Carrollton Yard – January 2024 (2)

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In the mid-1960s my maternal grandfather collected a dead tree – a snag – and cut it to fit from floor to ceiling in his living room. I was probably about 9 feet tall…with branches. One of my aunts decorated it with artificial ivy; other small items were collected and displayed there. When the house was sold after the deaths of my grandparents in the 1980s, my mother got the tree (I am not sure how she got it from Oklahoma to Texas) and it was installed on the covered porch at the front of my parents’ house…with fewer branches and a little shorter. Now that the house is being sold, it is uninstalled and going with a long-time neighbor to grace his family’s garden in New Mexico.

One of the branches that had to be cut off when the tree was installed on the porch has been in the front garden for a long time…decaying very slowly.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

There are rose bushes by the fence that were planted more recently. They were blooming profusely when the first hard freeze occurred…the blooms still colorful and dehydrated - fragile. Roses have been a popular plant with my family. I can remember by paternal grandmother loving the small in-town house they moved to from the farm in Wichita Falls; the previous owner had planted rose bushes – yellow, red, pink, white – that made many a great bouquet for my sisters and I to take to our elementary school teachers. My parents planted hybrid tea roses in the house they build in Wichita Falls; we each had a rose bush. Mine was the Granada. My dad’s was the Mister Lincoln.

Were the big rocks in the front a selling point? I always enjoy them in the front bed, that dramatically reduces the amount of mowing. They have been in place long enough to have lichen.

Of course – the red yucca are always a joy to photograph. This time of year it is all about the seed pods. My mother got a single plant in a pot and then propagated it to fill a significant portion on the sunny side of the front garden. My sister takes young plants that come up among the mature ones and has planted them in other yards…so the children of these plants are already thriving in family gardens elsewhere.

I realize that the yard will be forever changed with my parents no longer the owners of the place…it will be a place that exists only in memory.

Zooming – January 2024

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January was a very light month for photography; I was recovering from the stress of being away from home and made 2 short trips to Carrollton very focused on helping my parents adjust to their new home and preparing to sell the house they had lived in for over 30 years. Even with fewer images to select from – I savor the 9 selected as the best for the month: birds and snow and sunrises….and a surprised flower (taken near the end of December just as the first hard freeze was sending the Carrollton TX area into winter). Enjoy the January 2024 slideshow!

Snowy Day on our Patio

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The birds were very active at our feeders recently with the temperature in the single digits (Fahrenheit) and the wind blowing up to 16 miles per hour! Multiple perches were in use much of the time. The house finches were the most numerous but there were sparrows (white-crowned) and a woodpecker (hairy?) and a female Northern Cardinal too. It was quite a feeding frenzy!

I was taking pictures through an office window with a screen so the pictures have a softened focus. Sometimes birds were still enough for portraits (female finch, male woodpecker, white crowned sparrow, cardinal).

I attempted a picture of sparrow through vegetation….and liked the artsy veil that the automatic focus produced with the challenge.

Of course, there were other items catching snow around our patio – the chiminea, the holly trees, the gnarled vine to the side of the stairs to the deck, a paver near the almost covered lambs ear, fall leaves in the bottom of the wagon. I stepped outside to take these pictures….and all the birds flew away!

The birds returned within minutes of my exit from the patio back to the warmth of my office.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 27, 2024

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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.

Can autoimmune diseases be cured? - After decades of frustration and failed attempts, scientists might finally be on the cusp of developing therapies to restore immune ‘tolerance’ in conditions such as diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis.

Good and bad news for people with low back pain - The good news is that most episodes of back pain recover, and this is the case even if you have already had back pain for a couple of months. The bad news is that once you have had back pain for more than a few months, the chance of recovery is much lower. This reminds us that although nearly everyone experiences back pain, some people do better than others, but we don't completely understand why.

Why diphtheria is making a comeback - While this present surge of diphtheria cases is indeed unprecedented for West Africa, it is really a symptom of larger issues in global health, including insufficient infectious disease surveillance, poor vaccination rates and scarcity of public health resources.

The Prairie Ecologists Photos of the Week – January 22 2024 – Photographs from out in the cold.

The chemistry of meat alternatives – It’s complicated…..in the end are meat alternative ultra-processed food?

The strange reasons medieval people slept in cupboards – I can see how they might have been warmer….but also rather claustrophobic. And wouldn’t they be hard to keep clean?

