Harold Prairie

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One of the topics that came up in the last Missouri Master Naturalist chapter meeting was the need for some maintenance for Harold Prairie - the last native remnant in Greene County, Missouri. Shortly after the meeting, an email was sent out offering a tour and about 8 of us walked around the prairie the next Sunday between Highway 123 and the Frisco Highline Trail northeast of Willard, MO.

We caravaned from one of the trailhead in Willard. The long and narrow prairie had been recently mowed (road to the right in the picture….trail to the left behind the brush that had not been mowed). The prairie plants were coming up in the thatch.

We saw wildlife right away in the fringe of brush at the side of the trail:

Ornate box turtle

Gray tree frog – Missouri’s most common species of tree frog

A few things were blooming!

Most of the plants were just green...emerging and growing rapidly with the warmer spring days.

We talked about a plant survey in June and burning in the fall. There could be some manual woody plant removal required too.

One such woody plant that I was pleased to photograph: a black cherry. It was on the other side of the trail from the prairie but maybe the goal will be to extend the prairie to be both sides of the trail in some areas. We’ll see.

I am looking forward to what will likely be the next activity – the plant survey in June. Hopefully I won’t have a conflict…and the weather will cooperate!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 03, 2025

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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.

Foraging Violets – I have a lot of violets growing in my yard…and I am going to start harvesting them for salads. Why buy fresh greens when there is such a plentiful supply that I can pick just before I eat them?

The Unexpected Science of Staying Happy – An article about the World Happiness Report. The U.S., Canada, and Switzerland—all once top 10 contenders—have dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since the report began. That decline is linked to a drop in social trust and a rise in what researchers call “deaths of despair,” especially among men over 60​.

The 120-Year-Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees – A different perspective on history….more substantial than tents.

Exquisite Street Photography Celebrates the Different Moods of New York City at Night – More umbrellas than I expected.

Emily Cole, Daughter of Hudson River School Icon, Shines in Overdue Museum Show – She became a porcelain painter (botanicals) and painted in her father’s studio…. exhibiting her work a what is now the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

Relics of a Red World in Bighorn Basin – Satellite image of “red beds” in northern Wyoming and Southern Montana formed when the land was part of Pangea and there were extreme wet/dry seasons causing hematite in the rocks to oxidize (rust). The area is rich in fossils and oil/gas reserves.

Tree Rings Bear Witness to Illegal Gold Mining Operations in the Amazon, New Study Finds – The miners use liquid mercury which is then burned to obtain the gold….releasing toxic mercury into the air. Core samples from trunks of fig trees show the mercury levels…when they ramped up and how substantial they were/are.

Smoke from US wildfires, prescribed burns caused premature deaths, billions in health damages - Researchers estimated that smoke from wildfires and prescribed burns caused $200 billion in health damages in 2017, and that these were associated with 20,000 premature deaths. Senior citizens were harmed the most.

Check Out the First Confirmed Footage of the Colossal Squid, a Rare and Enigmatic Deep-Sea Species – This was a young one….only a foot lot. They can grow to be 23 feet long

The Only Ancient Greek Theater on the Ionian Islands Is Finally Unearthed – It was discovered in 1901 but was reburied after their survey…and olive groves and makeshift warehouses eventually covered the site. The site was abandoned during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus.

eBotanical Prints – April 2025

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in April - available for browsing on Internet Archive. The series of Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature by Pierre de Savary that I started browsing back in March was completed in April. Another series, Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse, included 5 volumes (medicinal plants). A third series was started at the end of the month Descriptions of orchid genera by Fritz Kraenzlin; there are another 6 volumes that will be in the May eBotanical Prints list. There were only 3 books that were not in a series!

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,103 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here.

Click on any sample image from April’s 20 books below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the April 2025 eBotanical Prints!

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V6 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1769

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V7 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1769

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V8 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1769

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V9 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1771

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V10 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1772

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V11 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1773

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V12 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1773

Illustrations of the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China, Vol. 39. * Chen Menglei, Jiang Tingxi * sample image * 1725

Collection de curiosites du Royaume des plantes * Gofman, Petr Marynovich * sample image * 1797

Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse (1805-1809) * Hayne, Friedrich Gottlob * sample image * 1809

Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse (1825 - 1827) * Hayne, Friedrich Gottlob * sample image * 1827

Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse (1817 - 1819) * Hayne, Friedrich Gottlob * sample image * 1819

Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse (1821- 1822) * Hayne, Friedrich Gottlob * sample image * 1822

Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse (1830-1833) * Hayne, Friedrich Gottlob * sample image * 1833

