Our Sycamore

We have a sycamore tree behind our house. It planted itself near the base of the stairs down to the lawn and I have simply let it grow…trimming off the lower branches so that it would not get in the way when we mow the grass. It will eventually provide shade for the three stories of the house on the west side; it’s tall enough now to shade the first two stories. This week I noticed how thick the fallen leaves were.

Sycamore leaves take a lot longer to degrade than maple or tulip polar – the other trees that drop leaves into our back yard – and they are much larger too. They keep growing from the time they unfold in the spring to the time they fall. They are often bigger than a dinner plate! They have to be raked or they will smother the grass. I got started on it this past weekend but it is quite a job.

The leaves sometimes fall when they are still a bit green…or mottled yellow and brown…or like cracked leather. I liked the color of the mottled leaf still on the tree with the sun shining through it. This is about as pretty as the sycamore leaves get in the fall.

The tree has bark that peels away and leaves the top part of the tree white. It is an easy tree to recognize in the winter

Last year our tree had one seed ball (that I saw); it is showing is maturity this year with many seed balls.

Our Maple

I took pictures of our  maple (actually it is our neighbor's but close enough to the property boundary that we rake about half the leaves) as it changed this year. On October 10th it was still mostly green.

By the 24th it was red at the tips of the branches.

Three days later – on the 27th – it was red all over.

On the afternoon of Halloween a lot of leaves had fallen and the sun shining through the remaining leaves caught my eye.

Yesterday – almost all the leaves had fallen and it was obvious that our neighbor’s yard crew had blown the fallen leaves and left exposed dirt. I am going to rake the leaves that are covering grass but leave the ones that are on dirt. Next spring I’ll need to consider what we can do for the area under the maple that has lost its grass as the tree has gotten larger. The roots of the tree are so dense that I don’t know that even shade loving plants will survive…but that is a project for next spring.

For now I’ll savor the last few leaves on the tree and the smell of leaf tea as I rake way the leaves from the grass and into the forest.

Missing the Weekly CSA Share

This is the first week I don’t have a CSA share since the season ended last week and won’t start again until next June. It feels odd to not have the bounty of fresh veggies coming in from that source. I am intent on getting every bit of goodness out of what is left --- wondering how long I can go before I’ll buy veggies from my grocery store’s produce section. It won’t be this week certainly.

The refrigerator was so full that the ‘cool’ actually got a bit cooler and some of the greens froze…so I used them in soup and stir fry. I still have lettuce, spinach, radicchio, and cabbage for salads…lots of root vegetables (carrot, turnips, sweet potatoes, and radishes) for slaw. I have peppers, pac choi and tatsoi for stir fry. I’m trying to eat the most fragile veggies first.

I thought the cilantro might degrade first so I made salsa with it (using tomatoes and hot peppers from earlier in the CSA season and frozen). I love the blend of the veggies with onion, garlic, and half a lemon. I use salsa for more than just tacos; it becomes salad dressing and stir fry sauce…a drizzle on the top of soup.

There is still a butternut squash, small white potatoes, and garlic along with a lot of sweet potatoes that don’t take up any room in the refrigerator and will be edible for quite some time.

I’ve got dried thyme and parsley/carrot tops that will season foods into the winter too.

The big lesson learned from the CSA is how good vegetables can be. I am a little spoiled with getting them the same day they are picked so I choose carefully in the grocery store during the offseason. I don’t try to eat the same all during the year. During the winter I like to have warm meals so I tend to eat a lot less salad type greens and stick with the sturdy greens (kale, cabbage, pac choi) that hold up well in stir fries or soups. Sometimes my grocery store has organic greenhouse dandelion greens and that is a treat in winter!

Hydrangea Flowers

After I took the picture of the one flower on our hydrangea bush last weekend – just about the only part not eaten by the overpopulation of deer in our area – I looked around the house at the hydrangea flowers I had cut in previous years from the same bush. They tend to dry and retain their shape…and sometimes some color too.

The oldest ones are probably over 5 years old. They have visible cat hair and dust they’ve collected from the air as they stood in their vase on top of the book case. There is still some color (originally pink) in the tips of some of the petals.

Some of the petals curved so that the veins became more visible.

Last year I cut some more and they have more of the pink color remaining although some parts turned a deeper brown.

