A Different Holiday Season

I’ve did a subset of decorating I do every year after Thanksgiving – put up the door scrunchies with cards from past seasons,

Filled the milk glass vase with glittery swirls (the milk glass vase was one that was left in a house we bought over 30 years ago...and I always put something in it for Christmas), and

Put cards under the plastic on the breakfast table.

But that is it for decorating this year. We just got back from more than a week in Hawaii (blog posts to come about that) and are planning day trips to other places (Longwood Gardens, Brookside, etc.) that are decorated for the season through early January.

It is a different plan for the holiday (Thanksgiving – Christmas – New Years). There is less decorating, more time with family and more time traveling! Wrapped gifts are not on the agenda at all. My husband gave me a binocular harness strap before we went to Hawaii and he bought himself more gear for star parties that are in our future!

I’m still thinking about what traditions I want to squeeze back into the plan….maybe pumpkin custard for Christmas day…putting away all the decorations we did get out on New Years Eve.

It’s the Season for Soup

When it’s cold outside – I like to make soup. Here’s my general technique:

I check my refrigerator and pantry – picking a protein and vegetables. And then I think about the broth.

The protein is generally something left over that I need to use up (like roast or lunch meat) or frozen edamame, or nuts (dry roasted peanuts or soy beans or my favorites). Sometimes I use quinoa as the protein source.

I try to pick veggies that will hold up to being in soup. I particularly like carrots and Brussel sprouts and bell pepper…and some of the stronger greens like beet tops or kale. I still have frozen whole tomatoes that are excellent thawed to enrich winter soups. Sometimes I cut up sweet potatoes to use instead of carrots. Onions and garlic can be cut up fresh or added in dry form. If I use them fresh I like to sauté them before adding the broth. In fact – many of the veggies can be sautéed before the broth is added.

Broths can be made a number of ways. I sometimes start with whatever is hot in the tea pot (tea, ginger water, cinnamon water, etc.) then I add seasonings or a bouillon cube…or let the meat I am adding provide the flavor and seasoning. My favorite seasonings (other than garlic and onion) are oregano, thyme, basil….or curry.

I don’t make cream soups very often but that doesn’t mean I don’t have thick pureed type soups. I like butternut squash soup with curry seasoning. Two ways to prepare it: 1) cook the squash directly in the broth and then mash it in the pan or 2) use squash cooked previously that is already pureed when I add it to the broth. The bright green of edamame added as the protein makes a very colorful soup…..or dry roasted peanuts if the bright colors are overwhelming.

Enjoy a warm bowl of December soup!

Beautiful Food – December 2015

Beautiful food often comes in whole plates like this one: Brussel sprouts with orange marmalade glaze, potato skins (there butter melting inside…my husband only like the inside of the potato and I have always favored the skins; we’re a good match), roast, and a cranberry sweet potato bread.

Sometimes even when it is cold, I get hungry for a salad. This one had no lettuce at all! It was hearty meal of celery (complete with leaves), cucumbers, carrots, cranberries, and peanuts! I like the bright colors and the melding of flavors. This time of year I like cranberries in lots of dishes.

The last stir fry with CSA veggies included watermelon radish, turnips, sweet potatoes and a few Brussel sprouts. The green beans were some I’d put in the freezer; they thawed quickly when added to the stir fry. The different shapes appeal to me almost as much as the colors.

A more recent stir fry is just as colorful but everything is from the produce section of the grocery store. I like different colors of bell pepper and carrot chips roughly cut…and I am enjoying Brussel sprouts although I’m going to wait a bit before buying more.

Food that is brightly colored and tastes good….beautiful!

Nature Photography through a Window – December 2015

My office window is my favorite place for ‘through the window photography’. Here are some recent images.

The nuthatch is the only bird to use the feeder this way! The bird is a little bigger than the chickadees and has a more aggressive personality. There is a titmouse waiting patiently on the deck railing for the nuthatch to finish.

Squirrels are very active this time of year.  The light caught this one with something to eat under the pines.

The dove was looking down at the seed bowl but ultimately decided that the bird bath was a better ‘next stop.’ Note that there are a lot of tulip poplar seeds in the gutter. We’ve has a bumper crop of seeds this year and they are still coming down with each brisk breeze.

