Ten Little Celebrations – November 2020

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Thanksgiving. The holiday is different this year. We are celebrating with the usual food cooked for two and phone/zoom calls. There is a lot to be thankful for. Life has been different during this pandemic time…with a new set of joys…and the family has – so far – managed to stay healthy. Easy be thankful.

Sunny days and new hope. We had a series of sunny days as the news came out about the COVID-19 vaccines doing well in trials…becoming available soon. And the news transition away from dystopian stories/views of the future toward plans to distribute the vaccine equitably, how the recovery of the economy could be supported,  anticipating our society becoming more equitable, and addressing climate change seemed to go along with the weather in brightening my mood just before the holiday. It is a more profound celebration overlaid on the regular holiday.

Neighborhood pond. There is always something to celebrate at the pond…a little less controlled than the yards of the neighborhood. Of course – the fall gingko leaves found along the way were a delight as well.

Crane Fiesta. I celebrated the sights and sounds of the birds from the video of the morning flyout. It would have been even better to be there…maybe next November.

Bluebird at the feeder. They are infrequent visitors, so I celebrate every time they come.

Finding paper towels and toilet paper. I had just bought my usual large packages (lasts us about 4 months) when I started hearing that there might be a shortage again. I celebrated that my timing was proactive…the shelves were full when I shopped.

Donating monitors. It felt good to donate two monitors for local teachers (makes it easier when teaching virtually). I celebrated that I saw the newspaper article…gleaned enough to find the person working to find/distribute monitors to local teachers…had 2 working monitors we no longer needed…and the monitors now have a second phase of useful life.

Mother. My mother celebrated her 89th birthday this month. I would have been in Texas for it without the pandemic. As it was there were telephone calls and videos. She had special food for a week! Maybe that is not such a bad way to celebrate --- no single day of over eating….thoroughly enjoying special foods over an extended period. We are trying that for out for this Thanksgiving week.

Pumpkin roll. I found it at my grocery store – a two serving package which is perfect for a special treat for my husband and me. I plan to buy it every time I shop through the rest of the year…a little celebration planned for shopping days!

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Eating lunch outside. My strategy of having breakfast on the deck works great for the summer…too cool for it to work now. Lunch works on some days although we are fast approaching a time when outdoor activity is what I want…not siting around. Getting outdoors is good on so many levels….always finding something to celebrate about our neighborhood or favorite places nearby.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Our Thanksgiving Menu:

  • Brisket

  • Baked potato

  • Applesauce spice muffin

  • Cranberry orange relish

  • Brussel sprouts (for me…my husband won’t eat them)

  • Pumpkin pecan custard

Birdfeeder Camera – November 2020

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The action captured by the birdfeeder camera has been more than black squirrel antics. Raccoons visit a couple of times a month, usually around 2 AM…they have gone away frustrated so far. They leave poop on the deck or the steps between the deck and ground. I wonder if it is before or after they attempt to get a meal at the bird feeder. Also – is it the same racoon or different animals? I know that the river (Middle Patuxent) is like a highway for young racoon seeking a territory of their own.  

There are two new bird visitors to the feeder I discovered when I reviewed the videos:

Red-breasted Nuthatch. This is the first year I’ve seen this bird in our yard. I had seen it fleetingly on the deck several times. It was at the feeder on the 20th and was gutsy enough to stay there when the Red-bellied Woodpecker showed up.

Eastern Bluebird. Birds are not frequent visitors to our yard – and I’m glad it came to the side of the feeder visible to the video camera. It flew to the feeder while white-breasted nuthatch was there. The nuthatch left and the bluebird took the perch where it had been. Then the female red-bellied woodpecker flew to the feeder and the bluebird departed. Shortly after the woodpecker left the bluebird returned.

I’m thrilled that the video camera managed to capture some birds at the feeder that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

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Applesauce muffins. I am making holiday foods a few days early…and we’ll begin enjoying them early too. The applesauce spice muffins will be great for breakfasts.

Oatmeal cookie bars. I use the recipe from the Quaker Oats box but this time I added the rest of applesauce that I’d opened for the muffins into the batter. The cookie bars are more cake like – very yummy with chunks of apple from the applesauce. They’ll work for breakfast, snacks, or dessert.

Patuxent River

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My husband and I enjoyed the PAXCON Reflections (the webinars provided in lieu of the Patuxent River Conference this year). The recordings are now posted to the website (link above) and available to all. The topics include:

How climate is changing in the Chesapeake Bay region and the Patuxent River watershed, potential impacts to Patuxent River water quality, and how communities can prepare for the future

The importance of wetlands in the Chesapeake Bay Region

Stormwater and how local communities are working to restore their streams and meet regulatory requirements

I’ve been prompted by these webinars to think about my own connection to the Patuxent River close to where I live. The Middle Patuxent originates in Howard County and joins the Little Patuxent near Savage, MD which continues southeast to join the Patuxent River just before it crosses under Crain Highway just south of Crofton, MD. There are 5 locations where I’ve been at or in the Middle Patuxent in recent years. The first 4 are sites for volunteer gigs (pre-pandemic) with high school students assessing water quality. Use the Google Map starting at MPEA and follow the Middle Patuxent.

