Zooming – March 2019
/The colors and patterns of tree trunks
A mushroom on a tree branch – gills exposed
A robin
Pine buds
Frog eggs
Cone flower seed pods
Crocuses
Sweet gum ball
Hemlock cone
Ten Little Celebrations – March 2019
/March had increased activity from February – a nice ramp up to the busy months of the spring field trip season of April, May and June. It was easy to find little celebrations all during the month.
A Creative Live course on bird photography – I always celebrate courses that hone what I already know…and show me something new that I want to try.
Getting new glasses – I had skipped getting new glasses last year – thinking that my prescription had not changed enough. It’s worth celebrating to see better again.
Snow on the ground but no on the streets – I celebrated a beautiful snowy day when the streets kept enough warmth to remain clear. It’s one of those instances where you can enjoy the scenery and not worry about hazardous driving conditions.
Cleaning out stuff – We donated two carloads of stuff (a bicycle was a big part of one load. I celebrated making progress on cleaning out accumulated things that we no longer need.
Then there are signs of spring – appearing throughout the month – and celebrated for the breaking of winter’s hold on the landscape:
Miniature daffodils blooming in the front flower bed that bring back memories of my mother-in-law that bought and planted the bulbs in another garden 30 years ago.
Tulip poplar and cherry buds brought inside and opening a few weeks before the buds outside open.
Doves mating on the deck railing.
Frogs eggs in the little pool at Mt. Pleasant.
A spring-like afternoon – full of sunlight and a warmer temperature.
The biggest celebration of the month was the news that both my daughter and son-in-law have faculty positions beginning next fall in the same place! It’s quite an accomplishment for them to both get their PhD and then do a couple years as post docs…then this milestone.
Belmont – March 2019
/Howard County Conservancy hosted a training session at Belmont for upcoming elementary school BioBlitzes last week. I hadn’t been to the location since January, so I looked around before going into the Carriage House for class. The plane trees (they are like sycamores but are a little different – have some seed balls in pairs rather than single) seemed full of seed balls. We’ve had quite a lot of wind and the fibers holding the balls to the tree look worn at this point. I wondered how long they would stay attached after I saw the zoomed image through my camera.
It was sad to see the stump of the red maple they had to cut down recently. Evidently it lost a lot of big branches during some of the recent winds. The colors in the stump drew my attention. The tree was not extensively rotten but there were some insect holes. The stump would have to be sanded to count the rings. The tree had been struggling in recent years, but I always pointed it out because it had small branches low enough on its trunk for children to see the flowers and leaves.
It also had a root that was above the surface and been injured by mowers…but still survived.
I almost always pointed out the red maple to contrast with the nearby sugar maple – which is still standing with some ivy growing on it. It was a good concept for student to think through – how the trees were alike and how they were different…both maples.
The class had an outdoor portion to try out the app and tablets the students would be using. I used the time to take a few more pictures. There were crocuses blooming in the grassy area near the mailboxes.
The wind had blown pine cones and sweet gum balls into the same area.
The pond still looked like it has all winter. The clouds had rolled in while we had been indoors. And this landscape shows the dimness of the day.
I turned back to the view the manor house and notice a maple that no longer had its upper branches. One of the them was very rotten. But the tree is still blooming!
We headed up to the cemetery and I checked the hemlock. The tree looks like the treatment for wooly adelgid has worked. I tried an experimental shot with a cone highlighted…and blurry branches above and below.
By the time I am at Belmont again – there will be even more signs of spring.
Mt. Pleasant – March 2019
/I was at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant on a sunny cold morning last week – and took a few pictures. There were two things that have always been there and almost always on my walk from parking to the nature center that I don’t think I have photographed before: 1) The old tractor that has been in the same place for so long that it is sinking into the soil under it (or silt is running down the slope to the wagon shed and accumulating around the tires).
2) The hook closure on the blacksmith’s shed….probably made by the blacksmith!
The flowerpot people were dressed for spring…but looked a little bedraggled. The March winds have probably made some adjustments.
I took a picture of a pine on the way to a stop in the Honors Garden. The pines are still the main greenery around.