We have robins in the neighborhood too. There are some that winter here but I haven’t seen them in the winter very often. There seem to be more that stayed in the neighborhood this year.

I’m not sure what this flicker was so interested in but it was in the area long enough to get a picture.

I’ll share another batch of ‘through the window’ images in January.

Sunrise

It’s easier and easier to catch the sunrise these days. The trees have lost all their leaves and the time is later with the days still shortening. The two images in this post are from two recent days.

The color changes very rapidly – no time to wait around. I scurry to find my camera and step out the front door. The neighborhood is quiet. I wonder if there is anyone else nearby savoring the moments of color that start the day….and feel privileged that I do have the time. Somehow the rest of the day is always better having started this way.

I’ve read that ancient cultures sometimes had special rituals at sunrise and it is easy to imagine how the coming of the sun would be welcomed after a cold December night. They lived in closer contact with the elements of our planet than we do today. I feel the kinship with those ancestors while I watch the sunrise; knowing more about our planet, the season and the reason the sunrises with such color does not make it less special. Perhaps we should appreciate it even more.

Enjoy a sunrise where you live!

Lady Bug

We have lady bugs in the house! This often happens after some cold days in the fall...and at other times of the year too. Never constant or consistent. There are never a large number and the only aggravation they cause is if they get into one of the halogen lamps and roast themselves. I photographed one on the mirror in the bathroom.

The ladybugs are different than the ones I remember from my childhood. They are orange rather than red. And we never had ladybugs inside either. These bugs may be ones released to help control insect pests on the farms nearby. They probably starve to death in our house.

But I like to watch them wander around the walls….the ceilings…the mirrors. They are a part of the outdoors that I can welcome….not at all like stink bugs!

Some Winter Trees

Sometimes trees get a lot harder to identify in the winter but there are some easy ones to notice on winter hikes or drives. Here are my favorites from the area of Maryland where I live.

Holly. There is a holly growing as an understory tree in the forest behind our house. Whether they are in a forest or used as landscaping around houses – their red berries and bright green leaves are a spot of color in the winter landscape. The branches are used in greenery arrangements and garland at Christmas….but watch out for the prickles on the leaf edges.

Sycamore. After the leaves fall, the white inner bark of the sycamores is very striking. They grow quite large along the rivers and streams in our area.

River Birch. Most of the ones I’ve seen have been used as part of a landscape. Their peely bark is full of color in the winter landscape.

White or Paper Birch. The high contrast (black and white) of the bark makes these trees easy to spot.

Bald Cypress. This one not common in our area. We are little too far north. But is survives as a landscape tree. The knees give it away!

Southern Magnolia. The leaves on these trees say green all during the winter: waxy green on top and velvety brown underneath. You made find seed pods on the ground.

Sweet Gum. Sometimes it is easy to identify a tree by what is on the ground. Most Sweet Gum trees are so prolific that there are lots of gum balls around the tree all winter long.

Downy Woodpecker

We had a woodpecker visit our bird feeder and seed bowl recently. I took pictures then used them to make the identification.

It turns out that Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers look very similar. I looked at many pictures but finally found a side by side comparison that pointed toward the identification of the bird as a Downy Woodpecker:

• It was smaller than a robin
• The beak was short
• There was quite a bit a white in the wing

It must have been a male to because it had a nice red patch on the back of its head.

I was very glad to see the bird after I found the woodpecker feathers a few weeks ago.

Kolache Memories

I recently discovered a bakery in my area that makes Kolaches! I found them online and went earlier this week to see if the confections they made lived up to my memory of my Czech grandmother’s kolaches that were made for special occasions for the first 50 years of my life (she stopped cooking sometime in her 90s and no one in the family picked up the mantle from her).

The tray of kolaches in the place looked very similar to my grandmother’s – lots of fruit rather than just a little dab of jelly on top of a mound of dough that some people claim are kolaches. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have apricot filling (my grandmother’s favorite and thus mine too) but the peach was a good second best.  I bought one to see if the taste would live up to my memories.

