Roses always love the cooler temperatures of fall - and the ones at Brookside Gardens were no exception when I was there last week. The color in other parts of the gardens was from fall leaves….and the lights the crews were installing in preparation for the Garden of Lights which will be from November 23- January 6.
Enjoy the slide show!
October at Brookside Gardens - fall and the always lush conservatory plantings. This post is a quick sweep of plants from the conservatory and fall foliage in the rest of the garden. I’ll do some themed posts over the course of the next week on roses, gourds/squashes/pumpkins and mums.
The collage above shows plants in the conservatory. The bird of paradise always seems to be blooming. There were several grasses with large seed heads; the one in the lower right of the collage has a lot more color than some of the others. The shape of the uncurling leaf to the right is what caught my attention….and the lighting heightens the effect of the curves and color. The images in the collage below are all from the outdoor gardens. One of the few bushes blooming in the outdoor gardens was a fall camellia; otherwise the color is from fall leaves. The shelf fungus at the bottom right is on a stump I always check. The colors are more subtle than the fall leaves; the shelf fungus will stand out more in winter when all the fall color has faded away.
The collage below has two of my favorite trees - the sweet gum against the sky and the gingko in the lower left. The tea house with the colorful maples and the still-mostly-green papyrus in the pool complete this collage.
On our fall foliage trip a few weeks ago - it was 20 degrees as we got ready to set out on the last morning. Ice crystals had formed on the windshield and windows of the car parked in the hotel parking lot in Owego, New York. I took a few pictures. The original were gray scale; the pictures you se in this post have color added by Microsoft PowerPoint.
Even knowing they are ice crystals - I imagine other things -
What do you see in the ice crystal images?
Sometimes sunlight - or sun and shadow - is what makes an image special. There are three that are like that for me in this post.
The first is from near Ithaca, New York. It is at the very top of Taughannock Falls from the overlook across the gorge. The light at the edge becomes deep shade so quickly in the grotto behind the cliff edge with the plants growing wherever little bits of soil can accumulate in the rocky ledges.
The second is oak leaves. Have you ever noticed that oak leaves need direct sun to look deep red or yellow in the fall? If they are in shade they simply look green and brown.
And finally - the third are pine needles. They almost glow in the fall sunlight.
The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon was one of our destinations on our fall foliage trip this year. It’s located in north central Pennsylvania just west of Wellboro.
Unfortunately we were at least a week too late for fall foliage. The leaves were on the ground and their color fading. Colton Point State Park is on the western side of the canyon and has primitive facilities compared to the state park on the other side - Leonard Harrison State Park. There are a visitor facilities and overlook into the canyon from that eastern side of the canyon. Both also have hiking trails which we did not investigate on this trip.
The temperature had been in the 20s when we set out from Owego, New York earlier in the morning and was still cold. We enjoyed a short and quick hike along the rim in Colton State Park. A fall foliage trip is probably not complete without some wading through leaves and this was the place to do it.
We had warmed up in the car on the short drive over to Leonard Harrison State Park. The temperature had gotten a little warmer and there was a Boy Scout troop cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for the crowd; they were getting some customers even though it was only about 10:30. The oak trees that hold on to their leaves a little longer and the pines are certainly to be appreciated when the fall itself has come and gone!
Back in mid-August I posted about finding things to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and getting into the habit of writing it down each day reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:
Sleeping late. The night had gotten cold and we didn’t have the heat coming on yet. It was so wonderful to stay under the warm blankets just a little longer than usual.
A rainy day. I like to work when it is raining. There is no temptation to get outdoors and the little bit of noise from the rain on the roof provides the white noise to keep my focus on whatever I am doing. It’s a day to where concentration comes easily.
Pink mushrooms in the grass. Mushrooms seem to come up very quickly after a rain. These were almost hidden in the grass. At first I thought they were scraps of fall leaves. But from the side or underneath ---- they were this wonder color.
Watkins Glen. A beautiful place any time but I enjoyed it in the fall.
Corning Museum of Glass. I like glass in just about all its forms. Every time I go to this museum I find some other beautiful piece that I’d failed to notice before.
Home again. I always celebrate the first day back home even if I was only gone a relatively short time.
Writing 3,000 words to start a short story. I’ve signed up to participate in the National Novel Writing Month in November. So - I am busily practicing writing something every day and preparing a chapter by chapter outline to be ready to get 50,000 words written in November. Writing a 3,000 word chunk of a short story in a day was one of my practices that was successful! Hurray!