Enumeratio plantarum anno 1890 in Caucaso lectarum * Sommier, Stefano, Levier, Emile * sample image * 1900

Descriptions of orchid genera 1880-1908 V1 * Kraenzlin, Fritz * sample image * 1908

Descriptions of orchid genera 1880-1908 V2 * Kraenzlin, Fritz * sample image * 1908

Descriptions of orchid genera 1880-1908 V3 * Kraenzlin, Fritz * sample image * 1908

Descriptions of orchid genera 1880-1908 V4 * Kraenzlin, Fritz * sample image * 1908

Descriptions of orchid genera 1880-1908 V5 * Kraenzlin, Fritz * sample image * 1908

Zentangle® – April 2025

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30 days in April….so I chose 30 Zentangle tiles from the 93 I made during April. There were more to choose from that usual because I’m dedicating some time as I am winding down each day to creating Zentangle tiles and I made the tiles from a pad of Bright Splash card stock I found at Walmart. It was colorful and prompted some very different starting strings! I am probably going to stock up since it is imported from Vietnam…maybe won’t be restocked. This card stock along with the solid black are my favorites!

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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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 26, 2025

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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.

Liberation of Bergen-Belsen: how a lack of protective clothing cost lives – Typhus was rampant when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. Anne Frank had died there just a few weeks before. What happened in the immediate aftermath of liberation is described.

How climate change is supercharging pollen allergies – Longer growing season….and extreme allergy events where trillions of pollen particles, sucked up into the clouds as the storm formed, splintered by rain, lightning and humidity into ever-smaller fragments – then cast back down to Earth for people to breathe them in. In one such event in Australia - emergency rooms saw eight times as many people turning up with breathing problems as they would normally expect. Nearly 10 times as many people with asthma were admitted to hospital. 10 people died. It’s been called ‘thunderstorm asthma.’ In the US, pollen levels are expected to be higher than average in 39 states…with worse symptoms.

Colorful city birds – Brown shades are more common in natural environments than in cities. Successful urban bird species have more elaborate colors in their plumage, which is especially true for females. Cities seem to favor more colorful birds -- probably because there are fewer predators in urban areas and 'being seen' poses a lower risk than in rural areas.

See the Titanic in Remarkable Detail With a 3D Scan – From National Geographic. …a digital reconstruction of the wreck.

Royal Meteorological Society Celebrates 10 Years of Incredible Weather Photography – Great photographs an interview with Kirsty McCabe, UK's Royal Meteorological Society’s senior broadcast meteorologist and editor of their MetMatters blog.

Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again –The jellyfish-like creatures in this post are Velella velella – thin, oval shaped blue or purple that usually are 3-4 inches long. They use their stinging blue tentacles to prey on plankton.

Meet Four Amazing Endemic Parrots from New Zealand – They are quite different from each other…and the parrots we see in zoos.

Why you should avoid lotions and creams that contain 'fragrance' – Avoiding fragrance is easy enough…but other things are harder to detect and avoid.

Six immersive experiences for more joy – The 6 seems reasonable to me…most of them I had derived for myself already!

Ten National Wildlife Refuges That Need Our Support Most – All the wildlife refigures I have visited over the past few years have unmet maintenance needs. Funding for materials, equipment and staff has been too low for some time. There are Friends organizations that try to address some of the needs…but it is never enough. Some of the places that became refuges because they are very special are suffering now…maybe being irrecoverably harmed.

Illustrations in Children’s Books – Soviet Union 1980s

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I browsed 36 children’s books in February – published in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Some were clearly for export – in Hindi or English or Tamil or Bengali or Kannada. The text was not the draw for me; I was browsing for the illustrations. I’ve always enjoyed the artwork in books intended for children. It entices young readers…often colorful, sometimes whimsical. The books are freely available on Internet Archive. Enjoy a sample image from each below(click on the image to see a larger version)….then follow the link see more of the book!

The Guttapercha Boy In Hindi

Grishka And The Astronaut In Hindi

Stories for Children

The Little Hen or The Underground People - A fairy Story for Children

Yellow Beak

Bumpy

Onondaga Cave (2)

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Onondaga Cave is a wet cave. That means many of the formations are still active and the air in the cave is very moist. There is an airlock where the tour begins and ends. There are salamanders in the cave, but their numbers have declined with the bats (White Nose Syndrome); the salamanders eat the bat droppings and there are not enough to sustain as many salamanders and before. We didn’t manage to see any.

There is a river that runs through the cave. At one point you can hear the water moving but when you look at it from above it seems very still! They know where the water goes but not where it comes from!