Yummy! It was obviously freshly baked. The dough might have been a little heavier than my grandmother’s was…but otherwise it was close enough to bring back a tidal wave of good feelings. I ordered a half dozen with apricot filling (they will make them for special orders) to take as part of my contribution to a pot luck luncheon today! And I’ll probably go back for another half dozen right before Christmas.

Zentangle® – November 2015

Eleven months of Zentangle®-a-day…..it doesn’t get old…but it does evolve. The trend recently has been to use more color (somewhat tied to the season) and to name each tile. I found some Christmas glitter pens (red, silver, green, gold) and have started using them as I transition from fall color schemes.

Gourds, cross-section, puddles…O flower, plant frame, blue thorns…Bindweed, folded leaves, fire, peaks, tangle of color

Water grass, blue aura, flower frame…Aqua, tentacles, papyrus, red and gray…Spiral miscellany, blue and gray, flowers and pine

Crystal earth, micro earth, Tri-fiddle, ball spiral…Curled leaf, triangle figure, ferns, curls, ribbon beads…Green and gold bubbles, diva night, totem

Christmas flowers, frog eggs Christmas, glitter quilt…Lyre, ferns, pumpkin, yarn loops…Fall forest, eddy, crowd space, arches, tassles

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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.

Learning Log – December 2015

November was a busy month – with plenty of learning opportunities.

Coursera. I completed the Ancient Egypt: A history in six objects course from Coursera in November. It was more intense than I had anticipated and help me appreciate how much we are still learning about Ancient Egypt. There are new technologies like DNA sequencing and CT scans that are being applied now. I have finished the reading for the course itself but still have some of the references on my ‘to read’ list.

We got a catalog for non-credit courses from our local community college a week or so ago. I thought I might find a course for the winter months in it but discovered that I am spoiled by the variety and depth of Coursera offerings. I’ll start another Coursera course in December probably…but I haven’t picked it yet.

Travel. In this case – the learning was not in traveling itself…but preparation for it. I am reading every book I can about Hawaii right now in anticipation of upcoming travel.

Schools. I had the opportunity to interact with second graders from several elementary schools in the county over the past month. It is surprising the variability in the schools. The size of the classes, the overall behavior of the children, and the engagement (or lack of engagement) of the chaperones were just some of the dimensions. I was interested in comparing the school my daughter went to almost 20 years ago for second grade with the group that came for a field trip this year; it was different but still ‘good’ in the sense that the children participated and enjoyed their field trip. I decided that it was the myriad of changes outside the school that made up for more of the difference than the school itself. One child had a video game device that the chaperone confiscated before we got very far into the hike…and then he proceeded to participate like everyone else. Learning for all students has a lot of possible paths…and that can be counterproductive sometimes.

Something Hot to Drink

When the weather gets cold – something hot to drink is appealing. I’m trying some new hot drinks this season – ones that I don’t feel compelled to add sweetener of any kind to be palatable (last year I used way too much artificial sweetener). Here are the hot drinks I like so far. I make them all in my coffee maker than has never seen coffee!

• A stick of cinnamon in the carafe of the coffee maker. I let I steep until it begins to uncurl.
• A piece of fresh ginger in the carafe of the coffee maker.
• Home grown dried mint in the filter of the coffee maker. A tablespoonful for a pot. I like it plain or with almond milk.
• A small black tea bag added to the mint in the filter (one tea bag for a whole pot). It is bitter enough that I prefer it with almond milk.

Here’s to keeping warm from the inside out this winter!

Nature Photography through a Window

My office window provides a great vantage point of our back yard and I’ve cleaned it so that sometimes I can get good pictures just steps way from where I write this blog. The deer wonder through

And the squirrels are active in the yard.

They climb up the sycamore or the steps to get to the deck if I have seed in a bowl in addition to the squirrel-proof feeder. It is surprising how fast they discover the seed in the bowl!

But I enjoy trying to capture images of birds. There have been some successes this past month. The dove sat for a very long time on the roof of our covered deck that is visible from my window. It was cold day but that was a sunny spot.

The cardinal sometimes shares the seed bowl with others…and sometimes chases them away but he doesn’t stay long so the others get their share.

The female cardinal seems to need water more often than seed!

The titmice come as a pair.

