The zoomed imaging from this month were taking in my daughter’s yard in Springfield MO, my yard in Nixa MO, Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield MO, the Lake Springfield Boathouse and the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. It was not a big photography month. I expect February will have more if the weather does not cause cancellations of winter hikes I have planned.
I thought about plastics as I made my monthly drive from Missouri down to Lewisville TX and back. It might have been the noticeable plastic trash along the road – perhaps there was more of it because of recent winds.
The other reason I was thinking about it more was the breakfast set up. The same hotel chain we had stayed in when we went to St. Joseph MO late last month had used ceramic plates and stainless utensils – so it felt like a step backwards to have foam plates and plasticware. Both places had Keurig coffee makers in the room and plastic single used glasses. When I got the request for feedback to the hotel – I filled in several responses about the plastic in their hotel and pointed out that the bottle of water ‘gift’ is not as appreciated any more.
I have started carrying a ceramic mug in my suitcase…to make tea – avoid the Keurig completely and the cups they provide. I also carry a small water filtration pitcher to replenish my reusable water bottle and to make tea.
My eyes were itchy the whole time I was in Lewisville; when I checked, the air quality was yellow…and the hotel HVAC filter did not seem to help. The dominate pollutant type causing the ‘yellow’ level was PM2.5 which includes microplastics and products of fossil fuel combustion. I am considering whether I should travel with an air purifier like I did on road trips after COVID – when vaccines were still quite new.
The drive home was very windy with a front coming through (bringing ice and snow for the weekend) and there were several places where plastics were blowing in the wind. Not long after I got to I44 and was less than 2 hours from home, there was grass fire along the shoulder that seemed to go for at least ¼ mile…and the smoke was blowing across the road. Another hit to air quality!
There was a bit of nature at the Texas Welcome Center where I stopped on the way down that I’ll use as a positive ending for this post even though it has nothing to do with plastics or air quality: the bluebonnet plants are above ground and the beautyberry still has a bit of color!
My daughter was at a conference in Phoenix last week and I enjoyed seeing her pictures of the area near the convention center. She went early for a workshop and managed to see a basketball game in the arena that evening!
She sent pictures of desert creature sculptures
And the sign for a pollinator garden – that obviously still has some plants blooming (daisies and lantana) – an urban garden.
My favorites were the images of architecture and murals. The one showing the white roof (along with a mural) was taken from her hotel window. I wondered how often the white needed to be refreshed to maintain its ability to reflect heat.
It’s been over a decade since I was in Phoenix and then I did more in the outskirts rather than the downtown area. Winter would be the time I’d pick to visit again!
We got to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in the early afternoon on the day after Christmas. It was sunny and relatively warm – no coat required. We made a slow drive around the loop and side road. The next morning, we drove the wildlife loop again in the fog before heading home.
There were lots of birds to see and hear!
Trumpeter Swans
Snow Geese
White fronted Geese
And Bald Eagles
There were more eagles than when we had visited Loess Bluffs last March…but similar numbers of snow geese and trumpeter swans. The muskrats were not active outside their mounds, so we didn’t see any this time.
Unfortunately, another difference we noted were dead birds in the water; I recognized snow geese and trumpeter swans. Some looked like they had been dead for some time. Pre-Covid, the carcasses of dead birds were collected as one refuge we visited (to determine why the birds were dying and to minimize the contagion in the water); perhaps they no long do that because it isn’t effective, they know it is bird flu, or there are not staff to do the work. The area where most of the dead birds were located was not near where the bulk of living birds were; maybe water movement acted to collect the birds in the shallows along the shore (mostly) away from flocks.
I’ll end this post on a positive note with the botanical pictures! Seeds and pods and brown foliage dominate…but there was one green plant that had a lot of water droplets.
The wildlife refuge is a great place to see bald eagles in the winter….and other things too!
The day after Christmas was a great time for a road trip to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge. I had noticed that the latest Waterfowl and Bald Eagle Survey showed over 500 bald eagles at the refuge!
We headed out after breakfast…stopping in Springfield to pick up my daughter. I took a few pictures around her yard while she put her luggage in the car. A magnolia pod, sun shining through azalea leaves, yucca seeds, a leaf with dew drops, and colorful oak leaf hydrangea leaves.
I got some pictures of overpasses as my husband drove through Kansas City.