In the Honors Garden, the sun was highlighting last season’s cone flower seedpods.
But the reason I was in the Honors Garden was to check out the little pond. As I walked up a frog swam rapidly through the water to a new hiding place. It was too cold for a lot more activity.
This little pond is a favorite of the local Wood Frogs and they have been busy. There were egg masses in the water….soon to be tadpoles if they are not too far out of the water and freeze before they can develop. I posted about the frogs here back in March 2016….but it was a warmer day and I noticed the frogs more than the eggs.
I continued to the Nature Center for the training session scheduled for the day.
Birding through a Window – March 2019
/The birds seem to be moving faster this month – harder to photograph. There are a lot more robins about. Some seem to be looking around for nesting places and others are just passing through.
Flocks of red-winged blackbirds fly through this time of year too. I took some pictures of a flock of birds high up in the tulip poplar trees behind our house one afternoon and discovered there were two types of birds in the group: red-winged blackbirds (black eyes) and rusty blackbirds with yellow rimmed eyes.
The titmice were too fast for me this month – but I managed to get a picture of a Carolina chickadee.
A mourning dove preened on the deck railing.
The most startling ‘birding through the window’ event of the month was a mourning dove that bashed itself against my office window. It left some small (about 1/4 inch) down feathers behind on the window.
The bird apparently recovered quickly because it managed to fly to a neighbor’s roof – sat for a few minutes (recovering) – and then flew on as if nothing had happened.
There was a similar incident a few years ago with a cardinal. I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often.
Gleanings of the Week Ending March 23, 2019
/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.
Salt Could Play a Role in Allergies | The Scientist Magazine® - Atopic dermatitis has increased more than 2-fold since the 1970s….and researchers do not attribute the increase to greater awareness or diagnosis. Now comes the observation that people with lesioned skin from atopic dermatitis (but not psoriasis) had a 30-fold higher salt level in their lesions than in their unlesioned skin or skin from healthy controls. The connection to diet is speculative at this point…but we do have higher salt in our diet now that most people had in the 1970s.
In Siberia, Toxic Black Snow Reveals the Toll of Coal Mining | Smart News | Smithsonian – Yuck! Pollutions from open-air coal pits…in the extreme. Another reason, I’m glad we’re moving away from coal powered electricity generation. I wondered if the people living in the area of black snow develop terrible lung problems.
See the best pictures from Bill Ingalls, NASA's official photographer – 30 years of photography
What makes joints pop and crack and is it a sign of disease? – A little lesson in joint anatomy
Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling - Yale E360 – China’s plastic imports have plummeted by 99%, mixed paper has dropped by a 33%. Recycled aluminum and glass are less affected by the ban. So now we are sending plastics to landfills, incinerators or littering the environment. Communities across the US have curtailed or halted their recycling programs. That hasn’t happened (yet) where I live in Maryland. We must learn to produce less recycle (waste) and process it more locally…not ship is someplace else in the world.
Meet the Bizarre American Bittern – Cool Green Science – It’s a type of heron that makes a strange sound (listen to the recording in this post). It is so well camouflaged that you are more likely to hear it than see it!
Photography in The National Parks: Capturing the Grandness of The Grand Tetons – Reminds me that this is a National Park I want to see again. Last time we went, I wasn’t doing any photography yet.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Interactions – National Geographic Society – Pictures that are more than just a bird.
Prehistoric Microbes Inhabit an Oasis in the Northern Mexican Desert | The Scientist Magazine® - Fish, diatoms, and bacteria in lagoons in the Chihuahua Desert and cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. More than 5,000 species of bacteria and archaea have been documented.
Owls against owls in a challenge for survival: Researchers forecast interactions between two owl species and the quality of their habitat in the Pacific Northwest -- ScienceDaily – I learned at the Festival of the Cranes (New Mexico) last fall about Barred Owls moving into Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) territory….and winning the competition. That further reduces the NSO populations which is already endangered because of over-logging of the old growth forests.
Tree Bud Project – Week 2
/It’s Friday – so I am doing an update on the tree branches I brought inside a week ago. See the previous post here. All of them seem to be surviving in the vase of water. I’ve freshened the water every few days. All the pictures are with the 15x macro clip-on lens and my smartphone.