The purple/pink flower is from earlier this summer. The color deepened as they dried.

I’m trying to decide if I want to risk putting them all in one vase. They are fragile enough that they might crumble completely. The color variation and shapes of the dried flowers appeals to me.

Zentangle® - October 2015

The Zentangle habit is one that I even take on vacation! There is always enough room for tiles, a pen, a pencil, and tortillion!

Toward the beginning of the month I started experimenting with the patterns on soft drink bottles. My rationale was that making patterns on a curved surface rather than a flat tile would take some practice and I was considering making spherical Christmas ornaments for our tree this year; in the meantime, the decorated bottles could hold water for when I was hiking. I bought an ultra-fine point Sharpie. The ink did indeed stick to the plastic although I discovered that any residual oils (like from fingerprints) caused it to wear off. I also discovered that it pooled a bit if I didn’t pick up the pen fast enough so continuous line patterns were preferable. I am not back to tiles…and thinking of ornaments made out of paper coaster material – hanging diagonally ….I’ll have so of my early test tiles later in this post.

I am enjoying the colored pencils even though the patterns are made with the Micron pen.

I find myself using more open patterns so that I have spaces to add color. The group below includes a test of the Sharpie on a strip of plastic…before I used it on the soft drink bottles.

I like the flower fillers!

The group of tiles without color below is from when I was traveling. For some reason – I reverted to more traditional tiles while ‘on the road.’

Sometimes I use only one color…and in areas that I would have done shading.

Sometimes I think – after the fact – of themes for tiles…like the sea (upper left) or jewels and scarves (upper middle). I decided to start naming the tiles.

The names for this batch (starting at the upper left and moving to the right…then lower left and right): Opera house, Space I, D flower, Deed pods, Tri-red, D flower 2, 2015. The last one was an experiment on the coaster material to hang on the tree.

Below are three more with potential to hang on the tree. I started using a red Sharpie. I like the color but the lines are very fat! The lower right is a Zentangle with my name in hieroglyphs (one of the activities in the Coursera course on Ancient Egypt)…and I did auras around it to make a cartouche.

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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.

CSA Week 22 – The Last Week of the Season

This was the last week of the 2015 Gorman Produce Farm CSA. I took an extra bag because I anticipated a lot of food. I’m glad I did.

The main part of the share included:

• 2 kinds of lettuce
• Broccoli
• 3 watermelon radishes
• Pac choi
• Tatsoi
• 4 beets
• 2 bunches of turnips with greens
• 4 garlic
• Honey
• Parsley
• Chard
• Radicchio 

The 6 pounds of sweet potatoes and 1/2 pound of spinach did not fit into the picture!

The overage table was pretty full to and we were not limited to one or two items. I got carrots (with tops still attached), Brussel sprouts, bell peppers, and snacking peppers.

When I got home I had a lot of processing to do:

• The sweet potatoes are cured so will keep outside the refrigerator but they had gotten wet (rainy day) so I spread them on a big tray to dry.
• I cut the tops off the carrots and copped them up with the parsley…the pulp is on a tray drying.
• The turnip tops are cleaned, cut into pieces and in the freezer for use in winter soups.
• The Brussel sprouts are cut from the stalk and clean – ready to roast or toss into a stir fry.
• The Pac choi, Tatsoi and Chard leaves are in a bag – clean and ready to easily cut up. The stems are collected into a small bin; I’ve discovered that I like to cook the stems a bit more than the leaves so it is convenient to have them together rather than still attached to the leaves.

The crispers are full…the 3 bins I have for the overflow of veggies are full too. I’m focused on eating the ones most in danger of spoiling first!

CSA 21 and Beautiful Food

Next week will be the last of the CSA for 2015. We are getting a lot of vegetables each week as the fields end-of-season harvest rolls on. The week the bag was stuffed again.  The leaves of the bunch of turnips and stalk of Brussel sprouts stuck out of the top. The 3 pounds of sweet potatoes and watermelon radishes were at the bottom of the bag. A head of cabbage and bell peppers were toward the middle and the lettuce and bunch of cilantro was at the top. I traded the hot peppers included in the share for an extra bunch of cilantro. We were allowed two items from the overage table and I chose the pink stemmed chard and a pound of small broccoli stalks.

There is so much that is beautiful about fall foods. The one-potato-soup made with a broth started with water beets were cooked in (very red, a little vinegary) was a beautiful color and tastey.