MPEA

Middle Patuxent Environmental Area is near the origin of the Middle Patuxent. There are several streams that come together in the area to form the river. A loop of the Southwind Trail that goes close to the river. There are a lot of rocks in and along the river…riffles and runs and pools…places for lots of critters.

One time I went down when it was raining – the trail too muddy and the river too high for the water quality sampling. The runoff water had some foam in it and the speed of the water demonstrated how the banks eroded with each such event (note the leaning tree at the edge of the water.)

Robinson Nature Center

Robinson Nature Center is a little further down river from MPEA. I did water quality monitoring with other adults at that location pre-pandemic. There is more water in the channel than at MPEA. The trees along the river are smaller and don’t shade the water…making the water warmer that it was prior to the surrounding development. The banks are somewhat incised but there are still some beach areas…riffles, pools, and runs. There is more silt as well. There are still a few big rocks in the river. Note the whale shaped rock!

Edenbrook

The Middle Patuxent flows under Columbia Pike and on through suburbia. Parking at the dead end of Edenbrook Drive near Kings Contrivance and walking down the old road (gated) to the river is another access point. There use to be a bridge over the river that connected to Kindler Road on the south side. It washed away years ago, but the abutments are still along the river. The banks are more incised. The river is disconnected from its flood plain by this point (it has cut a deep enough channel that it doesn’t broaden much even when there is a lot of water: the water just flows faster and the channel just gets deeper).

Sweet Hours Way

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Parking on Sweet Hours Way and taking the Kings Contrivance Loop trail down to the rive is a little scenic hike on a paved. The banks are much more heavily incised here. The paths from the trail down to the river bed are very steep. There are trees that lean over the river in some places but some of them are barely attached to the bank. Once they fall, the stabilization they provided will be gone and the bank will collapse…until another tree’s roots hold the soil.

There are stretches of the river here that are sand/silt; the rocky bottom has been covered over.

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The little streams that flow down to the river here are also incising their banks. The land is sloped, and the banks quickly erode when they don’t support enough vegetation.

Behind my house

I hiked down to Middle Patuxent behind my house last spring during the first wave of the pandemic. Trees have fallen into the river – probably during a wind/rain event. They were big enough that they would have been growing at the river’s edge when my daughter was young (over 20 years ago) and we tried to make boats from sycamore bark on one trip to the river. During big rains, the water accumulates and runs off more rapidly now than it did then. There is forest buffer along the river but there has been a lot of development (impervious surface) in the watershed between MPEA and my neighborhood.  Some development is much closer to the river than my neighborhood with is about 0.13 miles from the river (forested). Some roads closely parallel the riverbed.   

I don’t know the river beyond that point although I might decide to take a small field trip to the Savage Mill/Bollman Iron Truss Bridge to look at the area where the Middle Patuxent merges with the Little Patuxent. I walked in the area years ago…but it was before I started taking pictures.

Black Squirrel Antics

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I noticed a black squirrel at our feeder while I was watching one of the Crane Fiesta webinars…and took a few pictures.

Later I checked the birdfeeder cam and saw a series of squirrel antics - several strategies to get seed from the feeder. It started at the bottom where the holes are located and birds get seeds. As soon as the squirrel puts its weight on the feeder – the holes are closed! It got no seed that way.

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Then it tried from the top. There is no seed at the top but the squirrel did a thorough sniff…trying to get into the feeder. No luck for the squirrel.

The next strategy was to jump on the feeder. The squirrel started out upside down then turned the other way while the feeder was swinging wildly…finally it jumped off the feeder.

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It sat below the feeder for a bit – recovering – then left the area. Still hungry.

There was a black squirrel that visited our deck back in June but it didn’t explore the feeder. I wonder if this was the same individual. There have been times that I think I see a dark squirrel in our neighborhood as I drive out for errands. We see the gray/brown squirrels on our deck and at the feeder frequently…the black one is still ‘special’ because it doesn’t visit often.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Drying sunflower. I am still enjoying the sunflowers I bought earlier this month. They are drying on the windowsill in my office. I love the color that remains. I photographed one of them with a black fabric background so show off the color and curves.

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Broken treetop. I glimpsed what I thought was a freshly broken tree through the pine needles from my office window and went out in the back yard (2 stories down) to see it without the pine being in the way. I was still looking though some other trees into my neighbor’s yard - but it does appear that one of the larger branches of a tree broke…and the top fell into the forest rather than toward houses. We did have a storm that came through last week with some high winds…which might have been when it happened.

Crane Fiesta

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We thoroughly enjoyed the virtual Crane Fiesta run by the Friends of Bosque del Apache. Checkout their website (bottom of the home page for a collection of short videos). The Facebook page of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge has the morning fly out and even fly in recordings from during the festival.