On the way home we stopped at Bennett Spring State Park near Lebanon MO. It was raining so the only picture I took was of a painted glass window! We drove down to where the spring emerges and then back to I-44 along a road through the forest….lots of dogwoods in bloom in the understory. It was a grand finale to the day trip even with the rain!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 19, 2025

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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.

Survey: US Public Spaces Not Meeting Community Needs – Funding for maintenance and basic improvements seems to be the key issue.

I tested some of the most popular ways of meeting new people. Here's what I found – The author engaged in 4 ‘hobbies’ and assessed their effectiveness in fostering social connection: team sports, bouldering, creative writing sessions, and a life drawing course. Evidently, they all worked for her! For me – my volunteer activities (with Missouri Master Naturalist and my county’s Friends of the Library) are the way I meet new people; I tend to like the triadic interactions (attention both to each other, and to an object or activity of mutual interest) that volunteering provides.

These Unassuming Artifacts from King Tut’s Tomb Could Tell a Remarkable Story – Originally the 4 small unbaked earthen dishes were thought to be stands for the nearly four-foot high gilded wooden staffs…but a new study proposes that the clay troughs would have held libations, most likely of water, aimed at the purification and rejuvenation of Tutankhamun in the afterlife, a rite known as the Awakening of Osiris.

Cuts to the National Weather Service May Have Serious Impacts on National Parks – And for everywhere else too. Weather impacts everybody.

New research boosts future whooping cough vaccines – My father – now in his 90s – almost died from whooping cough as a young child. Deaths have become less common since the vaccine although they are still in the double digits in the US. In 2024, several outbreaks left public health officials and hospitals scrambling to accommodate a sudden influx of patients, primarily infants, who are often too young to be vaccinated and suffer the most severe symptoms. I’m glad that a new vaccine may be more effective and longer lasting than the one we have now.

Study Reveals Mercury-Poisoned Industrial Age Child – A three- to four-year-old child died in France sometime in the 18th or 19th century. The youngster suffered from rickets and scurvy likely caused by poor living conditions during the Industrial Revolution. But there were also high levels of mercury in his bones and teeth. The study ruled out sources of mercury contamination and concluded that the child had been administered the toxic metal as a cure for his ailments, which ultimately killed him.

At 97, Endangered Tortoise Becomes Oldest First-Time Mom of Her Species with Four New Hatchlings – Four Galapagos tortoise hatchlings at the Philadelphia Zoo!

Celebrating Seeds – From The Prairie Ecologist. So many obstacles must be overcome for a seed to become a mature plant producing seeds….continuing the cycle of the species.

Antarctic Sea Ice Plunged in Summer 2025 - In 2025, summer sea ice in the Antarctic tied for the second-lowest minimum extent ever recorded in the 47-year satellite record. It’s not yet clear whether the Southern Hemisphere has entered a new norm with perennially low ice or if the Antarctic is in a passing phase that will revert to prior levels in the years to com

Global Economy More Vulnerable to Warming Than Previously Thought - By rattling supply chains, future storms and heat waves will also send ripples throughout the global economy, inflicting costs far higher than models currently show. No country is immune.

Science of Terra Nova British Antarctic Expedition

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The Terra Nove expedition took place between 1910 and 1913. It was led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott who died after making a last entry in his diary on March 29, 1912; his death along with the men in his party, overshadowed the scientific contributions at first.

The 12 scientists who participated—the largest Antarctic scientific team of its time—made important discoveries in zoology, botany, geology, glaciology, and meteorology. Volumes 4-8 of the Natural History Reports from the expedition were published between 1917 and 1924; they are my free eBooks selections for this week…freely available on Internet Archive.

 Natural History Reports / British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition, 1910-13 V4

Natural History Reports / British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition, 1910-13 V5

Natural History Reports / British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition, 1910-13 V6

Natural History Reports / British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition, 1910-13 V7

Natural History Reports / British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition, 1910-13 V8

Geology Course Experiences – April 2025

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Over the past month, the online geology course has moved along slowly with only another 2 chapters covering waste management/landfills and landslides. There was a week-long pause for Spring Break. I am glad I chose this version of the geology class (It’s titled ‘Earth: The Survival Guide’) since it provides a background for items in the news that have a geologic component. The syllabus for the next few weeks shows a significant uptick in topics with 4 chapters before the last exam on May 1. It seems like the course pacing is dramatically skewed toward the end.

I was disappointed that the scheduled field trip day was canceled because of weather (rain the previous days and the scheduled day, flash flooding and river flooding). Evidently there is not going to be another attempt. I’ll have to make do with my own observations as I travel around the state…and the geology field trip with Missouri Master Naturalists that is scheduled for early May; hopefully the weather will be better for that one.