In the time of the copper kings - Some 3,500 years ago, prosperous merchants on Cyprus controlled the world’s most valuable commodity. Beginning in the third millennium B.C., and especially during the second millennium B.C., copper was king and could make those who possessed it extremely wealthy and powerful. There was enough copper and tin on board the Uluburun ship (wrecked off the coast of Turkey) to produce 11 tons of bronze, which experts estimate could have been turned into 33,000 swords. Researchers have analyzed the Uluburun wreck’s copper and found that it all came from Cyprus. There is evidence of the surprisingly diverse nature of the community thriving there and that those Cypriots who controlled the production and distribution of copper, such as the shipment found off Uluburun, could become exceptionally rich.

Cicadas Are Coming: Rare ‘Dual Emergence’ Could Bring One Trillion of the Bugs This Year – We don’t live in the overlap area…but where we live in Missouri will see Brood XIX this summer….a great opportunity for cicada photography!

Incredible Winners of the Close-Up Photographer of the Year Contest – So many beautiful images. My favorite is ‘Spirit of Yucatan’ (drifting stems of lily pads in a Mexican freshwater cenote…the sky above).

Deepwater Horizon oil spill study could lead to overhaul of cleanup processes worldwide – Chemical oil dispersants combined with sunlight…made oil more toxic. Observations from after Deepwater Horizon, and being confirmed experimentally, to improve responses to oil spills.

Snowflakes

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It has been a few years since I posted about my attempts to photograph snowflakes. My recent attempt was my first in Missouri…and not a great success…more a learning experience. It was a bitterly cold day (in the single digits). It was snowing at a good rate…small flakes. I used the same materials I had in years past: red glass plate, magnifying lens clipped onto my phone, external clicker to take the pictures. I hadn’t realized the low temperature and the deck/patio being on the north (versus southwest) of the house would have on how cold I felt! The images are tantalizing but I was too cold to spend more time to get the flakes more isolated.

The better location in our Missouri house for snowflake photography will be the garage which opens to the south. It would be a good place to have my set up and be out of the wind. I might even set up an LED light underneath my plate! It’s only January; surely there will be more opportunities for snowflake photography this winter.

My previous snowflake macro photography attempts:

Feb. 2021 (and a second post…third post)

March 2015

March 2014 (and a second post)

Feb. 2014

Jan. 2014

Our Icy Neighborhood Pond

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I ventured outdoors on a sunny morning with the temperature in the teens; I wanted to see what the ice on the pond looked like at closer range than the windows of our house. Along the way I noticed the lingering snow near some rocks leaning up against a retaining wall; they’ve been leaning there since we moved to the neighborhood – maybe it is intentional to make the wall look unfinished? I like the color of the pine needles around the rocks…contrasting with the snow.

Closer to the pond, I photographed a leaf among the remnants of snow and moss/algae in the channel that feeds the pond with run off from the neighborhood. A little further on there was a big wad of oak leaves caught under the small bridge; it would slow the flow during a big rain.

And then there was the pond. Parts of the surface were white with ice…some ice was almost clear. It was hard to tell if there was any open water. There appeared to be some areas that migh have thawed and then refrozen…clear ice between areas of white.

I took zoomed pictures of the surface – noticing twigs where ice accumulated, leaves under the ice.

My favorite picture of the morning was a leaf frozen under some ice with the big frost/snow crystals on its surface.

New Orleans Vicariously

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My daughter attended the American Astronomical Society meeting in New Orleans last week with her research students. She sent a few pictures of the place that reminded me of the two visits I made to the city years ago…and something added to the skyline more recently.

She took a walking tour of the French Quarter…and took a picture on the river as it ended around sunset.

The next day she photographed the sunset from her hotel window. Her room was on an upper floor and the window was grubby…but it made the picture look ‘painterly.’

The second picture (only a minute later) highlighted a strange shape with a blue light on the horizon. It looked like a spy plane at first glance! I did some research. It is the Bollinger Canopy of Peace that spans across The National WWII Museum’s campus…built after 2015!

The next day my daughter and her students (and some others from the conference) did a late-in-the-day visit to the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans. It was established in 1990 – long after my last visit to New Orleans for a Computer Measurement Group meeting in December 1981 (the first visit was in Fall 1977 for a King Tut exhibit).

