to visit family and their friends from college in 2017 (with me as the primary chauffer), to Springfield MO to visit my daughter in 2019 (with my sister getting them to Oklahoma to visit family and then my daughter/me chauffeuring them to Springfield MO, they flew back to Dallas). The most unique experience of all that travel was their sighting of a gila monster in the back of the Tucson vacation rental house. The pandemic and their physical limitations have kept them close or at home for the past couple of years.

My husband and I discovered Birding Festivals during the decade: Bosque del Apache (NM) in 2016 and 2018, Rio Grande Valley (TX) in 2017, Space Coast (FL) in 2019, Laredo (TX) in 2020. We’ve enjoyed day trip birding events too…mostly in Maryland but occasionally into Delaware. They are a very appealing combination of travel, nature photography, and, of course, birding. During the pandemic we ‘made do’ with virtual festivals – not the same but still engaging.

The Staunton River Star Parties (VA) were an extension of my husband’s interest in amateur astronomy and prompted a flurry of purchases to enable camping on the observing field.  The weather cooperated in October 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 – and then the pandemic squashed that activity.

Coursera started up near the beginning of the decade and I enjoyed taking courses on topics that hadn’t been on the critical path toward getting my college degrees back in the 1970s and early 1980s; I moved on to other types of courses but returned to the platform at the beginning of the pandemic and probably will do courses sporadically when there is something that catches my interest. I enjoyed the intense Master Naturalist (2015) and Howard County Legacy Leadership for the Environment (2018) classroom-based courses and the follow-up advanced education courses/webinars in subsequent years.

Volunteering became a good way for me to ‘give back’ to my community, increase interactions with other people (particularly K-12 students and the general public), and increase the time I spend outdoors. It was ramping up throughout the decade until COVID-19 and now I am looking for opportunities to restart.

What is likely to happen during my second decade post-career?  There will be more of the same for several years (hopefully, minus continuing impact from COVID-19 or some other pandemic) with a flurry of activity making a long-distance move to a new home closer to our daughter. By the end of the decade, my parents will be over 100 years old if they are still alive. I hope that my health will still be about the same as it is now or that the accommodations I need to make are relatively easy; I am anticipating that I’ll need to have cataract surgery (and be thrilled to not need glasses for the first time since 3rd grade). There is a lot to look forward to!

Cancer Diary – Entry 12

4 weeks after surgery:

  • The surgical glue has flaked off the incision. I collected the bigger pieces and did a round of macro photography – commemorating the milestone – before throwing them away. The texture of the glue varied…crinkled, fibrous, crystalline. Blood that became embedded in it provided some color.

  • I’ve started putting Vitamin E and cocoa butter on the scar to help it fade over time (and am keeping it protected from exposure to sunlight).

  • The hematoma is mostly gone. The speed of the ‘clean up’ increased over the last week.  

  • On a not-so-positive note – I’ve been celebrating too much with food and my weight has started to creep upward…starting work to reverse that and continue on my plan to reduce 5+ pounds from my weight at the beginning of the year.

This with be the last Cancer Diary post unless something else happens. Right now -  the prognosis is good with continued monitoring tests to confirm. All the baseline tests indicate that the cancer was caught early and that my ongoing risk is low.

My experience has prompted me to think about what ‘good medical care’ means….what led to the early diagnosis and treatment. Looking back…it was a 12-year progression from a blood test revealing a risk factor prompting annual monitoring blood tests and ultrasounds. There was a biopsy with a benign result 6 years ago….and lastly a biopsy that revealed the cancer last fall. My primary care doctor coordinated all the monitoring until 2 years ago; I opted to go to a specialist thereafter. The specialist recommended the surgeon. Of the three, the specialist is the best at sharing his rationale of monitoring and treatment….and that is something I have come to appreciate more over the past few months.

Previous cancer diary posts:

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 5, 2022

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.

Oyster Hatcheries Help the Industry Adapt to Climate Change – There are lots of aspects of climate change that impact oysters – making mitigation more complex. The industry is trying to be proactive as problems are recognized.