I went back to look at my pictures from November 2016 and November 2018 when we enjoyed the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque. One of my favorite pictures is one I took the very first day in 2016; it shows that when the angle is just right – it is possible to see through the nares of the crane beak. It was a learning experience for me!

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Here’s a slideshow with a few other 2016 pictures from around the refuge.

In 2018, I did some rapid bursts of pictures to capture sequences of crane take off. I picked individual pictures from several of those to include in the slideshow below. It was colder than in 2016 but we were better prepared – snow pants, hand and foot warmers, balaclavas…layers. On one of the mornings, we watched the cranes stepping very carefully on ice.

I already looking forward to the next time we can be at Bosque del Apache during the festival week…. maybe in 2021.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 21, 2020

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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.

Photography In The National Parks: The Redwood Forests Are Made For Vertical Shots – Botany (redwoods), photography (including two short videos), natural places…a great way to start the day or boost my mood any time.

Tarantulas: Color, Cancer and Cramps – I remember a tarantula on the sliding glass door of our house in Wichita Falls, TX when I was in my early teens…at eye level. Fortunately, it was on the outside and I was inside. It was about the side of the palm of my hand. This article talks about research on tarantulas; they are probably more interesting than scary!

The cheap pen that changed writing forever - BBC Future – A little history for the week. The ballpoint pen was unveiled on October 29, 1945 in the US. However – the first patent for a ballpoint pen was back in 1888. Laszlo Biro developed a practical ball point pen by perfecting the ink (different than ink used in fountain pens) and got a patent in 1938 in Britain but World War II came along, and he fled to Argentina. His pen was released in Argentina in 1943, but the pen was little-known outside of South America. Find out more from the article.

Biophilic Cities For An Urban Century – During the pandemic, I have appreciated where I live for its proximity to nature; I live at the edge of a forest and the 30 year old development has larger trees in the yards too. Turning our cities from gray to green would be different but there are reasons to make the choice to do it. The authors consider urban economics, environmental health, and ecology…and propose that going forward that we should actively design for biophilic cities. If cities were more like the first picture in this article (and all those cars below were electric) – they would be much more pleasant places to live!

Top 25 birds of the week: Wild Birds! – Can’t resist….I always enjoy the collection of bird photos every week…so include it in the gleanings list.

Slideshow: How Ecologists Study the World’s Apex Predators – Projects from around the world studying the impact of predators…using a variety of techniques.

New solar panel design could lead to wider use of renewable energy: Designing solar panels in checkerboard lines increases their ability to absorb light by 125%, a new study says -- ScienceDaily and Solar Panels + Agriculture: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – Two articles about solar panels….we’ve seen more of them in the past few years…there are a lot of indicators that it’s only the beginning of the upward trend gaining momentum.

The Craters on Earth – They mapped 200 sites – high resolution topographic maps and satellite images…geological descriptions and photographs…details of each impact event. I followed the links and found that publication is available for pre-order here; the page provides the table of contents and additional sample images.

How Cowbirds raise their young, without raising their young – We had a group of cowbirds at our feeder one day this week. They seemed to be moving through rather than staying. There were some last spring as well, but I didn’t notice any cowbird chicks coming to the feeder like I have in previous years.

Plastic-eating enzyme 'cocktail' heralds new hope for plastic waste -- ScienceDaily – It appears that we are getting closer to a cost effective was to endlessly recycle plastic – which would dramatically reduce the need to produce plastic from fossil fuels. It’s also a good example of the benefit of collaborative research – international…multiple specialties…sophisticated (and rare) equipment.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Bosque del Apache Sandhill Cranes. We are enjoying the Bosque del Apache Crane Fiesta. It started out with a live video of the morning fly-out of the cranes. The recording is now available on the Facebook page of the refuge….remember to turn on your speakers to listen to the birds and enjoy the sunrise (it starts out before sunrise and runs for more than an hour)!

We’ve been to the area twice in November for the Festival of the Cranes and we always enjoy photographing the cranes (and snow geese) each morning. I simulated it by taking screen snaps as I watched the live video. Enjoy my little slideshow…but watch the video from the refuge’s Facebook to get the full effect!

Lincoln Memorial

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Internet Archive has the June 1923 volume of The Architectural Record – which has pictures of the Lincoln Memorial when it was relatively new, since it opened on May 30th, 1922. Note the small size of vegetation and open area around the monument. The area has changed in almost 100 years! Enjoy the pictures! (Note: In the first group of pictures, click on individual photos to see larger versions…the last one is the wall with the Gettysburg address.)

Jumping to 2020 - The Trust for the National Mall site has a live view of the monument from the top of the Washington Monument…looking down to the World War II Memorial and the reflecting pool toward the Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac / Tidal Basic. The area is a mix of vegetation, water, and monuments…with traffic of Washington DC on all sides. The area is an oasis from dense buildings but still embedded in the city. In the springtime, the cherry trees bloom in the area.