The cherry buds have opened into small white flowers! At first the buds just looked bigger.
Two days later, the white tips showed beyond the green of the outer covering.
And the next morning the flowers were open! I took a picture of the back and front of the flowers.
The plum is slower. Some of the buds have not changed at all and I am wondering if they were damaged by cold temperatures. Some look like they are larger. I hope they eventually will open.
The red maple has bloomed and is now drooping. They are wind fertilized…so won’t make seeds in the ‘windless’ house. At first, they looked very red – like little streamers from the bud.
Then the bigger structure grew.
And now they seem to be drying out.
The tulip poplar has been changing a lot too. At first more buds opened.
Two days later all the buds were larger, and a tiny leaf had emerged from one of them.
Over the next few days other tiny leaves emerged and began to get larger. I noticed the tiny leaves while they were still folded inside the bud too. The bark of the twig seems to be a deeper color too.
I haven’t noticed any changes in the black walnut branch. If the buds do open it should be spectacular with so many buds on the tip of the branch.
The sycamore buds haven’t changed much either although they seem to be a little larger and their color has shifted to green with some red overtones.
Stay tuned to next Friday for the next tree bud report!
Daffodils and Crocus
/Our miniature daffodils are blooming. My mother-in-law bought the bulbs about 30 years ago and planted them in the garden of our previous house. I dug them up and planted them in the front flowerbed of our current house about 25 years ago. I’ve divided them several times. I like them because they are small and hardy – no falling over from the weight of snow or heavy rain for these flowers. They’re also a nice way to remember my mother-in-law every spring.
Crocus bulbs don’t last as long in our area. Perhaps the squirrels eat them, or they get too wet and rot in the soil. I only have one this spring….growing in a mulch of tulip poplar seeds.
As I was walking around the yard and making a list of yard work that needs to be done, I noticed a holly that has come up near a bush that has been slowly rotting over the past few years. Maybe I’ll trim the bush down to half its current size in the early part of the summer and provide more light to the young holly so that it can replace the old bush sometime soon.
I am using the weather as an excuse to procrastinate on the yard work….just enjoying the daffodils and crocus for the next week or so.
A few minutes observing Mourning Doves
/One morning last week – I looked out my kitchen window on a warm breezy march morning and noticed two mourning doves on the railing of our deck…just beginning the mating dance. I ran upstairs to get my camera and started shooting the sequence below through my office window. The action takes place in just over a minute. The male has iridescent feathers on his head and neck. In the beginning, he is on the left….at the end he is on the right. Afterward the female flew off first and the male stayed put looking out over the yard.
This is not the first time the deck railing has been a favorite place for doves mating. In May 2018 and April 2016, I managed to photograph a mating pair as well. In our area, the doves are probably the most substantial and numerous prey for the red tailed hawks and other raptors.
It was easier with my new camera and its continuous shooting feature. I also now recognize the early stages of the courtship so have a few more seconds to prepare.
Macro Photography - Textiles
/I am finally experimenting with my 60x macro lens that I got for my phone. Textiles around the house were an easy project. The lens has a light and I found it handy. With this lens, I use the zoom on the phone to avoid clipping the image to take out the vignetting around the edges. I’d rather compose the image in the camera.
I liked the simple weave and colors of the worn dishcloth.
A crocheted hat had brilliant color but was not flat enough to focus well.
The washcloth had more fuzzy fibers than I expected but
Not nearly as many as the wool sock.
I got stuck on a tapestry jacket…had a challenge to choose just 3 to include in this post. The last one was from the inside of the jacket.
The machine embroidery of a silk jacket looked very different than I anticipated.
The weave of a light-weight jacket was more complex.
I realized that the patterns on t-shirts were painted – but hadn’t thought about what they would look like with the macro lens. The blobs of color stand out on the surface of the cotton knit.
The most non-fuzzy fabric was microfiber underwear!
The yarn in the bulky cardigan was almost too big to look interesting at this magnification.
Machine-made borders look more orderly than the fabric sometimes (the black is thread).