The blue jays sometimes come from water but they often move so fast that there is not time to even get the camera turned on. This one sat for a few more seconds than usual!

Sunrise

There are two things that make sunrise pictures easier at my house by November: the sunrise is late enough that I am normally already up and ready for the day by the time it happens and the leaves are off the trees so our front porch makes a reasonable vantage point. These pictures were taken about a week ago. It was a very cold morning and I appreciated that I could observe through a window until the color was just right….and then step outside for a few seconds. These pictures were taken about a minute apart. The color shift from pink to orange very quickly!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – November 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for November 2015.

Like October several celebrations involved the volunteering I do with the Howard County Conservancy. There were several types of volunteering this month and it was a grand finale to the season for me:

Fall hikes for 2^nd graders. This is the last season for the soil hike for 2^nd graders because of curriculum changes. I celebrated every hike that I did because the hike is such a favorite with the children and they participate so enthusiastically – getting their hands dirty learning about soil.

Belmont Colonial Holiday Celebration. The event is the beginning of the season for me and it gets me in the mood to decorate…to cook…to enjoy the people I am with.

Mailing Party. The ‘party’ to stuff envelopes with the annual accomplishments and request donations for the Howard County Conservancy is a ‘once a year’ volunteer event. We all are work madly for 3+ hours…but there is a lot of laughter and sharing of stories while we work. This time we took a break for a delicious Italian food lunch and then got back to work to finish everything. I celebrated the comradery and good food and getting it done!

I celebrated two ‘close to home places’ in November too:

Conowingo. Seeing a Bald Eagle is always a celebration. They have made quite a comeback in the 30 years we’ve been on the east coast. I remember vividly the first time I saw one in the wild – at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore of Maryland…in 1990. Now we go to Conowingo and consistently see many of them fishing in the river there.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory. There is something special about every visit to Brookside. This time the highlight was seeing how they clean the glass top of the conservatory! I celebrate that we have a place like Brookside Gardens in our area.

And there were things at home that were good too:

A cold autumn day at home. Sometimes after being out and about almost every day – I celebrate a day at home. This month it came on a very cold day and I celebrated that I could stay indoors! There will be many more cold days soon but in November they are still ‘new.’

Wind blowing the leaves off the lawn. I had to rake quite a few of the leaves on our lawn but some of them were carried by the wind into the forest where they will decompose and nourish the forest. Hurray for the raking effect of the wind!

And 3 more celebrations to round out the 10 for November:

The Martian. I celebrated a going to a theater…and seeing a good movie!

No cavities. I had a dental checkup this month and I thought for sure I had a cavity on one of my front teeth…but it was only a stain! They polished the stain off….and I celebrated all the way home.

Getting things done on my list. Sometimes I move items from one day to next….then I have a day that everything gets done…and I celebrate that discipline comes to the fore!

Fall Yard Work

There are a lot of fall yard chores! I’ve been trying to do a little on every sunny day recently.

Raking leaves always takes a lot more energy than I remember. Our trees are 20+ years old and big enough to have a lot of leaves….too many to leave on the grass since there are enough of them to form thick mats and kill the grass. Actually – the raking is easier than carting them back to the forest where they can decay into thick mulch on the forest floor. The yard crews use high powered mowers to blow them into piles and into the forest but the noise is overwhelming; for me it negates the pleasure of being outdoors on an autumn day…so I rake.

Cleaning up the deck takes some time too. This year, I am cutting the dried summer stalks and transplanting day lily bulbs (taking them from the beds where the deer always find the buds before they can bloom) into pots and planting native flower seeds (False Indigo and Joe-Pye Weed) that require overwintering before they can sprout. Our deck should attract even more butterflies and hummingbirds next summer! I’ve also harvested the celery stems and leaves that rooted last spring from the base of purchased (organic) celery. I’ve already enjoyed them in soup!

My husband will do a final mowing of the yard sometime this week to mulch the leaves still on the yard…and we’ll declare the fall yard work ‘done’ – ready for winter.

Woodpecker Feathers

Last week I saw a lot of birds one morning at our feeder (juncos, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, titmice), flitting between the trees in our yard (blue jays and robins) and back in the forest there were two kinds of woodpeckers: pileated and red-bellied. I next day I saw the red bellied woodpecker again and then it seemed like there were very few birds around at all for a few days. When I was working the yard yesterday – I found a pile of feathers. There must have been a predator in the area…probably some kind of hawk.