My husband and I are looking forward to being able to see the monuments again – post-pandemic. These pictures from 1923 are so detailed….I want to spend time photographing the monument again….and the other monuments that are nearby – Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam Vets, Korean Vets, and the Washington monument.

Holiday Groceries

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I have done my grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. It will just be myself and my husband…with family members on Zoom or the telephone throughout the day. There were some holiday extras that I purchased:

Brisket – It’s our tradition rather than turkey….my husband’s preference. It has a characteristic in common with turkey – lots of leftovers. We cook it in the slow cooker for the day then make barbeque with the leftover. Sometimes we have so much that we freeze some of it….just as I would do with turkey.

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Christmas cactus – I skipped ahead to the next holiday because the display in the store had so many plants in bloom. I got one that has white and red flowers. It’s in a small pot so I might need to move it to a bigger one after Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin roll – The store had it packaged in different sizes. I bought a two-serving size, and I my husband and I enjoyed it on the morning I brought it home! It was a tasty treat and not overwhelmingly sweet. I hope they have it when I shop two weeks from now. Maybe it will become a tradition until we shift to red velvet cake for Christmas.

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Chunky applesauce – My husband suggested that I make apple spice muffins for our big dinner since pumpkin custard is our favorite dessert (so pumpkin muffins would be too much orange veggie!). I also remembered to replenish my ground cloves, since I had used all I had the last time I made pumpkin custard.

I continued my winter strategy of buying a bouquet of cut flowers every two weeks. I picked one that had more deep red, white and pink rather than orange and yellow…acknowledging how different this Thanksgiving holiday feels in the midst of a raging pandemic…very aware of the value of consciously doing things to sustain our positive mental attitude.

I’m letting the sunflowers I bought 2 weeks ago dry in the Blue Tulip bowls…they’ll add some color to the windowsill in my office for the rest of the month.

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30 years ago – November 1990

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30 years ago I was settling into working full time again even though the work assignment was still very much in flux; the first project was cancelled before it could really get started and I was closing down the work and looking for the ‘what next.’ Concurrently – my 15 month old daughter had acclimated herself to being at day care for the full day 5 days a week…was enjoying cheerios and spaghetti and bubble bath and light switches (not at the same time)…and we flew from Maryland to Texas to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family.

That flight was probably the first flight since she had become mobile; the flight was not full, and she enjoyed small toys and books I had packed to keep her busy on the plane. There was a child a couple of years older in the row behind us on the way down and that helped too; they interacted via the slight crack between the seats. She was still small enough that I could carry her in on my back (we only used the backpack frame for a relatively short time…but it really worked well for those few months); I maneuvered through the airport and onto the plane easily although I noted that contorting myself to get the backpack on and off without assistance caused me to be sore on the travel days.

At my parents’ house, the mulberry leaves had been mostly raked away – but there were still a few to catch the interest of my daughter.

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That was one of the few ‘quiet’ times of the visit. She and her cousin (the same age) did a lot together…enjoying the attention of aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

A very memorable experience happened for me that Thanksgiving Day. I was carrying may daughter into my sister’s house and I slipped in the entry way – almost falling backward. My mother saw the whole thing and commented that she was surprised that I was able to stand back up rather than just sitting down hard. I felt sore in my left hip a few hours later as I helped clear away the dishes after our huge meal. It didn’t bother me enough to see a doctor, but I’ve had some reduction in range of motion in that hip since then.

The day after Thanksgiving, my husband – who had stayed in Maryland – called with the news that his mother had died. I immediately changed my flight home to come back that evening. My daughter must have sensed my emotional stress or simply mimicked my subdued demeanor. She was very quiet…cuddled…then went to sleep on the plane. That weekend we took her with us to plan for the funeral and assess what we needed to do for her grandmother’s apartment. The real work and funeral happened while she was in day care the next week. We brought some of the flowers back to the house after the funeral and she looked at them over the baby gate. They were the only part of the funeral ritual she experienced…my husband pulled out one of the carnations for her to smell.

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And so – from November 1990 onward – we have a tradition of putting flowers at the grave on Thanksgiving or the day after – silk flowers or a wreath at Thanksgiving, fresh cut flowers for her birthday in June.

Neighborhood Pond – November 2020 – part 2

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The high point of my walk to and from the pond was a gingko tree. My husband and I had spotted it on the day we took his car to get a new battery – a flame of yellow leaves in a yard along the main street of our neighborhood. In the few intervening days, most of the leaves had fallen. I took pictures of them on the street – in the grass – drifts in the street gutter.

The graceful shapes are one of my favorites (I make the Zentangle pattern frequently and these pictures give me some ideas of variation of the pattern!). This time of year, the color is yet another reason to enjoy the gingko trees. They are not natives to our area but have been planted as ornamentals in yards and parks.

On the way back from the pond I photographed one branch of the tree that seemed to have held on to more of its leaves. Some of them still have smudges of green.

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Neighborhood Pond – November 2020 – part 1

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I walked down to the neighborhood stormwater pond recently. There were still a few leaves that had not been swept away by the wind (or mowing or raking). I walked through drifts of leaves in the street gutter and sidewalks…crunching.