Sweet potato harvest. The weather dictated that it was time. It’s a lot like unwrapping a present although, in this case, you know there will be sweet potatoes. The surprise is how many there might be and how big are they.
Magnificent maple seen on the drive to the grocery store. Sometimes a path we take frequently has something of temporarily extraordinary beauty: in this case - a tree that has a glorious week every year in the fall….and somehow I always notice it.
Bean soup. Humble fare that was exactly what I wanted on a cool fall day.
This past weekend was probably the peak for fall foliage at Centennial Park in Howard County, Maryland. We stopped at the boat launch area first - and a Great Blue Heron flew up and stood for some moments on a pile of rocks! After that start to the hike, we began the 2+ mile loop around the lake. Enjoy the fall scenes in the slide show below: red dogwood leaves, the reflections of trees in the water, water droplets on a grass seed head, a boat on the water, cattails, Canadian geese taking of, lady fingers, faded lily pads distorting the reflection of lots of yellow trees, a frost damaged poke weed, and the lake through an oak curtain…..the scenes of fall at Centennial Park.
Ithaca, New York is well known for its gorges. We visited two state parks as part of our fall foliage trip. The first was Robert H. Treman State Park where we did the Gorge Trail. There are similarities to Watkins Glen (well-maintained trail, beautiful stone bridges and retaining walls) and contrasts (wider gorge with more sunlight, fewer pot hole pools, no ‘behind the falls’).
There was lots of fall foliage just about everywhere we looked both at Treman State Park and Taughannock Falls State Park.
We viewed Taughannock Falls from the rim this time. There was a thin ribbon of water shown in the middle picture below. The picture in the upper left is from the base of the falls in the winter of 2009 and the one on the right is from the winter of 2010. It won't be long before winter comes to the park again. The walk to the base of the falls is open in the winter because it is relatively flat (i.e. no stairs or inclines that become hazardous in ice and snow).
Finally - we took a drive through Ithaca and I took a few ‘street art’ photos as we stopped in traffic.
In addition to the gorge and broad views of fall foliage - I enjoyed some closer looks at fall plants - and the tile on the outside of the park building.
The rest stops along the interstates are the quickest ‘stop’ along the way and definitely add to the comfort of road trips. The rest stops have improved over the years. They are clean (usually cleaner than fast food restaurants or truck stops) and designed for smooth traffic flow - often separating cars from the truck traffic.
This year I’ve appreciated the plantings. On our fall foliage trip, the rest stop in Pennsylvania featured angel’s trumpets and sunflowers.
So - thank you to the people that make the decision to keep keeping those rest stops opened and in good working order…and making them beautiful too.
The only indoor part of our fall foliage trip was in the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. We timed it perfectly - for the few hours of rain during our 3 day trek. The museum allows photography so I enjoyed trying to capture images without too much glare. My favorite item this time was the broken pitcher with the green markings in the upper left of the montage above. Just think what it would have been like originally - glowing white with the bright green markings!
The vase with red carnations and a bird….the stained glass…the cut glass. Glass is certainly a versatile and appealing medium. I also enjoyed seeing another Karen LaMonte glass dress similar to the one I saw in the Tennessee last summer.
The museum also had several Chihuly pieces similar to ones I saw last summer in Dallas. There were also very different pieces - large chunks of colored glass, ribbed bowls, a giant peony of frosted glass. Enjoy the slide show below.
We made our annual fall foliage trek this week. This year we made our way from Maryland up through Pennsylvannia and the Watkins Glen/Corning/Ithaca area of New York. I'll post some pictures of the specific areas over the course of the next week.
Today the slide show features leaves already on the ground. They were newly fallen so their colors were still vibrant. Some were wet and that made the colors even more intense. How many trees can you identify in this mix? Maples...poplars...sycamores...beech...sweet gum...and more! Celebrate fall today!
The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:
IGNITE - Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution - the program in Seattle schools that is a best practice for educating young women about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, well documented and is spreading to other school systems. There is a toolkit available.
Prairie seeds - a collection of seed pile pictures - guess what they are! The answers are at the bottom of the post. The rose hips are the only truly easy one!
Fall prairie pictures - from the Prairie Ecologist
Evolution of Milkweed Eating Insects - I actually propagated milkweed at the woods edge in my yard….for the monarch caterpillars!
Doctors Speak out About Unnecessary Care as Cost Put at $800 Billion a Year - As a patient….how does one distinguish the unnecessary care? How many times has a side effect from unnecessary medical treatment created another problem? This is not only expensive…it is also dangerous to health.