The eye detects tiny holes in the fabric of the bag for delicate fabrics to go in the washer; with macro lens, it looks like a Zentangle.
After I got back to my office, I looked at two mouse pads with the macro lens. One is a woven surface…the other looks like a paint.
Spring Cleaning – Outdoors
/
It’s still a little cold to be out and doing big projects in the yard but we’ve made progress on a few this past week. They were the ‘easy’ projects. We took the lawn mower for pre-season servicing at the local hardware store first.
Then we planned to take my daughter’s old bicycle (not ridden for over 10 years) to donate. It had been on the covered part of deck out of direct weather but still exposed to temperature changes and some moisture during blowing rains. My husband discovered it was coated with green dust/slime when he went out to walk it around to put in the car. We decided to wait until we could clean it off.
A little water and some rubbing….and it looked much better. It got donated the day after I cleaned it.
Then there are projects that I’ve just identified and am waiting for a good day to get them done – like cleaning up piles of tulip poplar seeds and leaves that the wind had blown into corners of the deck and moving the compost bin to allow a thorough turning of the compost still ‘cooking’ (and distribution of the compost that is at the bottom and is probably ‘done’).
The hardest projects are where I’ve identified an issue but am not sure what to do yet. The most challenging is an area of our backyard that used to be very grassy but the record rain we gotten over the past year has washed away the grass and it’s now a small muddy stream. Maybe the grass will recover as the weather warms. If not, I’ll probably be looking at rocks and water loving plants for the area.
3 Free eBooks – March 2019
/In some months it’s hard to pick just three books to feature for the monthly eBooks post. March 2019 was one of those. I cheated a little and picked a periodical…with lots of issues available online…for the first one.
Baer, Casimir Hermann. Moderne Bauformen. Stuttgart: J. Hoffman. 1902-1923. Hathi Trust has volumes for each year here. A German periodical about architecture and interior design with many illustrations – some in color. It’s a slice of history of the period. Many of the interiors look modern…others dated. I realized again how appealing I find glass bricks, window seats, alcoves with benches and sometimes a table or a wall of windows and comfy chairs for reading, and curtains to divide a large room into segments. There were quite a few ideas I’ll use in Zentangle tiles as well.
Trouvelot, Etienne Leopold. The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. 1882. A slide show of 15 drawings is available from Internet Archive here. Trouvelot was well-known for his astronomical drawings made from observations at the Harvard College Observatory and the US Naval Observatory. Unfortunately, he also is the person that introduced the European Gypsy Moth into North America.
Day, Lewis Foreman. Nature in Ornament. New York: Charles Scribner’s sons. 1892. Available from Internet Archive here. Lots of ideas for Zentangle patterns in this book. I particularly liked the different stylized peacock feathers.
Gleanings of the Week Ending March 16, 2019
/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.
Wind Cave, In the National Park, Is 150 Miles Long...And Counting – About 2 miles are surveyed annually and there are about 3,000 unexplored openings that haven’t been checked.
Climate of North American cities will shift hundreds of miles in one generation: New web application helps visualize climate changes in 540 North American cities -- ScienceDaily – The article includes a link to the interactive map. Baltimore Maryland will be like Cleveland, Mississippi in 60 years!
Southern California Will Soon See Another Booming Superbloom | Smart News | Smithsonian – Much better than burn scars and mud slides.
The Obelisks of Heliopolis - Archaeology Magazine – Obelisks taken from the city…a project to understand where they originally stood and the role they played.
In Era of Drought, Phoenix Prepares for a Future Without Colorado River Water - Yale E360 – Living on the edge when it comes to water supply. It’s not just South Africa that has the challenge.
BBC - Future - How Japan’s ancient trees could tell the future –Teasing out how much rain fell in Japan over the past two and half millennia by looking at the preserved wood of ancient forests.
The soaring cost of US child care, in 5 charts and Paid family leave is an investment in public health, not a handout – Thought provoking…families coping in the modern world.
Utilities are starting to invest in big batteries instead of building new power plants – Shifts in the way big utilities are structuring themselves for the future – it not all about new power plants.
New molecules reverse memory loss linked to depression, aging -- ScienceDaily – Maybe in the future we’ll be able to treat some types of cognitive decline better than we can now.