Some food are beautiful in the raw – like these Brussel sprouts.

I’ve discovered that I use the firmer veggies like broccoli, sweet potatoes, kohlrabi, radishes and turnips in salads (slaw or added to lettuce) and stir fries when they are already shredded and ready to go.  The shredder disk of the food processor makes it very easy and the result – all mixed together – is beautiful and tastey. The picture below is from last week with the watermelon radish contributing the bright pink, sweet potato the orange, broccoli (the whole stalk!) the green, turnips and kohlrabi the white. Later today I’ll make a new batch with the veggies I need to use up now: purple cabbage, watermelon radish, sweet potato, broccoli, and turnips.

CSA Week 20

Our CSA ends at the end of October. Right now we are almost overwhelmed with fall veggies. I still have a lot left from last week and there was another very full bag for week 20:

Several kinds of peppers: bell and snack (I got double snack peppers by trading away my hot peppers).

Turnips. There were two kinds to choose from (red and white). I got one of each by trading away my eggplant for one of them. The turnip greens are a lot to eat before they go limp.

I’ve already made chips with the bunch of kale.

The broccoli and a few sweet potatoes were shredded with some turnips and watermelon radish left from previous weeks. It makes a complete meal when combined with dried soy nuts…and cooks quickly when added to stir fry. Of course I still have sweet potatoes to last for quite a while after the CSA officially ends.

I chose the red leaf lettuce rather than all green. I like the color variety. The arugula and pale green cabbage is enough ‘green’ for salads.

I picked up a bunch of mizzuna from the overage table.

My focus for meals over the next week is to eat the veggies that will spoil most easily….and save the ones that will last a week of more in the crisper.

Cut Flowers Photography

The flowers from our garden look a bit battered with the wind, rain and cooler temperatures of the past few weeks – but I cut two for some experimental photography. It was a quick project on a sunny afternoon.

I like the bright yellow and the bit of green in the corner of the sunflower image. The texture of the petals appealed to me.

The flower from the back was interesting too….and I liked the overall shape of the flower, leaves and stem enough to include the shadow.

The zinnia and its shadow made an ordinary flower something different.

The leaves of the zinnia have a bit of color in their connection with the stem….and the veins stand out too.

I had the sunflower I got from the CSA during the summer that has dried to look at as well. The petals are shriveled but retain their color. The curves and hairiness of the dried back of the flower seemed even more intriguing.

Jelly Fungus

Our deck is about 25 years old but seems to be in good shape. Last year I did notice some bright orange jelly fungus growing one of the knots visible in the deck railing. It went away after a few days.

It was back again last week. The fungus is growing in the railing all the time but puts out its colorful fruiting bodies when the conditions are right. Evidently those conditions include cool, wet weather.

And there was one small orange blob at a second know further along the railing. The organism is spreading, but not very fast. The blogs were gone in a few days; when the rain stopped and things dried out completely, the orange blobs were gone too.

From now on I will look for the tiny blobs every time it rains. They are a reminder that nature eventually regains control…slowly but surely. It’s the way of the world that we should appreciate when we can.

CSA Week 19

The week 19 share from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA was a full bag again this week. It was as large as last week (and I still have a few items in the refrigerator from last week…and I’m drying shredded radish leaves for use in soups through the winter).

In this week there is red leaf lettuce, arugula, chard (I chose the chard with the magenta stems), turnips (all white), red cabbage, bell peppers, banana peppers, 2 pounds of sweet potatoes, tatsoi, pac choi (traded my hot peppers for this), 1 pound of tomatoes, mustard greens, kohlrabi. I’m already thinking about making slaw of raw sweet potato, turnips, kohlrabi, and a watermelon radish from last week’s share. I’m enjoying the shredder attachment on my food processor!

I couldn’t resist including a close up of a chard leaf with this post. The color combination adds to the appeal of this vegetable in both salads and stir fries!

Our Oak

The oak in front of our house was planted about the time the house was built – so it is about 25 years old.  It is near the mailbox and drops leaves, acorns, and self-pruned twigs on our driveway as well as the yard. I notice it more in the fall because of the increase in debris. The wind has been blowing a lot the last few days so leaves are flying – some clearly ready to be jettisoned

And some still brilliantly green.