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I was early enough that the light was good for reflections on the pond. There was no breeze, so the water was a good mirror.

There was a red-winged blackbird in the cattails. It moved around a bit….called to others that had moved to nearby trees as I had walked up to the pond. I sat on the bench for a few minutes, but the other birds stayed away from the immediate pond vegetation.

The sun sometimes made a spotlight on the vegetation…bringing out the nuances of fading fall colors.

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The meadow on the far side of the pond has not been mowed and looks like it is being taken over by invasive pear trees. They’ll probably mow it again in the spring.

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All the flowers around the pond have gone to seed.

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As I started back, I noticed a tree with 3 squirrels’ nests! There were other similarly sized trees near it…but somehow the squirrels found this one more attractive.

A dogwood still held its colorful leaves. The native dogwoods usually have leaves that turn early and drop; this one is probably a non-native and I didn’t notice any seeds.

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Most of the oaks in the neighborhood have lost their leaves completely. Maybe they have just reached the age that they don’t hold their leaves longer. Ours was one of the early droppers this year.

I checked the micro-clover that we planted in some bare spots a few months ago. It is still growing very well everywhere we planted it. Hopefully, it will help the soil improve so we won’t have any bare places next spring.

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Tomorrow I will post about the high point of the walk to and from the pond.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Crane Fiesta 2020. The virtual version of Festival of the Cranes from Bosque del Apache is called Crane Fiesta and is happening November 19-21. It is being delivered as cost-free webinars….but registration is required. The link to register is https://friendsofbosquedelapache.org/festival-of-the-cranes/.  My husband and I are looking forward to the three days of virtual birding….the next best thing to being there (and looking forward to going back to New Mexico in November2021)!

Coloring Zentangle® Tiles – November 2020

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Next month I am cutting back to one Zentangle Tile collection post per month. The pile of colored tiles was way too big to do it this month! I’ve managed to choose 16 from the 100 or so that were made over the past month – some of the original tiles were originally drawm over a year ago and just colored and highlighted in second and third rounds. A few started out with colored rather than black ink patterns. The white gel pen adds a lot at the end…although the one with the green gel pen is one I like as well. somehow the rectangular tiles made from cat food box dividers are my favorite types of tiles right now. I like the color and the texture of them…and the larger space for patterns.

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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 November 14, 2020

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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.

Mapping out rest stops for migrating birds: New metric can help determine when birds fly over a site or stop to refuel or rest -- ScienceDaily – Stopover-to-passage ratio during migration research involves analysis of weather radar data collected since the 1990s…teasing out bird movement from precipitation! Results so far have included some surprises (and there are probably more to come as more of the historical data is processed and the processing becomes more and more sophisticated).

This Crocodile Dad Gives Over 100 of His Kids a Lift – A large species (gharial) with a narrow snout…in India.

Top 25 birds of the week: November 2020 – Birds from around the world….so much beauty in the natural world to see…and try to protect.

Top Solar States Per Capita 2012 vs. 2020 — CleanTechnica Report and US Energy Dept. Aims For Affordable Solar Power – Two posts about solar power. The first article shows the growth since 2012. In states where there wasn’t much growth, I wondered if the utilities in the state or the state government posed barriers to solar power. It seems like the whole country  should be in the mode of getting out of the way or encouraging renewal energy. The second article was about community solar programs from DOE with a mission to ‘bring affordable solar power to every household in the US by 2025’ – a worthy goal but is there enough money in the pipe to do it? This is not a technical problem as much as ‘are we ready to just do it.’

Lullabies in any language relax babies -- ScienceDaily and Baby Bottles Can Shed Millions of Microplastic Particles: Study | The Scientist Magazine® - I’ve been thinking recently about how much things have changed since my daughter was a baby over 30 years ago. I had a lullaby tape (in English) that I played for her in the evenings (although when she got old enough to choose – she wanted soundtracks from Disney movies as often as the lullabies). Now – we’d have digital music playing (rathe than cassette tapes) and maybe there would be lullabies in different languages too. The second article is about some worrisome research and I hope that pediatricians are keeping up and advising parents on best approaches.

When Domestic Birds Go Wild – Chickens, turkeys, ducks, swans, guinea fowl, peacocks, ornamental pheasants, doves and pigeons, emus, and parrots.

Picturing Earth: Astronaut Photography In Focus – A video – just under 70 minutes….with good imagery and discussion.

The return of Europe’s largest beasts - BBC Future – Bison, wolves, and elk…will the agricultural sector of Europe learn to cope with the big herbivores…and a predator?

As Waters Warm, Ocean Heatwaves Are Growing More Severe - Yale E360 – It’s easier for us to notice the heatwaves on land…but the ocean is taking the bulk of the increased heat on the planet and research on marine heatwaves is just beginning. The precise definition of the phenomenon was only proposed in 2016.  

See the World in Detail Thanks to the Close Up Photographer of the Year – Ending the gleanings list this week with some eye candy….enjoy the visual treat.