And then there was the dramatic bridge across the Missouri River.
On the way home the next day – the bridge looked darker with the clouds…still dramatic.
December is always a month with a lot of celebrations – Christmas…my birthday…the end of the semester for my daughter…a great time to travel.
Oak wood chips to create a new native plant area. The branches trimmed from daughter’s oak (stabilizing an old tree) were chipped and I celebrated when I got the whole pile moved to my front yard – creating a great bed that I will plant with native plants in the spring.
Sweet potato soup. I celebrated a soup with of sweet potatoes, chicken, apple, fresh ginger, and a little lime…toast cubes on top. It was probably the best soup of the month!
New docking station. I had been having problems with my monitors becoming disconnected from my Mac…and an external drive not being available. There were work arounds that no longer worked consistently to fix the problem. I celebrated when my husband provided a new docking station….and the problems were resolved.
Rorra water filtration system. In my quest to reduce the microplastics in food, I bought the Rorra system and celebrated the step to reduce microplastics (and some other things) in our water. Now I can move on to other aspects of my kitchen/grocery shopping.
Great blue heron from my hotel window. I celebrated that the view from my hotel window in Lewisville included a great blue heron for a second month in a row.
Home before dark. I knew that December was the hardest month for me to get home before dark on my return from Texas…but I managed it…about 5 minutes before sunset.
Dickerson Park Zoo. There were some cold days in December but we took advantage of a day that the temperature reached into the 70s to visit the zoo. I always find something the celebrate there – either an animal seemingly poising for a photography or the different noises they are making (or not).
Daughter’s tenure. The major hurdles in the tenure process for my daughter happened in December. It won’t be formalized until the spring, but we are celebrating this milestone of her academic career.
Christmas time goodies. December is not a diet month. I’ve celebrated with goodies I bought for myself and the ones my sister provided! January will be the diet month.
Another birthday. Celebrating another year…and the experiences that surrounded my birthday this year – several out-to-eat events, a trip to the zoo, a trip to a wildlife refuge. My present was an electric tea kettle made of glass and stainless steel – replacing a coffee maker that had a lot of plastic components.
As the year winds down, I am looking back at 2025 and realizing that while there was no major life pivot point, there was a lot to going on.
Over the course of the year, we replaced three appliances: refrigerator, hot water heater, and dishwasher. None of that was planned. There was some inconvenience, but we appreciated that the separate apartment in our basement has its own version of all three…reducing the impact. Still – we realize that we should plan for other future maintenance needs. I’m not sure whether the roof or the HVAC will be next.
I continued my exploration of Missouri – focusing on prairies during the spring and early summer; I signed up for walks in 4 prairie remnants in southwest Missouri and seem to have learned to ID some plants I saw.
I also took a geology class and enjoyed a field trip in May that highlighted the geology close to home.
My husband and I made a short trip to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in the part of Missouri that was glaciated – quite different where I leave in the southern part of the state in the Ozarks!
Later in the year I enjoyed walks at Ha Ha Tonka State Park – which is pretty close to the middle of the state.
I savored volunteering at a butterfly house from May to September; it was more enjoyable than the one I volunteered at in Maryland because it was native butterflies --- no close monitoring of the entry/exit to prevent exotics escaping into the wild.
We had some health challenges this year requiring outpatient surgery and some PT (maybe more) for my husband – PT for me that has become on a long term exercise regime.
Nothing kept us from enjoying our trip to the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival this past fall.
I maintained my monthly trips to Dallas/Lewisville TX to see my dad…occasionally my sisters. There is a routine aspect to them…but also something unique that happens each time. It is often stressful – hard to witness the month to month decline of my dad in his mid-90s.
My mood at the end of the year is not as optimistic as it was at the beginning. Have I crossed over to a pessimistic view of the future for our country (and for myself and my family)? It has occurred to me recently that maybe I have. There have been a lot of changes in the US over the past year that seem to increase the possibility of a dystopian future. Will 2026 be a pivot point for the country….or has the pivot occurred? There seems to be relatively little that individuals can do, but that doesn’t mean it is OK to do nothing.
My road trip to Lewisville in December was just two days. When I left home at 5:30 AM it was dark, cold, windy, and wet. The sun wasn’t up until my second stop of the trip – at the Big Cabin Loves off I-44. I took two pictures to celebrate the light and that the rain had cleared - even if the wind had not and was making for a more challenging drive.