Could COVID-19 still be affecting us in decades to come? – A summary of some research particularly about brain function/Parkinsons and diabetes relationship with COVID-19 just beginning…there is so much we don’t know yet.

The porcupine’s winter in slow-motion – How do porcupines in Alaska survive being out and about in the winter?

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Interactions – Mostly adults of the same species…but there are a few with different species and the first image is a pair of young owls (siblings).

2,000-Year-Old Roman Bowl Discovered Intact in the Netherlands – Blue glass that look like it could have been made very recently.

Locations of ancient Maya sacred groves of cacao trees discovered – History of cacao (chocolate) trees…grown around sinkholes…so special that the beans were used a currency.

Monarch butterfly numbers soar in California after dramatic losses – It’s great to have some good news about Monarchs….but they’re still a species that needs our help.

AccuWeather shares how an electric school bus fares in Alaska – Evidently the bus has done well even at -48 degrees Fahrenheit!

Musings from the parks: Navigating National, Wild, Recreational, and Scenic Rivers – Prompted by a proposal to refine limits on the horsepower boaters can use in Ozark Scenic Riverways in Missouri…a look at regulations at other rivers in the National Park System. I’d prefer that we begin the transition to electric motors (if motors are allowed at all) rather than only focusing on horsepower.

Epidemiologists develop advanced state-of-the-art tool for measuring the pace of aging – A blood test to measure the pace of biological aging…with the possibility of identifying interventions that would slow aging… and attempt to build aging health equity.

eBotanical Prints – January 2022

20 botanical print books browsed in January and added to the list. The month started with two flower books and one about forests in Japan. Then I found Peter Henderson’s handbook and years of catalogs from his seed business. The catalogs intrigued me. How many of the varieties of celery and melons and peppers and tomatoes…berries and flowers are still available? Some of these varieties would be considered heirloom now and prized because the seeds are suitable to save and grow in next year’s garden. I still have more of the old catalogs to browse in February; it’s a good time to be thinking about a garden.

The whole list of 2,309 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the January 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

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

The Flower-Finder * Walton, George Lincoln * sample image * 1914

Flowers Shown to Children * Kelman, Janet Harvey; Smith, C.E. * sample image * 1910

Forest Flora of Japan * Sargent, Charles Sprague * sample image * 1894

Henderson's Handbook of plants and general horticulture * Henderson, Peter * sample image * 1890

Everything for the garden, 1925 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1925

Everything for the garden, 1899 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1899

Everything for the garden, 1937 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1937

Everything for the garden, 1933 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1933

Everything for the garden, 1946 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1946

Everything for the garden, 1901 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1901

Everything for the garden, 1902 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1902

Everything for the garden, 1904 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1904

Everything for the garden, 1905 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1905

Everything for the garden, 1906 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1906

Everything for the garden, 1908 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1908

Everything for the garden, 1910 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1910

Everything for the garden, 1913 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1913

Everything for the garden, 1916 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1916

Everything for the garden, 1919 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1919

Everything for the garden, 1922 * Peter Henderson & Co * sample image * 1922

Cancer Diary – Entry 11

The doctor that referred me for cancer surgery scheduled a follow up appointment for about 2.5 weeks after the surgery - assuming the surgeon would complete his role at about 2 weeks after the surgery (which I posted about in the 10th Cancer Diary post). The appointment with the doctor that will continue my care is the most recent milestone in my journey with cancer and getting treatment. He confirmed that I would not need radiation/chemo and ordered blood lab tests immediately and developed a plan for the next year: periodic blood tests and an ultrasound in a year. I am pleased that my cancer was caught early enough that I am on track to be ‘cured’ rather than living with cancer for the rest of my life.

It was bitterly cold the day of the appointment…but I was buoyed by the results I already knew from the surgeon and the continued fading of the hematoma/healing of the incision. The doctor provided excellent feedback and answered questions…the tech that did the blood draw did a great job getting the needle in smoothly then filling the multiple vials of blood required. On the way out of the building, I stopped for a few seconds to photograph the garden that looked so inviting when the weather was warmer; the fountain is turned off now and it’s too cold to linger but I still like the look of the place. I hurried to my car, thoroughly chilled, but appreciating the time out in the world, away from home. I celebrated that the appointment had been early enough that I got a close parking space!