It was fun to get her impressions of the city. A lot has changed in over 40 years, but the French Quarter is still the hub – hotels and museums and walking tours cluster around it. I also savored that both of us have the experience of traveling to interesting places as part of our careers.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 20, 2024

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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.

Just how big can a snowflake get? It depends on what you mean by 'snowflake' - A snow crystal with six-fold symmetry is the kind of snowflake you might cut out of folded paper with scissors. But the word "snowflake" also can refer to white puffballs that drift down from the sky, which are made of many individual snow crystals that have collided and gotten entangled.

Treating tuberculosis when antibiotics no longer work - Substances that have a dual effect against tuberculosis: They make the bacteria causing the disease less pathogenic for human immune cells and boost the activity of conventional antibiotics.

Planning a city that gets people moving – Lake Wales, Florida has a plan to create a built environment that promotes mobility through walking, cycling, e-biking, or other means of transportation beside automobiles. One way to do that is through proximity—to a park, multiuse pathway, protective bike lane, or walkable destination. Another is to ensure that the environment is pleasant for walking or using a bicycle.

The qualities that are more attractive than our looks - When it comes to finding the right match agreeableness accentuates the benefits of other parts of our personalities. It really could pay to be kind after all.

Archaeologists Uncover ‘Exceptional’ Ancient Mural Near Colosseum - Crafted of shells, a special volcanic stone called pozzolana, marble, colored glass, and Egyptian tiles found in the remains of a house from more than 2,000 years ago. Its intricate designs show weapons and instruments hanging alongside ships and tridents. Archaeologists think a wealthy Roman officer commissioned it after a military success. Whoever the owner was, he may not have stayed wealthy for long. Evidence suggests that his family fell out of favor when the Roman emperor Augustus came to power. The building and its contents were later buried and replaced with a grain store built directly on top of it.

A Lake Born out of an Earthquake – Earthquakes can fundamentally reshape the landscape, reroute rivers, and even form new lakes. Consider the northwest corner of Tennessee in the early 19th century. Between December 1811 and February 1812, three earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 7 occurred in the New Madrid seismic zone, which encompasses southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, and neighboring parts of Tennessee and Kentucky. The last of these quakes, on February 7, 1812, centered near New Madrid, Missouri, was especially notable: It temporarily rerouted the Mississippi River, permanently dammed the Reelfoot River, and directed water to fill in a low-lying area to form Reelfoot Lake. More than two centuries later, Reelfoot Lake remains a persistent feature on the Tennessee landscape. An image from Landsat 9 shows the area in late 2023. The area of lake and surrounding wetlands is a state park and national wildlife refuge.

Cats Prey on More Than 2,000 Different Species - Scientists have long known that free-ranging cats—those that spend unsupervised time outdoors—can affect biodiversity by hunting and eating insects, birds, reptiles and mammals. Researchers sifted through hundreds of previous studies, books and reports to put together a database of every animal cats have been recorded eating, as well as the location. In the end, their list featured 2,084 species, which includes 981 birds, 463 reptiles, 431 mammals, 119 insects and 57 amphibians, plus 33 additional species from other groups. Some of the creatures that made the list—including humans—are too large for cats to hunt but reflect their scavenging tendencies. Though the findings are useful, some scientists say they distract from a much larger threat to biodiversity: humans.

Autistic people experience loneliness far more acutely than neurotypical people -Small adjustments to lighting, acoustics, decor and wayfinding, among other sensory factors, can significantly reduce the burden on people with sensory processing differences and open up more social spaces to them.

Inhalable sensors could enable early lung cancer detection - The new diagnostic is based on nanosensors that can be delivered by an inhaler or a nebulizer. If the sensors encounter cancer-linked proteins in the lungs, they produce a signal that accumulates in the urine, where it can be detected with a simple paper test strip. It could replace expensive CT scans for lung cancer (and be more accurate…not as many false-positives).

This Photographer Captured One Image of Cambridge (England) Every Day for 13 Years - After 5,000 photos, Martin Bond has decided to conclude his project, which showcased the city’s mundane and extraordinary moments. “The best thing about street photography ... is that it is possible for the final viewer of a picture to see more than the original photographer—proof, if any were needed, that there is more going on in any moment than a single person can understand.”