I listened to Christmas music as I drove….and tried to notice birds (there seemed to be more gulls and crows than usual…not as many vultures as on previous drives…perhaps the wind caused the activity change). There was a truck with a big bale of hay wrapped in plastic (bits of plastic flying off…I’d rather have bits of hay than plastic!). As I drove over Lake Eufala, there were sycamore leaves blowing across the highway – big enough that I could easily to id them.
I made the longest stop at the Texas Welcome Center – eating a grilled chicken wrap that I bought at one of my previous stops. I checked the beautyberry and noticed that there were still a lot of leaves on the oaks, unlike where I live in Missouri where the trees are bare. I picked up another bur oak acorn…and realized most of that oak’s leaves were on the ground.
My sister had left some home baked goodies on the bookcase in my dad’s room. I left her a bag of special teabags (in paper/cardboard packaging) and enjoyed walking around the room noting the seasonal decorations my sisters had added. I remember the fabric tree from many years…and wondered what its history is; maybe one of my sisters knows.
As I walked with my dad in the hallways, I took pictures of the decorations added in the shared areas of the facility.
The hotel was a short drive away and I was on the 4th floor this time…on the side toward the water retention pond and the great blue heron was there again; I took a picture through the window. I also noticed that the Bradford Pear trees were very colorful.
The next morning, I took some pictures of the sunrise over the highway.
My dad had some medical appointments later in the day, so I didn’t encourage him to exercise as I usually do. One of my sisters arrived just as I was leaving so I got to visit with her a little before I headed toward home.
I stopped in Prague OK for lunch – the town where one of my grandmother’s was born and grew up. She would not recognize it today! The café was excellent and I might stop there again….think about our family history.
I made it home just as the sunset – which was my goal. This is the hardest month to do that because the days are so short!
I forced myself to pick 2 pictures from each month to feature in this post. They were taken in my yard, at the Springfield Botanical Garden (and the butterfly house and Japanese Stroll Garden there), my daughter’s yard and during my travels for prairie walks in SW Missouri, to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in NW Missouri, Chicago IL, Branson, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. They are all taken outdoors! Enjoy the slideshow.
Our fourth morning at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival required us to be at the Harlingen Convention Center by 7 AM for the bus; we were glad it wasn’t earlier! There was an odd cloud or smoke plume that obscured the sunrise; tt was moving rapidly and seemed to have an origination point so I think it might have been smoke.
We headed to the town of Edinburg TX and their wetlands oasis – the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands & Birding Center - about 40 minutes on the bus.
I often revert to taking botanical pictures…and there were a lot of interesting plants ranging from dessert plants to lush riparian type plants. Click on the image in the mosaic below to see a larger image.
I even enjoyed some artsy pictures!
There were quite a few birds: Black-bellied Whistling ducks (and a mixture of hybrid domestic/wild ducks/geese)
Northern Shoveler
American Wigeon (and a Ruddy duck)
American Avocet
Herons: Great, Snowy, Green
Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Inca Doves
House Sparrow near the feeders
Crested Caracara
Neotropical cormorant
Curved-billed thrasher
There were turtles in a lot of places too – even crawling up the dam abutment! There were Texas spiny softshell turtles on a concrete pad near the boardwalk.
We weren’t still long enough to do much butterfly photography – but I did manage three!
The trip had been advertised as a place to see Kingfishers, but the banks where they had frequented had been cleaned up (i.e. bushy vegetation removed) and the Kingfishers had moved elsewhere.
Thirty days in November…so I selected 30 tiles from the 101 that were produced in November.
They are all ivory cardstock with black ink patterns…color highlights. There are patterns I repeat frequently and others that seem to emerge for a few tiles only. I am using color pens that are several years old; I remember that I bought some of them at the Walmart in Carrollton TX in the year I started traveling to Texas again after COVID. It takes discipline to not buy new pens until old ones are depleted!
I was traveling for 11 days out of the month and kept two pockets (one for tiles and one for pens) of my laptop bag packed with supplies! My Zentangle time is part of my winding down routine toward the end of the day whether I am at home or in a hotel; almost all the tiles were produced between 8 and 9 PM!
I’ve already cut red, green and white tiles for December – and plan to use black and white inks.