The Future of Universities | What's Next: Top Trends – 7 Cs: Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Curiosity, Character and Compassion
Tree Bud Project – Week 1
/I started a project to photograph tree buds this week by cutting small branches from trees in our yard: cherry, plum, red maple, tulip poplar, black walnut, and sycamore. Unfortunately, there were no branches low enough for me to reach on our oak.
The plan is to bring the branches indoors (where it is warm) and monitor the buds – see how many of them would open indoors over the next few weeks. Once they do, I’ll check to see what is happening with the buds on the tree outdoors.
I took pictures of the buds with the 15x macro lens clipped to my smart phone…starting with the cherry. The buds are enlarging but still firmly closed. Our tree lags the blossoms down in DC around the tidal basin.
The plum buds are still very small. They already show the pink color of the flowers. The tree usually blooms after the cherry.
The red maple twig is easy to identify - opposite twigs, red buds. I was surprised that there were so few branches with buds on the lower branches; the deer must be the culprits. It took a lot of looking to find a branch I could reach with buds.
The tulip poplar already had a popped bud! The others on the branch were still closed. The leaf scars are interesting to notice too.
The black walnut has a lot of buds at the tip of the branch. This tree was also heavily browsed by deer. The branch leaked sap as I was taking pictures. Hope is it OK with the water from the vase.
Finally – the sycamore buds are still tight. In a previous year, a sycamore bud on my indoor branch opened and a tiny leaf unfurled.
I’ll be posting about the leaf buds about once a week if there is action to report.
Ice Bubbles
/Last week there were plenty low temperature nights. I started a project to collect frost flowers on a red glass plate to photograph. The conditions were not right for frost a single night! But – it did rain a little and the water that collected froze around the red plate that I had slanted in a container.
When I pulled out the plate and the ice, I noticed that there were a lot of bubbles in the ice and modified my plan to photograph them.
I started with the lower magnification (15x) macro clip-on lens for my phone. The bubbles that were near the surface of the ice look fractured – not quite round.
My favorite at the 15x magnification was near the edge of the ice – where it met the plate. There were some long narrow bubbles as if the air was climbing the slope of the plate.
I switched to my 60x macro lens with its own light source. The bubbles look jewel-like and the color of the red glass plate come through the ice.
My favorite was one that did not have the red color. It looks like a grayish pearl.
I am still hoping for some frost flowers and there is a possibility since it’s only March. There should be a few more frosty days for us here in Maryland.
March Sunrise
/
It was a cold morning last week when I noticed the sunrise color was reflected off the clouds and stepped outside on my front porch for a picture. By next month the trees will be leafing out and the sunrise will be obscured almost completely. I hurried to take my pictures – thoroughly cold almost instantly in the 20-degree temperature.
The cat was waiting for me at the door but made no move to come outside. The trash truck was rumbling through the neighborhood; 6:30 AM and the day was brightening.
It was cold enough that the birds seemed to be sleeping in. I’ve been seeing more robins and red-winged blackbirds recently…but the morning was quiet at sunrise.
The clouds thickened during the day and snow fell (melted on impact) in the afternoon. At this time of year, any snow could be the last of the season. I savored the snow in the air through the window of my warm office.
Hooker’s Icones plantarum
/Icones plantarum (illustrations of plants - figures, with brief descriptive characters and remarks, of new or rare plants, selected from the Kew herbarium) was started by Sir William Jackson Hooker in 1837 and edited the first 10 volumes and continued by his son Joseph Dalton Hooker (9 volumes) and then others. Over 25 volumes are available on Internet Archive or Botanicus (same scan…simple different user interface so take your pick).
The Hookers (father and then son) were directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1841-1865 - the time period that the gardens became world renowned. They published throughout their long lives (the father lived to be 80 and the son 94) on botanical subjects. One of Joseph Dalton Hooker’s daughters (Harriet Anne Hooker) was a botanical illustrator and married William Turner Thiselton-Dyer who was director of the gardens from 1885-1905.