Dried hydrangeas

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My daughter let me cut the last three flowers on her Asian hydrangea bush last October (see post here). They lasted a long time in a vase on the windowsill in my office. About the time I headed to Texas in mid-November, I put the flowers into separate vases with no water to enable the flowers to dry.

When I returned home, the flowers were nicely dried with most of the petals still blue! I took some high key images of the best one – where the petals stayed relatively flat rather than wilting/curling.

This is a great way to prolong the flowers of fall into winter. I wonder how long the color will last….

Yard Work – January 2024

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Normally I don’t do much yard work in January but I was away from home for the last mowing of leaves in November so that was my project for the first warmish day after I was back in Missouri; I mowed the areas with thick leaves when the high temperature for the day was less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. After that I began to worry that there wasn’t going to be a day warm enough to plant some of the bulbs my sister dug up for me from my parents’ yard.

Then it happened. It was in the forties again, but the sun was bright. Before I started my project, I walked around my yard to assess the plants in the flowerbeds. There must have been an early hard freeze because all the crape myrtles have leaves on the stems – no time for them to turn and fall. The same thing might have happened to the rose bushes too. Next spring there might be a lot of dead twigs to cut out of those plants. On the bright side, there were several plants – including the hens and chicks – that appear to be handling the temperatures very well.

I used the wagon to carry the pots of spider lily bulbs around to the front of the house. They were going to become a ‘ruff’ around the base of our two red maples. I had put mulch around the base last spring, so it was relatively easy to dig a rig near the outer edge of the mulch and then plant the bulbs. It only took one pot for each tree; I still have one pot of those bulbs to plant at my daughters.

I hope I get another warmish day to plant the iris rhizomes and a rock rose….but first I need to decide where I am going to plant them!

First Snow of the Winter

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I was home for a bit of snow last week; I don’t know that it was the first of the season overall…but it was the first for me! It started by covering the deck and railing…the cover of the gas grill.

I was hopefully that it would cover the tennis court so I could try out walking a pattern there…but it didn’t stick to the court since the temperatures before the snow had been significantly warmer. I’ll have to wait for another snow event. I used my camera zoom to photograph snow caught in the holly branches.

I celebrated being home for the snow!

Birds at Josey Ranch the last day of 2023

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I got to the large pond at Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX) just after sunrise on the last day of 2023. The birds were in feeding mode. The ring-necked duck diving for fish…

The swans swimming up to a high bank to nibble the grass while staying in the water….

A flock of double-crested cormorants landing just as I arrived than quickly finding good places to feed on the pond.

They were more numerous than I had ever seen at the pond before…I was probably lucky to catch some that were migrating.

A great blue heron was statue-like – standing on the grassy shore.

When I looked at my images on a large sceen, I discovered that I had managed a photo of a scaup with its mouth open!

The sunrise was not spectacular; the clouds were thickening as the sun came up. It was spectacular to see the cormorants so active in the minutes of brilliant sunshine at one end of the pond. I headed back to work on tasks I needed to complete before I left for Missouri (going home) the following day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 13, 2024

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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 were the death tolls from pandemics in history? – The two most recent ones are COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Death from the 1918-1920 flu pandemic was larger than both together….and the population of the world was less then too.

Moments of hope and resilience from the climate frontlines – Drought then intense rains leading to rolling blackouts, damage to infrastructure, agriculture failures, mosquito spread diseases. Heat stress leading to deaths of people and wildlife, wildfires. Protecting and rehabilitating damaged habitats. A new normal….not anyone ready. Heat officers to help residents cope. Coastal erosion (caused by coastal development, rising sea levels and storm surges). Taking two years rather than one to dry firewood in Lapland. Solar panels positive impact on health care in India (and anywhere where electric power is unreliable). Crop irrigation required where it previously was not. Learning from our past, simpler lifestyles.

European Imports of Russian Pipeline Gas Dropped by Half Last Year - Europe has implemented measures to conserve energy and has ramped up wind and solar power. Last year, Germany, the largest economy in Europe, drew more than half of its power from renewables for the first time.

NASA Captures Stunning Images of Jupiter’s Moon Io on Closest Flyby in 20 Years – Image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Io is the most volcanically active planetary body in our solar system with 100s of volcanos.

Christmas Trees on the Beach – The innovative ways communities are using the cut trees after Christmas!

How humans have changed the Earth’s surface in 2023 – Overhead pictures tell stories of the past year. The picture of the drained Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was startling.