The tree still looks mostly green – but the foliage is less dense.

A few years ago I planted day lilies around the base of the trunk. Their green fringe looks nice through the summer and into the fall. They never get a chance to bloom because the deer eat the buds just before they open!

Over the years, the bark has become more deeply furrowed and acquired lichen. The tree is aging well. The lower branches that the county cut last spring so that fire trucks would not be damaged coming into our neighborhood in an emergency have not been missed; if anything – the tree green a bit more than usual this past summer.

It is big enough to shade the front of the house in the summer time. I’m glad it is a deciduous tree so that the front of the house gets warmed by the sun in the winter.

I picked up some acorns from the driveway. It is not a heavy year for acorns. I recall one year when it seemed like we had a carpet of acorns and my daughter collected bags of them to donate for a riparian restoration project in our area.

In an earlier year – before we moved to this house - my daughter and I collected acorns from another oak when she was in pre-school. We made a garland my gluing acorns and their hats together around a piece of gold thread. We left them in a bin for the glue to dry before we put them on the tree. When we came back the next day – little worms had come out of the acorns!

Zentangle® - September 2015

Zentangle-a-Day is becoming a well-established habit for me. The day is not complete without at least one. In September I continued my experiments with color. I also decided to cut the whole 8.5x11 inch pages into tiles (no left over skinny strips) and continued to use old business cards. The net result was a lot of variability in size.

My husband a virtually new set of Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils that I started using. They have a different ‘feel’ than the older pencils….the colored part of the pencil seems softer.

I experimented with overlaying colors (in the bottom right below, there is a yellow overlay on all the colors. One of my favorite tiles of the month is the middle left one – with gingko type leaves – and left black and white.

I tend to like tiles with one or just a few colors the best. The simple business-card tile with green triangles is one of my favorites.

As the month progressed – I started thinking about using colors at the edges and in spaces of tiles….as in the upper left (below).

The tile in the lower middle below was the same ‘ribbon’ pattern repeated 3 times….the color made a difference!

My most favorite tile of the month was done on a paper coaster (upper left). I think of it as The Flaming Spiral.

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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.

CSA Week 18

The share seemed huge this week. Maybe it is just typical of fall or the farmer bulking up this share just in case Hurricane Joaquin cases some flooding of the farm before next Wednesday.

The watermelon radishes are 3 to 4 times bigger than last year. I traded the eggplant for another 3 so I have a total of 6. One has already been shredded and it added both flavor and color in a slaw with ingredients from last week: broccoli and kohlrabi.

There was another bunch of beets. I’ll be making more fruit beety with the beets even with half the previous batch still in the freezer. That still leaves the leaves. I’ll be focusing on eating them while they are fresh either in salad or stir fry.

There are a lot of ‘greens’ right now: arugula, watermelon radish leaves, lettuce, and mizzuna (two bunches since I traded hot peppers). The freshness of the leaves means that they will last a bit longer in the bins I have for the refrigerator….as long as we don’t lose power when the storm comes through early in the week.

There were bell peppers and snack peppers still this week.

I was thrilled to get another sweet dumpling squash – yum!

The heaviest single item of the day was 3 pounds of sweet potatoes. I’m glad the squash and the sweet potatoes don’t need to be refrigerated.

I picked rosemary as my herb choice…it’s already drying.

We got 2 items from the overage table; I got 1 pound of roma tomatoes and some scallions.

My refrigerator feels very full!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – September 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 September 2015.

Haircut – I’d gotten rather shaggy over the course of the summer….the shorter hair was worth celebrating!

Laptop – Hurray! My new laptop (after a rough start) is living up to my expectations. I am celebrating that it is definitely better than my old one in every way.

Acorn squash with homemade orange marmalade and butter – A vegetable that tastes like the dessert is always a celebration.

Homemade veggie soup – I used up some of the overwhelming numbers of tomatoes and other vegetables on one of our first cool days….celebrating the beginnings of fall with food.

Art of Flower Photography – A class that it beautiful to watch and spurs my own photographic experiments; this was another multi-dimensional celebration.

Mediation Course – I’ve only learned the bare minimum…enough to realize the potential…and am celebrating it as a beginning.

Glass birdbath – The glass bird bath in the front our house is something I check every morning when I come downstairs. Sometimes there is a bird…sometimes not. The sight of glass bowl in the morning light always starts the day on a positive note.