The pile was back in the pile of leaves I’ve creating at the edge of the forest. There were long feathers and fuzzy bits of down. The black and white pattern looked like a woodpecker and was probably the red-bellied woodpecker since a pileated woodpecker are mostly black rather than the black and white pattern.

I picked up some of the feathers to photograph. They were a little damaged so probably had been on the ground for a few days.

Yesterday, I noticed more birds at our feeder again. Maybe the predator has moved on.

Beautiful Food – November 2015

There are so many beautiful foods to choose from this time of year. It seems like there are bright colors at every turn.

The salads have the orange of sweet potatoes or carrots…the dark green of parsley or cilantro…the magenta of watermelon radishes…even the cheese and boiled eggs in this salad are colorful! The whole is as beautiful as it is tasty.

And the salsa made with end of season bounty of tomatoes, cilantro, onions, hot pepper, garlic, and onions…gets just a spike of citrus from a lemon (peel and all). The colors and flavors blends together to contribute to several kinds of meals and snacks: salads, stir fries, tacos, chips….

And what about all the root veggies this time of year: white turnips, watermelon radishes, sweet potatoes (ok…I cheated a little – the green is a broccoli stalk rather than a root vegetable)…all in one stir fry. I add a little water when I first start cooking them to make sure they have enough cooking time to soften. Again – the appearance of food makes a big difference in the appeal of the meal.

New this month – and something I look forward to every years – is the arrival of pomegranates in the grocery store. I buy at least one a week. The seeds always look like little jewels to me; the color meshes well with the season. And they are my favorite afternoon snack until the season runs its course sometime in the early part of next year!

Pressed Leaves

Back in August I trimmed the lower branches from our sycamore and saved some of the leaves by inserting them with paper towels in a book. I rediscovered the books with the pressed leaves yesterday. The leaves had dried retaining their characteristic overall shape. The top side of the leaves was a dull green – darker than the fresh leaves. The underside was lighter and the veins were still easy to spot. Between the veins the leaf was as delicate as tissue paper.

Taking a close up – the veins are brown instead of the light green they were when they were fresh. Sycamore leaves are a little fuzzy on the underside and that still seems to be true for these dried leaves.

There was a tiny leaf that was dominated by the veins that bring the water and nutrients from the soil up to the leaves. The new leaves are structured for their growth throughout the season so their veins always look large in proportion to the size of the leave. If this one would not have been cut it would have increased dramatically in size before the fall.

Sometimes insects cause leaves to take on a lace-like appearance. This leaf might have fallen early even if I had not cut the branch.

The last leaf I photographed was two colors and reminded me of a topological map with mountains and valley – brown rock and green forests.

At first I thought I might try to make Zentangle® patterns on the leaves….now I’m not so sure. They crumb very easily.

Our Tulip Poplar

Our tulip poplar grows at the back of our yard – at the edge of the forest between a pine and a maple. Its leaves began to turn yellow relatively early in the fall but some of the leaves stay on the tree until the very end of the season. The first picture in this series was taken on October 10^th; the tulip poplar already had yellow leaves while the maple was almost totally green.

By October 24^th, the poplar had yellow and brown leaves and some were beginning to fall to the ground. The maple was red at the branch tips and had not dropped many leaves at all.

By October 27^th, the poplar a thinned a bit.

And by November 7^th, both the maple and the tulip poplar had lost all their leaves!

We moved into our house about this time of year over 20 years ago and the flying yellow leaves from the tulip poplar are the ones I associate the most with fall at this house. The trees are the tallest in the forest behind our house so they are impossible to ignore. The shape of the leaves is easy to recognize. Those leaves deteriorate rapidly from yellow to brown to mulch.

The seed pods last longer. They stay on the tree and release their seeds throughout the winter and into the next spring.

The tulip poplar was not a tree I ever saw growing up in Texas. When we moved to the east coast – to Virginia and then Maryland – they were one of the first trees that I noticed….and I like having one in my backyard so that I can see it every day.