Gustav Hegi’s Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa
/Hathi Trust has multiple versions of the Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa (Illustrated Flora of Central Europe) that Gustav Hegi edited between 1908 and 1931. There are editions published after his originals as well. I chose to peruse the volume made available by University of Michigan. The first 6 volumes (some of the volumes have multiple parts so there are more that 6 items in all) have colorful images – lots of plants on one page. The sample images from the 12 volumes I looked at – lots of color and variety on a winter day.
According to Wikipedia, the author, a Swiss botanist, wrote about a third of the content…and edited the whole. He obtained his PhD in 1905 and was had been a curator at the Botanic Garden of Munich from 1902-1908. The volumes were published in Munich. He died in 1932. The article contains very little information of his life outside of his publications although he had returned to Switzerland before he died at age 51.
eBotanical Prints – February 2019
/Twenty-six botanical print books February; that’s what a lot in a month that only had 28 days! Most of the books were from one series and not in color but the drawings were detailed and often contained a lot of botanical details (flower parts, etc). Enjoy the carousel of the 26 sample images today and all the links to the volumes below! I’ll provide more information on some selections in the next couple of days. The complete list of all the botanical books I’ve found online, can be found here.
Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V6 pt2 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907
Plantæ Yucatanæ. (Regionis Antillanæ) Plants of the insular, coastal and plain regions of the peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico * Millspaugh, Charles Frederick * sample image * 1902
Icones Plantarum V1 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1832
Icones Plantarum V2 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1832
Icones Plantarum V3 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1840
Icones Plantarum V4 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1841
Icones Plantarum V5 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1842
Icones Plantarum V7-8 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1844
Icones Plantarum V9 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1852
Icones Plantarum V10 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1854
Icones Plantarum V11 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1871
Icones Plantarum V12 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1876
Icones Plantarum V13 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1879
Icones Plantarum V14 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1882
Icones Plantarum V15 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1885
Icones Plantarum V16 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887
Icones Plantarum V17 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887
Icones Plantarum V18 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887
Icones Plantarum V19 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1889
Icones Plantarum V20 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899
Icones Plantarum V21 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899
Icones Plantarum V22 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1894
Icones Plantarum V23 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1894
Icones Plantarum V24 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1895
Icones Plantarum V25 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1896
Icones Plantarum V26 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899
Gleanings of the Week Ending March 9, 2019
/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.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: January and Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: February and Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Feathers and Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Forest Birds – From National Geographic. There are multiples this week since I seemed to have a backlog in my gleanings holding area. Enjoy the colorful, graceful images.
'Upcycling' plastic bottles could give them a more useful second life -- ScienceDaily – Now that many countries that used to take our recycle waste have stopped accepting it, we are suddenly facing the problem of what to do with ‘recyclables’ closer to home. Making materials that have higher value is one way to keep more of it from ending up in landfills.
Soundscapes of Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon – Cool Green Science – Listen to some nature audio…if it’s too cold to get outside and into the wild right now! These would make great backdrops to a meditation practice.
Image of the Day: Prickly Legs | The Scientist Magazine® - Froghoppers gain traction for jumping by piercing plant surfaces with their spiny legs! (Note: froghopper nymphs are spittlebugs!)
Photography in The National Parks: A Winter Shutdown Stay in Olympic National Park – I want to go! This is a national park I haven’t visited.
What kind of bug is a bug? | The Prairie Ecologist – A little entomology lesson.
Alaska in Flux: Slumping Coastlines – A comparison of a coastline between 1992 and 2018 …showing land slumping in to the Beaufort Sea. An airport is closer to the water now than in 1992.There is also a map showing that quite a bit of Alaska is wetter that is was in 1984. Lots of changes in the Alaska land.
Work Underway to Return the Shine to Thomas Jefferson Memorial – The Jefferson Memorial is probably my favorite in DC. I’m glad it’s getting the renovation it needs to look good into the future.
14 keys to a healthy diet | Berkeley Wellness – A little update based on most recent recommendations (for example, dietary cholesterol is not something to worry about since it has little effect on most people’s blood cholesterol).
Infographic: How Ginger Remodels the Microbiome | The Scientist Magazine® - I like ginger and am including it more consistently in my diet. It’s another food to boost gut health!