The labs were also impacted by spring break. Topics were:

  • Groundwater contamination investigation that involved samples to be tested for nitrates, total dissolved solids, pH, and salinity…then pinpointing where contamination was coming from using a contour map of industries and where the samples were collected.

  • Streams and rivers using topographic maps to observe how river move along the surface and the observable structures from the interactions between water and the surface (things like natural levees and oxbow lakes).

  • Geologic maps – looking at the geographic distribution of rock units exposed at the Earth’s surface. Maps of Webster County MO, Bright Angel Quandrangle, AZ (part of the Grand Canyon), and the Williamsville Quadrangle, VA (part of the Appalachian Mountains).

The ‘streams and rivers’ lab was not on the original syllabus and there has not been an update showing which of the labs will be dropped. I hope the ones on Caves/Karst and Shorelines will still be part of the semester.

I am anticipating a flurry of activity between now and the end of the semester! There are a lot of textbook chapters in the syllabus that we haven’t done yet.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 12, 2025

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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.

Doctor shortages have hobbled health care for decades − and the trend could be worsening – It does seem like it is getting harder and harder to make an appointment with my doctor…and I have yet to see the same doctor twice for my annual checkup since we moved to Missouri. This article provides some background into why the US is increasingly short of doctors.

Your neighborhood might affect your risk of dementia - Most studies of risk factors for Alzheimer's disease focus on the individual level, not the community level. Of course, intervening at the community level is challenging, but prioritizing disadvantaged communities may be an effective way to mobilize resources for older adults and provide avenues for reducing the risk of dementia for the overall community.

Mangrove Pioneers - On the ground, a team surveying tidal marshes near the Florida–Georgia border in 2024 found red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) and black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) growing 50 miles (80 kilometers) and 14 miles (23 kilometers) farther north, respectively, than their previously documented range. Landsat and other satellite imagery are valuable for monitoring marsh-to-mangrove transitions over larger areas and longer time frames. Conditions along the U.S. East Coast are conducive to mangrove territory expansion - less-frequent extreme cold events and rising winter temperatures in the region as contributing factors to the trees’ survival.

These Carnivorous Snails Slurp Earthworms Like Spaghetti – Snails in New Zealand….the short video is worth watching!

Why Norway is restoring its Cold War military bunkers - Norway is a land with many bunkers. At the peak of the Cold War, the sparsely populated, mountainous country had around 3,000 underground facilities where its armed forces and allies could hide and make life difficult for any invader. Norway is reactivating two of their most iconic underground structures of the Cold War. The role of the reactivated base which has had structural and equipment upgrades is to help the "resilience and survivability" of Norway's F-35s in the face of a Russian attack.

Are Hairstyles the Key to Unlocking Art History’s Most Famous Portraits? - Hairstyling has always been a way that women exacted agency over their self-presentation.  Paintings and sculptures can be rare visual records of these carefully chosen, and ephemeral, hairdos—which, unlike fashion garments, can’t survive and be passed down. (Although some historic wigs and clip-ins have stood the test of time and made it into museum collections.)

Making Sense of Butterfly Declines - Over the past two decades, the total number of butterflies across 554 species has plummeted by 22%. That means a loss of about one butterfly out of every five observed since 2000. This alarming trend underscores the severity of the decline, with many species experiencing drastic reductions in their populations. Three ways to help butterflies: plant native, plant native milkweed (i.e. native host plants), don’t spray.

2,000-Year-Old Wooden Houses Found in China - Houses in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, that date to the Warring States period (475–221 b.c.). The stilted and terraced wood-frame structures would have been covered with reeds and bamboo. The walls, made of interwoven wooden posts and thatch, retain numerous small holes, which archaeologists believe were left by grass ropes used to bind the structure together. Artifacts recovered from the site included primitive porcelain cups, red pottery tripods, ceramic urns, bronze drill bits, and plentiful remains of domestic animals as well as marine resources.

Retreating Arctic Glaciers Have Exposed 1,500 Miles of Coastline - Scientists tracked the movement of 1,500 coastal glaciers from 2000 to 2020, finding that retreating ice had unveiled hundreds of miles of coastline, largely in Greenland - revealing stores of precious metals…. but they warn that newly exposed coastline, which has not been cemented with ice, is vulnerable to erosion and landslides.

Listen to the First Known Recording of Shark Sounds, a ‘Weird’ Audio Clip Captured at a Marine Lab in New Zealand – Sounds from a rig shark…when it was handled between tests in the lab.