8 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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It’s a challenge to stay vigilant with masks…handwashing…distancing from other people – but even more important now with the cases spiking all over the country. Maryland is back to numbers we haven’t seen since June and the trend looks like it will go higher. The metrics that were established to open restaurants and bars are now indicating that the capacity needs to be reduced…and the governor did that this week.

My husband and I got our first haircut of the pandemic in mid-October; our logic was to get it before the anticipated increase in cases as people began spending more time indoors….anticipating that our next haircut would be after we are vaccinated. Our timing was good based on what is happening now…just 3 weeks later.

The CSA ended the third week in October. That was my only weekly errand away from the house and it was one I enjoyed. I am considering some kind of outdoor foray that I can do every week --- someplace not far from home…but a change of scenery once a week. The end of the CSA impacts my grocery shopping as well. I’ve already started buying more produce; it will increase as I clear out the veggies I froze over the course of the summer. I’ll still be shopping every other week rather than my pre-pandemic weekly habit; I’ve discovered that every other week works well for me.

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After the CSA ended and I didn’t have a dusty gravel road to traverse, I got my car washed (drive thru) --- it’s a joy to have a clean car. It’s good for the winter now. I also bought gas – the first tank since January. So now I am back to charging the car and doing my driving as an EV. It was low risk since everything was self-service and I wore a mask just in case someone else pulled into the slot next to me; and used hand sanitizer after I got gas…and after I put the code in for the car wash. My car is probably set with fuel and maintenance until after the vaccination is available.

I had a porch full of stuff to donate. It feels good to get rid of items we no longer need. We also made a trip to the county landfill for some larger trash items and hazardous waste (large fluorescent bulbs). The charities and county facility are probably at lower capacity but functional at this point. Their processes for protecting their employees and the public are established.

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My husband and his doctor have changed his prescriptions from mail delivery to pickup at a local pharmacy based on the challenges with timely delivery from the postal service in our area. I’m not sure if this is related to the pandemic at all…but it is all happening at the same time. There are layers of anxiety that sometimes are separate…but tend to meld together over time, stretching our ability to cope with more and more and more.

We made a field trip to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant for birding. It was outdoors, small group, distanced, mostly masked. It was OK…but now that the cases in our state are spiking, we might not do something like that again. We can still go to places like that but just on our own.

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There were joys of virtual events over the past month. My favorite was the Hawaii Island Festival of Birds. It was good for the moment…and gave me ideas about the future…things I want to do post-pandemic.

It’s fall. We thought we would take some fall foliage drives but we missed the peak so the main fall activity has been mowing leaves in our yard! Still – the continuity of the natural cycle is something that buoys my spirits.

Right now, I am aware that there are multiple anxieties beyond the pandemic. After 8 months – the pandemic is the one I am coping with the best; I know how to reduce my risk and I have developed habits that are easy to maintain because they incorporate activities in my every day activities that are joyful…it is easily sustainable until the vaccine is available.

My hope for the next few weeks is that several of the other anxieties will reduce dramatically (since I have not discovered good ways to cope with them – who would have guessed that the transition from one US President to the next would be so fraught) and that we’ll be settling in for Thanksgiving and then Christmas with lots of virtual interactions with far flung family and the usual good food/decorations…savoring home and health…looking forward to a post-pandemic sometime in 2021.

Jaws – The Story of a Hidden Epidemic

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Most of the books I feature in my blog are free eBooks available from Internet Archive (or similar sources). This is a more recent book that I purchased in Kindle form:

Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic by Sandra Kahn and Paul R. Ehrlich published in 2018 by Stanford University Press. It’s available from Amazon for about $10.

The basic idea is that the way we grow up and live now causes our jaws to be malformed compared to the jaws of our ancestors.

It has been observed that ancient human jaws had room for wisdom teeth….and the lower jaw continued to fit with the upper over the lifetime. That rarely happens now and there is a lot of orthodontic intervention to correct problems that develop.

So – the book sets out to identify what is different now…why is there so much malocclusion in childhood and beyond….and obstructive sleep apnea as we get older?

One of the ideas from the book was that breastfeeding and then providing chewing opportunities for babies (rather than relying exclusively on pureed foods) as soon as they begin to get teeth helps the jaw form properly. In my family, that happened well enough that my sisters and I didn’t need braces (although we did need to have our wisdom teeth removed). I was old enough to remember when my youngest sister had just been weaned and was teething; my mother had given her a piece of celery to chew on; my mother took the celery and gently felt to see if the tooth had emerged and my sister bit down so hard that the finger bled a little (I always though my sister had assumed that the finger was the celery and she was finally going to get the bite!). The next generation was not so lucky – all 5 of my mother’s grandchildren required braces. I hope pediatricians are prompting new parents to give toddlers opportunities to chew after being weaned. And - it turns out that breast feeding requires more jaw power than bottle feeding so why don’t we have modified bottles that can do the same for situations where a baby is not breast feeding!