Nora Denzel Keynote Speech at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012 - youtube video
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012 wiki - links to information about each talk
Coursera - take the world’s best courses, online, for free
Extreme Weather Photo Contest Winners - From NASA. Shelf clouds, thunderstorm, walls of dust, lightning
Is reading in the dark bad for your eyesight? - It depends. Take a look at a summary of research on the topic.
The conservatory of US Botanic Garden in Washington DC always has beautiful plants. On a visit early this month, the shapes and colors drew my attention the most.
The spirals of the unfurling fiddlehead - along with the pink and green coloring.
Bromeliads with blooms that are splashes of vibrant color and thick fitted curves.
Petals that are paper thin
Flowers that look like they’ve sprouted wings
The pattern of fibers on a tropical trunk
A flower petal that looks like a spider is attached
A slipper with just a touch of color
The unfurling of a tightly pack bud in purple and pink
I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference this past week In Baltimore. The core audience for the conference was computer science or information technology students, academics, and early career professionals. I’m much further along - being in the field for 40 years and now starting down other paths. Still - the sessions prompted some reflection on my part and I’ll be doing several blog posts over the next week as I get my thoughts organized and written down.
The first key take away (for me) is that once a technical woman….always a technical woman.
It doesn’t matter if I am working in the field or if I have gone on to other things. Being technical is entwined in everything I do. It’s blended with the way I choose to live and incorporated into my role as a matriarch. Here are some things that have happened since I left my computer-related career.
So - I am pretty sure that for me
Once a technical woman….always a technical woman
is true now and for the rest of my life. Later this week I’ll talk about a second reflection prompted by the conference: the distressing statistics about women in science and technology…..and why we should care.
As we walked around the Smithsonian Mall and the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC, the plantings were representative of ones that are truly at their best in this area just before the leaves turn and then fall. The roses like the cooler weather. The grasses have full seed heads. The asters show their blue and purple color liberally. The dogwoods lead the color change and the winterberry has bright red berries that contrasts with the green leaves still on the bush. There may not be as many butterflies but the ones that are still around may be easier to see because they don’t flutter as rapidly in the cooler temperatures. Enjoy the slide show of these beauties of early fall and celebrate fall!
Now that summer is over - it’s a great time to visit museums. On a recent Saturday, I enjoyed the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. I still bought tickets for the IMAX film I wanted to see when I first got there (just before 10:30) before wandering around to look at the planes, rockets, gliders, and shuttle. There are docent led tours periodically but I had been to the museum enough times to enjoy looking at things on my own. The weather was sunny so the view from the tower toward the Blue Ridge and Dulles Airport was quite good. Enjoy the slide show of my favorite pictures below!
The insectivorous plants exhibit at the US Botanic Garden runs through October 8th. We went to see it this past weekend. The exhibit is a clever mix of sculpture and real plants. I can remember being fascinated with Venus Flytrap plants as a child. The pitcher plants (at right and included in the slide show) were the highlights of this exhibit for me - particularly the outdoor sculpture grouping of them. The sculpture of the Venus Flytrap was mechanized; push a button and it snapped shut!
There are several more posts from the Botanic Garden visit…they’ll come out over the next week or so. I posted about the landmark building models in the conservatory at the US Botanic Garden last November.
Many years ago I started collecting headlines/news blurbs as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. Reviewing the September 2002 headline gleanings - I forced myself to pick 10.
What do you celebrate in October? Here are some ideas:
Apples and squash. The new harvest is in and apples are at their best. There are a large number of varieties to try other than ‘Delicious’ – so experiment and find a new favorite! Many communities host festivals that feature the produce of fall and fresh apple cider or apple butter.....and all those colorful squashes.
Foliage. Take a drive or a hike through a forest of deciduous trees. Timing it just right is always a challenge – but easier now that there are so many web sites that predict the peak color and even have pictures of areas.
Leaves. Play in piles of leaves. Yes – the raking is a chore…but make it into a fun activity while you are at it.
Cooler weather. After the swelter of summer and even September – October has some very welcome cooler days. Celebrate with some outdoor activities and enjoy a picnic.
Halloween. Buy those bags of candy and be prepared to offer a treats to all those goblins that come knocking! We purchased a plastic jack-o-lantern that looks like the real thing years ago; turned out to be a great purchase to decorate the front porch for the big night.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
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