Life Magazine from 1937

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1937, I thought about my parents; they started school that year. They were probably still very focused on things going on within their family and small community rather than the broader world…but the world was heading into a time of turmoil. Looking at the way Life was covering those events seems relatively naïve now! The sample images (one from each weekly magazine) show a variety of topics the Life editors chose to cover over the course of the year. Most of the ‘color’ pages of the magazine were advertisements.

Life Magazine 1937-01-04 – a lot of public works projects in the past 4 years

Life Magazine 1937-01-11  - Margaret Sanger and birth control

Life Magazine 1937-01-18 – Chinese farmer in California

Life Magazine 1937-01-25 – US Army planes

Life Magazine 1937-02-01 – Roosevelt’s second inauguration  - a rainy day

Life Magazine 1937-02-08 – Mississippi flooding; levee dynamited at Cairo, Illinois

Life Magazine 1937-02-15 – US Supreme Court’s new building

Life Magazine 1937-02-22 – Marian Anderson

Life Magazine 1937-03-1 – Building the Golden Gate Bridge (accident)

Life Magazine 1937-03-8 – Sun Valley sky lifts

Life Magazine 1937-03-15 – British crown

Life Magazine 1937-03-22 – Irving parachute

Life Magazine 1937-03-29 – Palm Springs

Life Magazine 1937-04-05 – HMS Glorius in winter maneuvers

Life Magazine 1937-04-12 – Mussolini in North Africa…a Roman city in the sand

Life Magazine 1937-04-19 – Queen Mary with 3 grandchildren…Elizabeth II as a young girl

Life Magazine 1937-04-26 – Neville Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life Magazine 1937-05-03 – British rearmament

Life Magazine 1937-05-10 – Germans celebrate Hitler’s birthday

Life Magazine 1937-05-17 – Dionne quintuplets at 3

Life Magazine 1937-05-24 – Coronation Day at Buckingham Palace

Life Magazine 1937-05-31 – Golden Gate Bridge from one of the piers

Life Magazine 1937-06-07 – University of Virginia

Life Magazine 1937-06-14 – Washington DC from the air

Life Magazine 1937-06-21 – Dust Bowl

Life Magazine 1937-06-28 - Telephone

Life Magazine 1937-07-05 – River Jordan and Jewish farms

Life Magazine 1937-07-12 – Audubon Association protects birds

Life Magazine 1937-07-19 - British air fleet after rearmament

Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – Typical day for a 12-week-old baby

Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – US wheat belts

Life Magazine 1937-08-09 – Mapping the battle at dawn

Life Magazine 1937-08-16 – Wall Streeters commute by plane

Life Magazine 1937-08-23 – Niagara Falls

Life Magazine 1937-08-30 – Maine trotters

Life Magazine 1937-09-06 – Texaco advertisement

Life Magazine 1937-09-13 – Nephew of Geronimo

Life Magazine 1937-09-20 – Prime Minister’s Kitchen

Life Magazine 1937-09-27 – Nazi parades

Life Magazine 1937-10-04 – American Legion parade

Life Magazine 1937-10-11 – Joe Kennedy and merchant marine stagnation

Life Magazine 1937-10-18 – Armstrong Linoleum advertisement

Life Magazine 1937-10-25 – Natives of Northwest Canada

Life Magazine 1937-11-01 – Man O’ War…256 ‘children’

Life Magazine 1937-11-08 – 100-inch telescope for Mt. Wilson

Life Magazine 1937-11-15 – Flying Dreadnought

Life Magazine 1937-11-21 – America as an exporting nations: raw cotton, automobiles, fruits

Life Magazine 1937-11-29 – Nursery furniture

Life Magazine 1937-12-06 – Japanese depiction of dying afternoon of Manchu China and garish dawn of Westernized Japan

Life Magazine 1937-12-13 – Train engines (billions of dollars and millions of men)

Life Magazine 1937-12-20 – Christmas is in the air

Life Magazine 1937-12-27 - $300/minute to operate the set for MGM’s musical Rosalie

2 Months with my Nikon Coolpix P950

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The most significant experience with my newish Nikon Coolpix P950 was our trip to Loess Bluff’s National Wildlife Refuge; there were three blog posts from that trip (one, two, three). My favorite image that the new camera captured was a video of trumpeter swans…trumpeting!

There were a few photos I took around my spring yard – crocus and a pinecone in the grass. I notice the slight increase in weight from my previous camera…not a positive for the new one.

The camera autofocus is not as good in lower light as my previous camera…or maybe it is the ‘through the window’ aspect of the photos I take while we are making Feeder Watch observations.