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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.
We visited the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge on the third morning of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. The visitor center was not open (it was during the government shutdown), but the restrooms were. I knew the morning was going to include some hiking, so I brought along my trekking poles and they worked great – I got tired, but my back didn’t hurt!
There was a lot to see. The highlights in my photographs were:
Altamira oriole and a nest created by the species
Eastern Pondhawk (dragonfly)
A bee on the ground mimosa - Powderpuff (Mimosa strigillosa)
A preening Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and a preening Great Kiskadee
A Great Egret in the wind
A Green Heron – very hard to find among the plants
A Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Of course there were lots of plants/landscapes to note as well. Somehow a leaf on the ground full of holes looked interesting to me as I rested midway through the hike. Turks cap grows wild at the refuge. There are a lot of legumes in the area…many with thorns! And there is enough moisture for Spanish moss to thrive.
And now for the rest…mostly bird pictures that are mainly for identification…many of the waterbirds were almost out of the range of my camera or there was vegetation between me and the birds. The largest insect was on an awning near the tower.
I used the Deet spray on my lower legs but got bites (mosquito) through my leggings above my knees and on my arms through my sunblock shirt sleeves! Fortunately, they did not itch too much (after I put baking soda water on them); so far, I am not feeling any ill-effects; next time I will be more careful and spray myself more thoroughly.
Our second morning at the Rio Grand Valley Birding Festival started with a walk around the National Butterfly Center in Mission TX. It was a pleasant morning for a walk round the place. My husband and I stopped by the last time we went to festival in 2017, but it was a rainy and cold day….so we didn’t go past the visitor center! This time it was a beautiful sunny day, and we enjoyed walking around the space behind the visitor center with our guides. At one time there was a lot of anxiety that the border wall would cut through the center…but evidently the land for the center was preserved and there is still a lot to see there.
I saw a lot more than I was able to photograph! It was an interesting walk. I started with some plants near the entrance.
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Spiny lizards
Neotropic Cormorants in flight
Northern Mockingbird
Green Jay (including an interaction with red-winged blackbird)
Bronzed Cowbird
Plain Chachalaca
Great-tailed grackle (including a picture that makes it easy to see the size difference between the grackle and the chachalaca)
White-winged Dove
Black-crested Titmouse
Inca Dove
Hummingbird
Queen butterflies
A rescued tortoise (not native…shell damaged by a fire)
Logs with beer, banana, brown sugar mix painted on daily) that attract insects
Olive sparrow (I saw several during the festival but these were the only photos!)
Nest of an Altamira/Audubon oriole hybrid
An adult and juvenile white ibis flying
By the end of the walk, I was ready for a rest on the bus while we headed to another birding hotspot.
The first morning of the festival was an early one; we were at the Harlingen Convention Center by 6 AM to board the bus that would take us through the border fencing to the dock where we would board a pontoon boat. I took a few pictures of the plants growing at the edge of the parking lot as the guides talked about the trip and what we would likely see.
The boat was large enough to provide space for everyone plus our gear. There was a lot to see during the whole trip. The birds that I managed to photograph and that are in the slideshow below are:
American Coot
Caspian tern
Ducks (hybrids)
Egrets: Snowy, Reddish, Great
Golden-Fronted Woodpecker
Great Kiskadee
Herons: Great Blue, Tricolored, Yellow-crowned Night
Kingfishers: Green, Ringed
Osprey
Pied-billed grebe
Roseate Spoonbill
The river was clean – almost no trash. There were some houses on both sides and parks. A small group of people were picking up trash along the river in a park on the Mexican side; they must do it frequently enough that there isn’t a lot of trash to pick up. Border control was evident on the US side. It was a quite weekday morning on the river…great for birding.
We spent the first week of November at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival headquartered at the Harlingen (Texas) Convention Center. We had enjoyed the festival back in 2017; in the intervening years we moved from Maryland to Missouri and opted to drive rather than fly this year. My husband did the driving.
The fall foliage as we started out was at its peak…but muted because of our dry summer.
The segment of our trip through Dallas was, as anticipated, the worst part of the drive. We were going through in the early afternoon on the way down.
On the way back, there was a decorative mosaic in one rest stop south of San Antonio
And a window reminiscent of a water wheel in another.
We drove through Dallas about 9:30 AM. The traffic is never ‘good’ going through Dallas.