Another idea is that not only do we need to learn good posture for our back; jaw posture is important too! Correct jaw posture is the mouth closed with the teeth slightly touching….not with the jaw lowered. The airway is at its maximum when the jaw is closed! The muscles developed to close the jaw are important to maintaining that open airway. In some cultures, mother’s gently close the baby’s mouth after they finish nursing to encourage them to breathe through their nose and develop good jaw posture. I’ve been consciously monitoring my jaw poster and building up the appropriate muscles…I do find that my sinuses empty more easily, and breathing is very relaxed…although it felt strange at first. I rarely breath through my mouth but I was holding my jaw slightly open as my ‘default’ rather than the closed jaw that is good posture. Notice that it is also easier to swallow pills with the jaw closed!

There was an article published in Bioscience by the authors in September that is available online that provides some highlights from the book and pictures that illustrate the difference proper jaw posture makes.

9th Anniversary for my Blog

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I started my blog on November 11th, 2011.

The very first post was about making Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffins. Maybe I’ll make the recipe again this year. Brookside Gardens and Longwood Gardens had wonderful displays for fall gourds and squashes that year. I was doing some photography then, but a good portion of the blog posts weren’t illustrated. Now the majority of posts have a illustrations and sometimes the topic is the illustrations themselves.

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Travel has continued to be a blog topic all along…which has made this year different from all the preceding ones; it’s been a year dominated by being ‘at home.’ The most frequent destinations in previous years were where my family lives – the Dallas, TX area for my sisters and parents….and then a sequence of places for my daughter: Tucson, AZ for grad school, Pittsburgh and State College, PA for post doc, and Springfield, MO for faculty position. During some of the years I travelled with my sister…to South Carolina, Tennessee, and Rhode Island. My husband and I discovered Birding Festivals as a travel focus beginning in 2016 with Bosque Del Apache’s Festival of the Cranes. As soon as the pandemic wanes (probably with the wide availability of a vaccine), we’ll be traveling again and the blog will pick up that thread again.

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Books have also been a blog topic all along. The trend has been toward eBooks which are now about all I read. The botanical eBooks list has grown to over 2,000 volumes at this point and is still growing! I’ve become more interested in images of all kinds – photographs, paintings, etching, sketches – and I appreciate viewing them online rather than in a museum or physical book; I like to take my time, sometimes enlarge a particular portion of the image, view them on just about any device and almost anywhere!

I have made pattern-like doodles for as long as I can remember, and they have been part of the blog posts for most of the 9 years. Now they follow the Zentangle tile process – most of the time. I’ve diverged in several ways and that will change over time. At present I am making tiles in black ink with the idea of coloring them….adding white highlights as the last step. I am not using a pencil at all (for strings or for shading).

Gleanings have also been in the blog for most of the 9 years. My feeds have changed slightly but are still skewed toward science related topics. One trend I noticed is that the solutions to address climate change have matured over the past 9 years. There are a lot of effective technologies available to choose from (see Project Drawdown) – which add some hope to an otherwise dystopian future for the Earth and humanity.

My outdoor volunteering ramped up over the 9 years and I enjoyed writing about it…then that aspect of life came crashing down with the pandemic. I am hopeful about it starting again sometime in 2021. Giving back to the community, interacting with schools on field trips and people visiting Brookside’s butterfly exhibit is a joy I’ve missed in 2020.

I’ve been in my same home office for the entire 9 years and the view through the window is always fabulous – out to the bird feeder/bath on our deck and back into the forest. The view is inspiring and pictures I take through the window often make it into blog posts. Probably my favorite sequence is of bluebirds bathing from back in February 2018. I collected a sequence of ‘through the window’ pictures from 2012 through 2019 for the slideshow below. The feeder was added in 2015 which was a big attraction for November birds. I also noticed that the zoom on my cameras improved over the time period!

The very first post about little celebrations was back in August 2012 and then I started the listing of 10 each month in September 2012. Noting the joys of life is one of the ways I keep myself optimistic…which I’ve needed more than usual in 2020. Stream through the ‘celebration’ posts via this link.

The blog continues on….documenting my post-career journey. These pandemic and political upheaval months of 2020 have probably been the most unusual – and anxious - of my life; I am looking forward to the new year and documenting the events that unfold – finding celebrations.

Mt. Pleasant – November 2020 (part 2)

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The Davis Branch was serene as usual in the rocky beach area. A family with children was at the water’s edge so I focused more on the shed with beech trees still retaining a few leaves, the upstream and downstream view, and the path up the hill.

I noticed that the treey with the damaged trunk (maybe from a lightning strike) had been cut at the top. Or perhaps the top fell and it was the sawed pieces that I photographed were facing the path.

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A path that was mostly grown over last year at this time is now a clear track…maybe a little too close to the stream, but everyone likes it too much to close it off. I enjoyed some colorful leaves along the way back toward the stone wall.