I am determined not to revert to my previous bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) but I find myself using my small point and shot camera that I can slip in a pocket for times I don’t anticipate needing the additional zoom power of the heavier camera!

Stress Reduction Strategies

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Late last summer, I started a lot of new activities and noticed that my stress level, as detected by my Garmin Lily, increased. My stress level and the quality of my sleep are related – when stress is high, sleep quality (and sometimes quantity) is low. At the time I thought I would acclimate, and my stress level would be reduced…but that didn’t happen.

I realize now that the new activities were not the only reason my stress level was high. My back was bothering me and the politics of the country were causing some anxiety as well. I asked my doctor for a referral for physical therapy to help with the back pain and started the PT sessions in December. They coincided with the holidays and a dramatic reduction of my new activities. By early January, I thought my stress level was trending downward along with the level of pain caused by my back.

It didn’t last. With the start of a new semester (geology class), an uptick in new volunteer activities, and the changes occurring at the Federal level….anxiety and stress spiked again and were even more volatile that before. Most of the time I was able to minimize my back issue (thanks to continuing the exercises I learned in physical therapy) so that was not usually a big component to my stress level. The strategies I am applying now (see below) seem to be helping…but I only have a few weeks of results so far. I suspect that I will be tweaking my stress reduction strategies for the foreseeable future!

  • No caffeine after 9 AM.

  • Limit TV news and news feeds. Be informed but not scrolling through news frequently.

  • Practice focusing thoughts on the present.

  • Continue physical therapy exercises focused on reducing back pain + at least 8,000 steps per day. Swopper chair (bounces) when sitting at my computer.

  • Move every hour….i.e. take a break from sitting. Use the time for a household chore.

  • Get some outdoor time every day.

  • 2 hours before bedtime: no screens. Read physical book and create Zentangle tiles. Do relaxing stretches.

  • Electrolyte drink 3 hours before bedtime.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 5, 2025

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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’s Hiding Inside This 2,200-Year-Old Pyramidal Structure in the Judean Desert? - Alongside Nahal Zohar, a stream in the southern Judean Desert, archaeologists are picking through a large building they believe was used as a stronghold for protecting the caravan route bringing bitumen and salt from the Dead Sea to Mediterranean ports. To date, researchers have found a new Dead Sea Scroll, excellently preserved ancient Roman swords, and a 10,000-year-old basket and lid.

Which Native Plant Are YOU? - Take a moment to enjoy a bit of playful anthropomorphism as you take a Native Plant Personality Quiz, to see which native plant YOU are most like!

Ecologists document Utah's bee species and say beehive state is rich in bee diversity - 1,167 bee species are documented in the state of Utah!

Mud, water and wood: The system that kept a 1604-year-old city afloat - The city, which turned 1604 years old on March 25, is built on the foundations of millions of short wooden piles, pounded in the ground with their tip facing downwards. These trees – larch, oak, alder, pine, spruce and elm of a length ranging between 3.5m (11.5ft) to less than 1m (3ft) – have held up stone palazzos and tall belltowers for centuries, in a true marvel of engineering leveraging the forces of physics and nature.

From Wasteland to Wonder – A free eBook by Basil Camu about trees and how each of us can improve the places we love. It includes QR codes for instructional videos about how to do things. One that I viewed and will apply immediately is how to prune shrubs in a way friendly to the plant…and results in less frequent pruning!

Renewables Accounted for More Than 90 Percent of New Power Globally Last Year - Still, growth is not on pace to meet a global goal to triple renewable capacity by the end of this decade. Continuing its clean-energy dominance, China installed more renewable power than all other countries combined last year.

7 Ways State Wildlife Action Plans Save Species – From the National Wildlife Federation.

Women Played a More Important Role in Producing Medieval Manuscripts Than Previously Thought - Female scribes were responsible for producing at least 110,000 handwritten manuscripts between 400 and 1500 C.E. in the “Latin West,” or the Roman Catholic parts of Europe, researchers find. That represents roughly 1.1 percent of the total 10 million manuscripts produced during that period….and that is likely an underestimate.

Jamestown is Drowning - Millions of artifacts have been excavated from the site over the last century, helping historians to understand much of what we know about this historic early settlement. But untold numbers of other artifacts may soon be lost forever because of increasing water levels, not just from flooding but also from rising groundwater and migrating wetland areas. Among the most profound known impacts are the loss of human remains. The average sea level has risen nearly 1.6 feet in the tidewater region of Virginia—a trend that is now accelerating. Studies predict that about 14 of Historic Jamestown’s 23 acres—or 60 percent—could be permanently underwater within the next 50 years.