Photographer Travels Europe to Document Incredible Starling Murmurations – I see smaller murmurations every road trip….never in a situation to photograph them! They are not always starlings. I remember seeing one in Florida that was tree swallows.

Could Climate Change Cause More Lakes to Turn Bright Pink? – Single-celled, salt-loving halobacteria. There is a new pink pond at the Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge in Hawaii…but it has been happening in the Great Salt Lake’s North Arm for several decades.  The number of pink ponds could increase with warmer temperatures increasing evaporation (and increasing the salinity of waters).

Next Solar Eclipse, In April, Expected to Attract Upwards Of 4 Million Tourists - Great American Eclipse has developed a geographic model to estimate how many people will travel to see the April eclipse. This model predicts that between 1 and 4 million people will travel to the path of totality. Texas is expected to receive the majority of visitors, followed by Indiana, Ohio, New York, Arkansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Oklahoma, Maine, and New Hampshire.

U.S. Dietary Committee considers if the potato is a vegetable or a grain - Agriculture officials say the average American consumes about 50 pounds of potatoes each year.

My Parents’ House

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Once the decision was made in mid-December with my parents to move to an assisted living group home, I found myself examining the house that that had called home for more than 30 years – the last home they would own…the only one that didn’t still have a mortgage when they moved. The contents documented the whole of their lives.

The creation of the garden room not long after they moved into the house was a project that added more than space to the house.

The space was lined with house plants (some that had grown quite large) and had great light. The jigsaw puzzle table was there…a rocker and glide…and a transport chair that was easily maneuvered into a sunny spot to observe birds outside at the feeder or read the paper. The glide, puzzle table, and transport chair were moved to the assisted living group home.

The large plant in the foreground of the picture with the transport chair is one that grew up into the skylight of the garden room over the decades. My sister had brought it home from her work when an office closed. It bloomed in December (something it had done rarely over the years)…to the joy of my parents and the whole family. My sister has now managed to move it (in a U-Haul truck) to her house about an hour away; we were all relieved that it survived the trek intact.

A clay pot that another sister made was in the corner of my parents bedroom holding a collection of peacock feathers and dried seed pod/flowers….a suncatcher. My mother selected it as something to move with her – perhaps because of the memories of each item and the vase itself. Peacock feathers are special in my family because my maternal grandparents kept peacocks in their later years.

Back in the garden room a small poinsettia purchased recently sat on the windowsill. The second image is my favorite artsy image of December 2023! The pot was small enough for the windowsill at the assisted living group home so it moved with my parents.

We are now in the phase of sifted though everything in the house….taking a little more to my parents, distributing items to family members and my parents’ friends, donating some items….recycling and trash are the last resort. There are ups and downs to the work. It is giving us time to internalize the pivot point in my parents’ lives (and our own).

First Frost in Carrollton

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December was warmer than usual in Carrollton. There wasn’t a frost until the next to the last day of the month! I went out early to capture the sunrise…not particularly interesting but worth the effort since I realized there would be frost to photograph when there was enough light.

I went out about an hour and half later and found frost coating the ground cover in the garden. Some of the plants seem more frosted than others – the differences in textures and microclimates probably.

The 30+ year old rose bush had a bud that was not yet open. I realized that I should have cut it before the frost to bring inside. I cut it with the frost on it and took it to the assisted living group home for my parents later in the day….perhaps the last flower from the rose bush a cousin purchased for my grandmother’s 80th birthday so many years ago.

The sweet gum in a side yard (a hybrid that does not produce spiky seeds) is finally red. My parents planted the tree several years ago when it became apparent that the mulberry trees that were almost the vintage of the house were not going to survive much longer. I’m glad they enjoyed the young tree for several years before they moved.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 6, 2024

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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 Britain's taste for tea may have been a life saver - The explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives - the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave. Sometimes people's existing behaviors can make more of a difference to their health than an explicit intervention might.

Carbon-Based Paleolithic Paintings Found in France - The carbon-based drawings were detected with visible light and infrared photography, X-ray fluorescence, and spectroscopy underneath previously known images. The discovery could allow for precise radiocarbon dating of the artwork. Most of the Paleolithic paintings in the more than 200 caves in the region were made with iron and manganese oxides, which cannot be directly dated with radiocarbon dating technologies.