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There is now a new bridge across the Davis Branch! I had missed that news and found it by accident. There are riffles right at the bridge then deeper water. I hope the little trees planted around the bridge survive. It is a great vantage point now and will get better as the trees get bigger.

Overall – our little field trip to Mt. Pleasant was too short to do everything. Maybe we’ll go again some weekday morning ….when there will be fewer people around.

Mt. Pleasant – November 2020 (part 1)

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Our second field trip of the pandemic – birding at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant. We met the group at the Robbins Skywatch – distancing and wearing masks - to watch for hawks flying over. It was not an optimal morning with calm sunny weather. In terms of numbers we saw more vultures and crows than hawks…and the high point – for me – was a raven. I wasn’t trying to get pictures of the birds…felt lucky enough to track them with my binoculars.

I took some pictures from the vantage point of the skywatch: horse nettle fruits,

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Fall foliage across the meadow and on the other side of the Davis Branch,

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And some new houses that have been built in the past year or so (they change the feel of that area of the meadow for me…I prefer areas of the conservancy where surrounding development is not visible).

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I took a break to walk down to the Davis Branch ‘beach’ area (more about that area tomorrow). Along the way I started taking pictures of seeds spilling out of seed pods.

I walked across the meadow on the path where the chunk of quartz was taken out of the path to keep it from damaging the mower – has been just to the side of the path since. The indentation where was until a couple of years ago has almost filled in now.

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On the way back to the car I noticed that there are new doors on Montjoy Barn.

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I also walked around the other areas near where we had parked…taking in scenes from previous falls when I volunteered to hike with elementary school field trips: the old farm house,

The leaves under the gingko tree in the picnic area,

The witch hazel blooming in front of the Gudelsky Environmental Center.

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And then we were heading home after a pleasant fall morning at Mt. Pleasant.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

The sound of fall leaves. I ate lunch outdoors on our covered deck…listening to the leaves. The ones still on the trees are getting drier… and they make a different noise as they bump into each other than spring or summer leaves. They are the wind chimes of nature this time of year.

Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge

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E. A. Wallis Budge worked for the British Museum from 1883 to 1924 and published many books about Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities…many of which are now available online via Internet Archive. I’ve enjoyed browsing through them over the past month or so and have selected some of my favorites to feature with sample images below. I’m always a little surprised at how much was already discovered by the late 1800s/early 1900s….and that there are still new finds in the region every year (when the frequent wars/political upheaval don’t get in the way). Of course – our understanding of these artifacts has increased over time; it’s wise to keep in mind when the books were written/published.  Each book title is a link to the book on Internet Archive. Enjoy

Books on Egypt and Chaldaea

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Gleanings of the Week Ending November 7, 2020

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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.

Taking the measure of sea level rise - ocean altimetry, land motion, ice height, gravimetry – NASA missions that measure some aspect of sea level rise…there is a lot to work to measure and analyze – to better understand that is happening.

Health Care Facilities Maintain Indoor Air Quality Through Smoke and Wildfires | U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit – Some of the HEPA filters purchased for the pandemic were available and were used to keep hospitals operational in areas where the outside air was smokey. Are we going to need this type of filters in our homes as well – for air quality more than the pandemic?

Top 25 birds of the week: Seabirds – Beautiful birds…from all around the world.

From Palmyra to the Pacific: Realigning a Rainforest – Cool Green Science – An atoll 1000 miles southeast of Hawaii…marred by human intervention…now owned by The Nature Conservancy…inspiring the creation of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2008. Restoration is ongoing to maximize Palmyra’s resilience to climate change: eradicating black rats, realigning native rainforest (not restoring because what was there originally is unknown), and reintroducing native bird species.

Red maples doing better in the city -- ScienceDaily – Hurray for red maples. The study was done in Philadelphia which is a couple of hours from where I live….and I have a health red maple in my back yard!

Deformed Beaks: What We Know About An Alarming Bird Disease  - Avian Keratin Disorder (AKD) which might be caused by a poecivirus. The birds in the article are from Alaska but some are species we have hear in Maryland too. Hopefully, this is not a disease that will become widespread.

Top US States for Percentage of Electricity from Solar – Even states that aren’t normally viewed as ‘high sun’ are near the top of the list! This chart will probably change a lot over the next few years as more and more utility companies and individuals transition to renewables. Government can help but it is quickly becoming the more cost-effective path forward…market forces will drive the transition.

Scientists Discover New Human Salivary Glands | The Scientist Magazine® - Tubarial glands…what a surprise that they haven’t been discovered previously!

Floating gardens: More than just a pretty place -- ScienceDaily – It is a small experiment…but there was measurable nitrate reduction by the garden….maybe it is something that could be scaled to reduce accumulation of nitrate (from agricultural and yard runoff) that causes algal blooms.

Largest Arctic Expedition Ever Comes to a Close | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – The Polarstern, a German research vessel, is back in port after spending a year drifting with the ice floe across the Arctic. It will take 2 years to fully process all the data collected but the initial assessment of the Arctic environment is summarized as grim: ice gone in places it should be meters thick.