These Are the 20 Happiest Countries in the World - The United States dropped to its lowest ranking yet in the annual report. This year, America came in 24th, down from its peak at 11th on the 2012 list.

eBotantical Prints – March 2025

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in March - available for browsing on Internet Archive. This month includes 4 volumes of Dissertatio Botanica by Carl Peter Thunburg from the late 1700s and the first volumes of Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature by Pierre de Savary (the second series will be continued in the April eBotanical Prints). My favorite image of the month is from the Album of Chinese flora executed by one or more Chinese artists for John Reeves (1774-1856).

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,083 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here.

Click on any sample image from March’s 20 books below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the March 2025 eBotanical Prints!

Nova genera Plantarum  * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1781

Dissertatio Botanica V1 * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1781

Dissertatio Botanica V2 * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1782

Dissertatio Botanica V3 * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1782

Dissertatio Botanica V4 * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1782

Flora Japonica * Thunberg, Carl Peter * sample image * 1784

Flora Japonica sive Plantae * Siebold, Philipp Franz von * sample image * 1835

Album of Chinese flora executed by one or more Chinese artists for John Reeves (1774-1856) * Chinese School  * sample image * 1820

Icones selectae plantarum * Kaemper, Engelbert * sample image * 1791

Medical botany; or, history of plants in the materia medica of the London, Edinburgh and Dublin pharmacopoeias. Arranged according to the Linnaean system V1 * E. Cox and Son (publisher) * sample image * 1821

Medical botany; or, history of plants in the materia medica of the London, Edinburgh and Dublin pharmacopoeias. Arranged according to the Linnaean system V2 * E. Cox and Son (publisher) * sample image * 1822

Standardized products - a descriptive list of drug extracts standardized by chemical or physiological means * Parke, Davis & Company * sample image * 1911


A brief treatise on various ailments and their treatment by nature's remedies * Medical Institute (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England) * sample image * 1895

The new British domestic herbal * Waller, John Augustine * sample image * 1822

Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des plantes * Dodart, Denis * sample image * 1676

Handbuch der pharmaceutischen Botanik. : Mit illuminirten Kupfern * Juch, Karl Wilhelp; Volckart, Johann Friedrich * sample image * 1804

The reformed practice of medicine * Rosen, Samuel * sample image * 1895

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V3 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1764

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V4 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1764

Recueil des plantes les plus usuelles peintes d'apres nature V5 * Savary, Pierre de * sample image * 1765

Another Event about Trees

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Last week I was one of 4 tables for a Scouting event (the other tables were about bears, skulls, and tracks). I used materials I have been collecting and used since last fall. It was the first time with small groups coming to the table and talking about trees for 10 minutes…then doing it all over again. I expected to be limited to one table but I had 2 – plenty of room to spread out.

The groups were K-4th grade…3-6 in each group. I was surprised at how many recognized the thorn (or pods) of honey locust, knew that trees produced oxygen, and knew that counting trees rings is a way to tell how old the tree was (even though most of them had never really tried to do it before)!

I had a slide show that emphasized things to notice about a tree if you want to identify the type of tree it is.

The different sizes of pinecones were fun….and the difference between the pinecones and the cone from a spruce was new to them. We talked a bit about escaped Bradford pears that we see blooming all over our area right now…and the redbuds that are also in bloom and are native. My white oak seedling was a good conversation starter too; one of the scouts had an acorn that had a root (so far) and was trying to figure out what to do with it next. It is probably one of the red oaks since they tend to sprout in the spring.

The pictures are from the end of the sessions…rearranged considerably from when I started!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 29, 2025

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How long will you live? New evidence says it’s much more about your choices than your genes - Environmental factors influence health and longevity to a far greater extent than genetics. Environmental factors had the greatest impact on lung, heart and liver disease, while genetics played the biggest role in determining a person’s risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers, and dementia. The environmental factors that had the most influence on earlier death and biological ageing included smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity levels and living conditions.

'The ice melted beneath our feet': The huskies that revealed the rapid shrinking of Greenland's ice - Greenland experienced record ice loss in 2019, shedding a total of 532 billion tones from its giant ice sheet, according to a 2020 study. On average, Greenland loses 234 billion tons of ice per year. What's distinctive about Greenland is how much melting happens on the surface in the summer, because Antarctica doesn’t get anywhere near as much.

Humboldt Penguins on the Edge – Temperate penguins of Chile and Peru. They hunt in the cold, nutrient-rich waters of the Humboldt Current, the world’s largest marine upwelling, that flows a few miles offshore. They are excellent swimmers and deep divers in their pursuit of anchovies and other fish. Humboldt penguins have come back from the edge of extinction before—it will take the continued efforts of local communities, governments and partners to bring them back again.