Winners of the 2023 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest – Wonderful views. I wish more of them were annotated (where they were taken…comments from the photographer, etc.). One of my favorites was the Winner for Snow and Ice by Thomas Vijayan of Canada.

Which zoo animals are most active in winter and what times are best to see them? – Author commenting about zoos in the UK…but most of the comments are relevant to zoos in the US too. I particularly enjoyed the last recommendation – going to the Reptile House to warm up! My daughter gave us a membership to the local zoo for Christmas…and we’ll probably bundle up and go soon (but not while the weather is in the 20s)!

Photos of the Week – December 24, 2023 from the Prairie Ecologist – Great reminders that there are interesting subjects for nature photography in winter.

103-Year-Old Artificial Christmas Tree Sells for Over $4,000 – A sliver of history: The tree originally belonged to Dorothy Grant, whose family purchased it for their Leicestershire, England, home in 1920. When she first saw it, the 8-year-old girl was “wildly excited.” She decorated its branches with cotton wool that resembled snow, as baubles were an “extravagance” at the time. Grant cherished the tree for the rest of her life. When she died at the age of 101 in 2014, her 84-year-old daughter, Shirley Hall, inherited it. She decided to part with it to honor her mother’s memory and to ensure it survives as a humble reminder of 1920s life—a boom-to-bust decade.

Photography In the National Parks: 2023 In Review – Rebecca Lawson’s favorite shots from 2023 from Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainer, Lake Chelan, Yosemite, Death Valley, and Banff National Parks.

Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisp usher in banner year for U.S. apples - Growers report that apple production in the United States hit levels in 2023 that had not been seen since the 2014-15 season. Washington State was the largest grower, producing some 90% of the nation's crop. Of all the varieties, Honeycrisp, Gala, Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Fuji make up 76% of the total apple holdings. The big winner this year was the Cosmic Crisp apple, which experienced a 41% year-over-year growth, with 9.5 million bushels harvested.

Millions of mysterious pits in the ocean decoded - Most of the depressions in the seafloor in the German Bight are created by porpoises and other animals in search of food, and then scoured out by bottom currents. The researchers showed that the marine mammals leave pits in the seafloor when they hunt for buried sand eels.

2023 was a year of big anniversaries – 20 years ago the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas…the Concorde made its final flight, 30 years ago the World Wide Web launched into the public domain, 50 years ago hip-hop began, 60 years ago March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (“I have a dream” speech)…JFK assassinated, 75 years ago Israel declared independence, 80 years ago Casablanca opened, 150 years ago blue jeans patented.

Last Sunrise of 2023

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I was in my parents’ house alone on the last day of 2023. They had already moved to assisted living (more on that in the monthly ‘ramping up elder care’ post coming soon) and the first round of distribution of the furniture had occurred: to their new home, to the rest of the family. It felt odd to be there without them and without the jumble of possessions that had been there for over 30 years. The beauty of the sunrise changed the trajectory of my mood for the better!

I loved the color caught in the line of trees visible from the backyard. I took several zoomed images. I think the last one is my favorite.

It occurred to me that the prettiest sunrises are not the ones the occur on a clear morning…it takes some clouds to catch/reflect the light. Maybe that is a good analogy for life too – that complexity and challenge make life better!

My Favorite Photographs from 2023

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Photography is something I enjoy frequently (one of those hobbies that pop up almost daily!). I’ve picked 2 photos from each month of 2023 for this post. Picking favorites is always a bit of a challenge; looking at the collection as I write this post I realize some were chosen for the light

  • A heron in morning light

  • A backlit dandelion

  • High key image of iris…and then a turkey using the same technique

…some for the subject

  • The busy fox squirrel

  • Two insects in one flower

  • The egret struggling to control a fish

  • The feet of the American Coot

…some because they prompted a strong memory of the place.

  • Driftwood at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

  • Sculpture in the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House Garden in St. Louis

  • Metal iris and sunrise at my parents’ house

  • Geese on the snow and ice in my neighborhood in Missouri

  • Cairn as the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield, MO

  • A flower blooming in December at Josey Ranch Park in Carrollton, TX

Enjoy the mosaic of images (click to see a larger version).

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2023

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December has been one of the most unusual (and stressful) of my life. Along with all the upheaval – there were still little celebrations to notice and savor.