The railroad bridge over the Red River and the Jersey wall makes it hard to see much of the river from the bridge. It didn’t look as ‘red’ as usual – or maybe it was just the light.
In Oklahoma, there was a little fall color, and I managed to take a picture of the art along Interstate 44 in Tulsa. The hill with sparse trees along the turnpike not far from the border with Missouri always draws my attention; it is a natural hill or something that was constructed?
Most of the fall color was past peak in Missouri – too late to collect any new leaves to preserve for my tree presentations.
More posts about the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in upcoming days…
October included some great volunteer and travel experiences…and plenty at home to celebrate too.
Road trip to Jefferson City – I celebrated the Missouri Department of Conservation Partners Roundtable (particularly Dr. Nadia Navarrete-Tindall talking about edible native plants), touring the Missouri capitol building, and Ha Ha Tonka State Park!
Corn on the cob from the grill - The temperatures were milder…we cooked on the grill more often and I always enjoy the corn on the cob cooked that way.
New faucets on bathroom and kitchen sink - My husband installed new faucets (with a little help from me holding things together while he tightened from underneath). The old ones had been leaking onto the counters when they were turned on. We are both enjoying the dry counters around the new faucets!
Season finale for the Butterfly House - I savored the final volunteer days and the celebration for the volunteers and staff.
Home school fair – I celebrated that so many people visited my table at the Home school Fair and seemed to enjoy learning about trees.
My car repaired – The damage to my car (mostly underneath) was repaired and I have already taken it on a road trip. I celebrated that it was fixed quickly and that it looks ‘good as new.’
Hiking poles – I cheered myself onward during my first test walk with hiking poles…have high hopes that they will help me avoid back pain on future hikes.
Memory care – I celebrated finding two memory care facilities that would be good candidates for my dad’s next home. My sisters and I had a difficult time choosing (and it was stressful)….not something I am celebrating.
New hot water heater and dishwasher – I celebrated that the new appliances were installed quickly…that the hot water heater is better for the environment (heat pump electric rather than natural gas) and the dishwasher is quieter than our old one.
A rainy day - The past few months have been very dry in our area so the rainy days in the later part of October were something to celebrate – although the rain came too late to have brilliant leaf colors this fall. The leaves are still mostly on the trees…muted colors.
My lower back often starts to hurt when I am out hiking; I suspect that I don’t stand up straight all the time and when I don’t, my back starts to hurt, and the situation seems to be unrecoverable once it starts. I bought some Trekking Poles and hope they will help me keep myself straight.
I’ve done a few short walks with them, and they seem to help. On my first test walk, I adjusted them several times. The shortest adjustment of the poles did not work at all…my back bothered me immediately. The other two adjustments worked great...effectively stopping my backache from the shorter poles! That’s an excellent result since I now can adjust my poles and (maybe) get some relief from back pain.
We have registered for another birding festival and that will be the first field test of the trekking poles. I’ll use a photo vest instead of a backpack (with my water bottle in the back pouch) and learn to use the wristbands to control the polls while I am using my camera or binoculars. I am savoring the prospect of hiking/walking with a lot less pain than I had during the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art organized an exhibit of art featuring Niagara Falls in 1985. The exhibit book is available for browsing on Internet Archive. There are four essays included:
Nature’s Grand Scene in Art
An American Icon
Doing Niagara Falls in the Nineteenth Century
The Role of Niagara in America’s Scenic Preservation
Or – just browse the book for the art! I’ve selected 4 sample images…there are a lot more to be found by browsing the whole book (link below).
I made a second visit to Ha Ha Tonka State Park last week – on my way from the Missouri Department of Conservation Partners Roundtable and took a short hike to the Castle Ruins. The ruins are on the bluff above the spring area, so I had views of the spring area where I had hiked a few days before.
I got to the park early enough that there was a parking space in the small lot between the water tower and castle ruins…beside the carriage house ruins. The castle ruins were visible over the treetops from the parking lot.
I took a few pictures of the carriage house ruins and continued as I made my way up the hill: fall wildflowers, a part of Lake of the Ozarks, the spring area below (and the paved path I had been on a few days before).