Study: 'Sustainable intensification' on the farm reduces soil nitrate losses, maintains crop yields - A nine-year study comparing a typical two-year corn and soybean rotation with a more intensive three-year rotation involving corn, cereal rye, soybean and winter wheat, found that the three-year system can dramatically reduce nitrogen -- an important crop nutrient -- in farm runoff without compromising yield.

These Everyday Artifacts Tell the Story of Harriet Tubman’s Father’s Home as Climate Change Threatens the Historic Site – The site is in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge – the first place I saw a bald eagle in the wild (in the early 1990s). My family visited there many times when we lived in Maryland, and we observed the transition of the marshes to ghost forests and then then open water over the next 30 years. The refuge is obviously changing with rising sea level.

Plastic recycling gets a breath of fresh air - The researchers used a molybdenum catalyst and activated carbon -- both of which are inexpensive, abundant and non-toxic materials. The mixture with PET was heated and, after a short period of time, the chemical bonds within the plastic broke apart. With the tiny bit of moisture from air, the material turned into terephthalic acid (TPA) -- the highly valuable precursor to polyesters. The only byproduct was acetaldehyde, a valuable, easy-to-remove industrial chemical.

This English Burial Site May Be Centuries Older Than Stonehenge - Flagstones, a burial site in Dorset, on the English Channel, may be the earliest known large circular enclosure in Britain. It is a perfectly circular ditched enclosure, with burials and cremations associated with it and may have even served as a prototype for later sites such as Stonehenge, which is located just 45 miles to the northeast. The ditched enclosure was created around 3200 B.C.E., with burials placed in it at that time. The scientists were also intrigued to find that a young man was buried under a large stone at the site fully a millennium later.

Climate change threatens future of banana export industry - It will be economically unsustainable by 2080 for many areas across Latin America and the Caribbean to continue growing bananas for export, because of rising temperatures caused by climate change.

Spring Spectacle: Thousands of Tulips Bloom at One of LA’s Top Gardens – Reminds me that I need to plan a visit to the botanical gardens near where I live in Missouri for tulips soon!

Portraits of women who 'shine a light': from an 'analog' astronaut to a watermelon farmer – Vignettes of women from around the world…what a range of activity!

Illustrations in Children's Books - Soviet Union 1980s

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Internet Archive has quite a collection of books for children published in the Soviet Union for export during the 1980s. I was very familiar with books for children published in the US during the same time because I was reading a lot of them with my young daughter in the early 1990s. The illustrations are the big draw – as the sample images from the books I browsed last January show. They are often colorful…sometimes artsy or whimsical…sometimes realistic. Enjoy browsing some children’s books!

Raggity and the Cloud

Sun Sews a Shirt

Fly away, seagull, fly away

My first book

Little Arthur's Sun Two Armenian Stories

Learning about Missouri Geology – March 2025

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We took two road trips over the past month --- opportunities to observe Missouri geology along the roadsides! My copy of Roadside Geology to Missouri has been a good reference.

The first was from our home near Springfield MO to St. Louis. Interstate 44 dominates the route and there are plenty of roadcuts first on the Springfield Plateau then the slightly lower Salem Plateau…finally down the northeastern flank of the Ozark Dome close to St. Louis. Our day trip was on a sunny day, so it was easy to take pictures.

One of the most interesting road cuts is at the north side of the rest stop near mile marker 235. The Roadside Geology book says – “Tilted blocks of Pennsylvanian sandstone and shale….are part of a down-dropped block of rocks along a fault zone or a filled-sink structure, or perhaps both.” I took pictures from the south side of the road as we were going toward St. Louis

And then one as we passed by on the return.

We noticed caves and state parks along the way and are planning a ‘field trip’ in April to see some of those.

The second was from our home near Springfield MO to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City MO. The route took us from the Springfield Plateau to the Salem Plateau…then the Osage Plains as we turned toward Kansas City and crossed the Missouri River…finally to the Glaciated Plains of Northern Missouri. The day was sunny, making photographs of road cuts as my husband drove possible. I even got two pictures of the roadcut near out home as we set out!

The road cuts were less pronounced as we got further along…and more crumbly. On a botanical note – the sycamores are easy to spot this time of year.

I was so busy photographing overpasses and the bridge at Kansas City that I didn’t realize the bridge was over the Missouri River!

The Loess Bluffs (in this case roadcuts) look very different than the roadcuts further south. The loess here is from the edges of glaciers of the last ice age. Plants sometime can take root…but often sluff off and the loess is revealed again.

And then we reversed toward home.