Completion of a construction project. Big machinery digging in the street/sidewalk, the alleyway, and backyard of my parents house. The city was replacing an old sewer pipe. It was interesting to watch…although there were a few anxious moments too. We all celebrated when they finished within the 3 days they’d estimated for the project!

A warm day to mow the leaves. The leaves didn’t really begin to fall in Carrollton TX until December. We celebrated a warm day to mow them into the yard.

Crystalized ginger, big peppermint sticks. I savored special foods from the past that I haven’t eaten as much in recent years. I bought the crystalized ginger and a sister provided 6 of the big barber pole peppermint sticks. I started the celebration of my birthday early!

Red velvet cake. When I was growing up, my usual birthday cake was red velvet cake – made by my mother. This year one of sisters and her husband discovered a diner that had an excellent version of the cake – and bought me two pieces – which I enjoyed 2 days in a row prior to the actual birthday!

A break. My other sister came to make lunch for my parents and I took a break away from my parents’ house. I went to a small café for brunch and they had a special: birthday pancakes! I opted to get that special (another early birthday celebration) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I walked (and took pictures of birds) around Josey Ranch.

December celebrations. My birthday is just one of the normal December celebrations in my family. There is also my parents’ anniversary (their 71st) and Christmas! It’s always a hectic month…full of family visits.

Good sleep. I usually sleep well but it has not been as consistent this month….so I celebrated a particularly good night!

Fall foliage of crape myrtles. I’d never noticed crape mytles in the fall before. At my parents the conditions must have been just right for them to turn from green and hold their leaves this year. I celebrated how great they looked with the leaves and seed pods.  

Finding assisted living. Change is hard. We had moments of discovery and panic…celebrated finding an assisted living group home for my parents and then realizing that the details required another burst of energy. As I write this we are all celebrating how much we have accomplished with our combined efforts.

Daughter arriving. My daughter came for my birthday and the anniversary. She took me out for Ethiopian food to celebrate my birthday!

December 2023….what a cresendo for the year!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 30, 2023

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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.

Fevered Planet: How a shifting climate is catalyzing infectious disease – The geography of disease is also changing as novel pathogens affecting plants, animals and humans increase their range. New beetles are heading north and devastating Siberian forests, Alaskan mammals are struggling as new ticks arrive and human habitations in northern Norway are infested by new insects.

‘Green Roads’ Are Plowing Ahead, Buffering Drought and Floods - Designing roads to capture water through strategic channels, culverts, and ponds and divert it for agricultural use. Nearly 20 countries have either implemented Green Roads for Water or plan to begin soon, and thousands of kilometers of roads, worldwide, have already received Green Roads interventions.

Photos of the year (2023) from the Prairie Ecologist (part 1 and part 2) – Lots of great nature photos.

How Fire-Prone Communities Can Reduce Their Risk - Playbook for the Pyrocene, which offers 20 community planning and design strategies that can be applied by landscape architects, planners, homeowners, and developers. “The questions we are trying to answer here are not so much where to build, but rather how to build better within the context of wildfire broadly.”

Giant Goldfish Are Bad News for the Great Lakes - In the Great Lakes, abandoned goldfish and their kin are known to root up plants, contribute to harmful algal blooms and consume native vegetation.

Nine breakthroughs for climate and nature in 2023 you may have missed – Yes – I missed some of these!

Parts of China’s Great Wall Are Protected by a ‘Living Cover’ of Biocrusts – Lichen, moss, and cyanobacteria!

Fresh water from thin air - Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH). The need for more affordable options has spurred interest in ‘passive’ AWH systems that use moisture-hungry sorbent compounds to collect water. The small amounts of power that such systems require could, ideally, be supplied by the Sun. Typically, these sorbents are exposed to the air overnight, when temperatures are cooler and moisture is more abundant. They collect the airborne moisture as liquid in a process known as adsorption. When day breaks, the sorbents are transferred to a device that uses solar energy to drive the release of water. This water is then condensed and collected. And there are abundant opportunities beyond simply producing drinking water. For example, a harvesting system that piggybacks on existing photovoltaic solar panels, using the waste heat and energy from these panels to power water production9; the resulting water helps to cool the panels and therefore improves their efficiency

Archaeologists Discover Brutal ‘Bakery-Prison’ at Pompeii - The cramped space provided minimal light, as windows to the outside were small, high and barred.