I am so buoyed by the results that I am feeling more optimistic than I have all during the pandemic; I realize that, even though I was consciously reminding myself that the cancer had been detected early, I experienced a deep anxiety about it that became part of everything I was thinking and doing for the past few months.  Now I’ve started wearing earrings again (when I am not going to be taking a mask off and on), buying flowers every week at the grocery story and making multiple arrangements to place everywhere in the house. This is a time of celebration…a time to be happy that I am healthy and enjoying winter 2022.

Previous cancer diary posts:

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 29, 2022

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.

Photography In the National Parks: My 10 Favorite Shots From 2021 – I only went to one national park in 2021: New River Gorge (in West Virginia). There are so many beautiful National Parks to see…and they’re worth seeing again and again.

Big Gulp: Blue Catfish Eat Wood Duck – We’ve seen fishermen catch blue catfish at the base of Conowingo Dam (we’re there for the bald eagles). They are huge…sorry to learn that they eat ducks.

Top 25 birds of the week: Raptors! – How many of these live in your area of the world?

Air Pollution Makes It Harder for Bees to Sniff Out Flowers – Not just a problem for bees…also moths, hoverflies and butterflies are having a harder time. This results in a 14-31% reduction in pollination among plants exposed to polluted air.

Ocean microplastic pollution may be greater than estimated – Not a good trend…and this form of pollution that is new enough that the full impact is still being discovered.

With Fewer Animals to Move Their Seeds, Plants Are Stuck in Threatened Habitats – Another way the world is becoming less resilient at a time when climate change is pushing all life to use all the resilience available.

Large Permian Basin Methane Leaks Are Causing As Much Climate Pollution as 500,000 Cars – It’s frustrating that the oil industry has not been a better steward of resources they are extracting for energy. The methane leaks are a waste of the effort put into extraction….and bad for the planet too.

Dinosaur food and Hiroshima bomb survivors: maidenhair trees are ‘living fossils’ and your new favorite plant – Learn more about the ginkgo tree! There is one along my walking route in my neighborhood and others I find in local gardens and parks near where I live. They are so different from other trees…worth noticing.

North Sea Fossil Fuel Companies Plan to Invest More in Wind than Oil Drilling – Hurray! Maybe other companies around the world begin to do this too….a strategic move for Shell, Total and BP.

Antimicrobial resistance now a leading cause of death worldwide, study finds – This challenge will increase over time…if we don’t take action to slow the development of resistance and develop new antimicrobial techniques (maybe we need more strategies than simply trying to develop new antibiotics).

Paleontology of Missouri

The late 1800s were a time of paleontology and geology publications across the US…and Missouri was no exception. Internet Archive has Charles Rollin Keyes’ two part Paleontology of Missouri (volume 1, volume 2). Keyes was the State Geologist of Missouri when they were published in 1894. Both volumes have plates after the main text of the volume.

I am interested in the paleontology of Missouri since my daughter now lives there. My idea was to learn as much about the paleontology and geology and natural history of Missouri as I know about the state where I grew up (Texas) and the one where I’ve lived for more than 20 years (Maryland). These volumes blend paleontology and a historical perspective because of when they were written.

According to Wikipedia, Keyes got his PhD in 1892 from Johns Hopkins University (i.e. in Baltimore, Maryland) and worked for the states of Iowa and Missouri…later he was the President of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (Socorro, NM).

High Key Flowers

I’ve been buying flowers every time I go to the grocery story since the beginning of the year – so there were several different arrangements availablefor my indoor high key photo shoot. My set up was all in my home office…the plants on a small table or the window ledge…the bright sunlight on the other side of the window. The objective is arrange situations where like is coming behind the subject and to overexpose enough that the background goes to white. I sat in an office chair on the opposite side of the room – usually with the camera on my knee to keep it steady. The camera was far enough away from the flowers for the camera’s auto focus to perform well.

I experimented with composition…and focus. I like the textures and colors that seem to pop in the images because of the whiteness of the background and the lack of other clutter.