It was early enough that the light was good for viewing the ruins. Some of the stone walls were still black from the fire that destroyed the house in the 1940s. The fire must have been hot. I wondered if there was not enough water high on the bluff to deter it all…that the fire simply burned until there was nothing left to burn. The ruins are fenced…and there are signs saying the ruins are unstable.
There was a family group with a photographer taking pictures with the ruins in the background – perhaps as part of the buildup to a wedding.
I took a few more pictures as I walked back to my car – more foliage and another view of the lake. There were some twisted eastern redcedars on the steep slope of the bluff.
This park is only about 1.5 hours from where I live…a great day-trip destination.
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.
Flamingos reveal their secret to staying young - A decades-long study in France reveals that resident flamingos, which stay put, enjoy early-life advantages but pay later with accelerated aging, while migratory flamingos endure early hardships yet age more slowly. This surprising link between movement and longevity challenges old assumptions and offers new insights into the science of aging.
‘Montana Miracle:’ The State Actually Succeeding at Housing Reform - In 2023, Montana passed a series of state laws aimed at increasing housing construction that included allowing ADUs and legalizing multifamily housing in commercial zones. This year, the legislature doubled down, expanding on the 2023 law and eliminating parking requirements for most units in the state’s 10 largest cities. A new law also eases permitting for manufactured home parks to eliminate the need for a subdivision review when these parks are not subdivided into private lots. Another allows single-staircase buildings up to six stories, making it easier to build denser buildings on smaller lots.
Photographers Capture Underground Pools and Passages of Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico - So far, 150 miles of Lechuguilla Cave have been explored. With every new survey, the cave offers new insights as to how underground chambers like these are formed and the microbial beings found there. Its beauty earned the entire Carlsbad Cavern National Park the title of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. But due to its complexity, entrance is limited, with the NPS restricting explorations to highly trained speleologists with pre-approved plans.
Plastic Free Water Filters: Can We Find Water Purifiers without Plastic? – My daughter and I are looking to upgrade our water filters. I hope the water filter technology improves with emphasis on reducing microplastics in water.
Inside Ukrainian Artist Dmitry Oleyn’s Sculptural Approach to Landscape Painting - Rather than use the traditional approach that embraces the flatness of the canvas, the artist instead builds his pigments so there is an element of bas-relief, leaving the surface rugged and with a marked sense of tactility from the artist’s hand. When they are displayed, the irregular surface casts shadows, which when viewed against the painted shadows, is especially intriguing; it also creates a degree of mutability, as depending on the time of day and where the paintings are hung, the lighting of the space dialogues with the work both physically and compositionally.
Photography In the National Parks: Mesa Verde Revisited – I’ve been to Mesa Verde once….back in the 1970s. This article reminded me that I want to go again.
Map Reveals Toxic Pollution Leaking from U.S. Drilling Sites - Scientists have shown that U.S. oil and gas drilling sites are not just leaking methane but also a host of toxic chemicals that pose an urgent threat to the health of those living nearby. A new interactive map details the impact of hundreds of major leaks. At nearly every oil and gas site, leaks also produced benzene, a known carcinogen, as well as other chemicals that have been shown to harm bone marrow, weaken the immune system, impair the nervous system, as well as cause headaches, dizziness, vomiting, and fatigue. Is the fossil fuel industry so arrogant that they don’t care that they are spewing poison (some of which could be used for fuels and other industrial purposes if captured) that negatively impact the health of people and other life?
World’s Tallest Douglas Fir Tree Damaged in Mysterious, Multi-Day Blaze, but It’s Alive After Firefighters Extinguish Flames – It burned from August 16 to August 21. The tree is estimated to be around 450 years old and has a diameter of 11.5 feet. It no longer holds the title of the tallest Douglas fir in the world. However, officials are hopeful the old tree will rebound from the damage wrought by the fire. It’s possible the fir will even grow a new crown.
Six tips from the Middle Ages on how to beat the summer heat – Save the ideas for next summer: work flexibly, wear the right hat, eat to lower body temperature, try wild swimming, use aftersun, or flee.
8 Hints to Reduce Your Food Footprint - You can make food decisions today that change your food footprint. Eight ways you can reduce your food footprint so it’s more environmentally food-friendly: limit ultra-processed foods, curb waste, eat a primarily plant based diet, buy local, compost your food scraps, avoid plastic food packaging (sometimes difficult to do), lose the gas stove, call out Big Ag for its polluting practices.
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Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2025 Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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