Longwood Gardens – Earlier this week my husband and I made a road trip to Longwood Gardens (posts still being developed). It was a 13,000 step walk around the gardens and meadow on a near perfect fall day.

Bird Walk – I’d never taken a walk with a birding group until recently. It was a good experience even though it rained off and on….birds seemed hunkered down rather than active. I celebrated that the area I live in has a number of active birders.

An indoor day – Sometimes it is a relief to just be indoors at home. I love the view from my office window!

CSA Week 17

I still have a few potatoes, sweet dumpling squash, chives, and bell peppers left from week 16. The potatoes will keep. I’ll bake the squash in a few days I should freeze the peppers and endeavor to use up the chives as quickly as possible.

The share this week was a typical fall bounty:

Beets ---- I am making fruit beety with the beets and using the stems/leaves in stir fries

Broccoli ---- We were warned by the farmer to soak the broccoli to get the insects out of it. I’ll probably make slaw out of it after that….which can be used in salads and stir fries

Bell peppers and snack peppers ---- It’s a bit overwhelming but I like peppers both raw and cooked

Parsley – I’ll use as much as I can fresh but will probably end up drying some of it.

Thyme – I traded my hot peppers to get a second bunch! I’ve become a fan of thyme in stir fry and soup…and it dries very easily

Kohlrabi – I’ll use the leaves and stems in stir fries. The bulbs may become part of the slaw I make with the broccoli

Tomatoes – We are down to a pound of the red tomatoes this week. I got a pint container of the sun gold tomatoes as my pick from the overage table.

Butternut squash – This is probably my favorite winter squash because it is big enough to have enough left over to make custard (made with the cooked squash instead of pumpkin but otherwise the same ingredients)

Eggplant - There are two again this week. I plan to make another batch of eggplant balls and may freeze some of them.

Yummy meals in week ahead!

Deck Garden – September 2015

The deck garden going to seed! I’ll have to collect the seeds for next year’s deck garden as the pods dry completely.  The Black Eyed Susans are all seed pods at this point. The zinnias still have some blossoms but about half have formed seed pods. I experimented with a drape from my camera lens (made of a white plastic shopping bag) to photograph this zinnia flower on a bright sunny day.

The basil is going to seed too but it is more difficult to pinpoint went the flower ends and the pod begins. I liked the color of the pod and leaves in this one.

The sunflowers have not done very well in my deck garden and it may be that they like deeper soil. They took a long time to create buds and the blooms were not large. They often look better from the back than the front.

The leaves of the purple peas have a lot of the color of the peas in their leaves along with the green.

The leaves of the sunflowers are just green but pattern of veins. Both of the leaf images were the underside of the leaves.

A New Laptop

I got a new Dell laptop last week. At first there was significant trauma. My plan had been to immediately upgrade it to Windows 10 (it came with Windows 8.1). The install proceeded so slowly that I decided it was hung and let the recovery process take it back to Windows 8.1. After trying to make the upgrade again with a slightly different process – and stalling again – I looked at the Dell support site and discovered others were having the same problem. I initiated a chat with Dell Support and they scheduled a technician to replace the SSD with one from another vendor. That happen about 48 hours later. And things began to get a lot better.

As soon as Windows 10 was working, I got Office 365 working on the machine (my husband already had the account set up). Then I installed Firefox, Fitbit, and Photoshop Elements. I transitioned from Chrome to Firefox as my default browser and was surprised that the transition was so easy. Fitbit was more challenging – probably because I didn’t read the instructions for installing Fitbit Connect carefully enough. The one that took the most finesse was Photoshop Elements because its catalog and the location of photos has to be kept in sync. It was a relief when everything was working by the end of the week.

A new external monitor was delivered on Saturday and I set it up on Sunday. I quickly decided that I would use the USB ports on the monitor rather than the hub I had been using (the new laptop only has 2 USB ports). I was surprised at how much that change reduced the cable clutter around the laptop!

I’m always excited when I get a new machine. This one is the most noticeable performance delta ever: the SSD improves the speed of everything and the machine is very quiet.

One discovery from this past week: all the Zentangles and mediation don’t help me overcome the frustration of tech not working as I expect. There were times when I had to stop doing anything with the laptop…calm down…and come back to work on it again! I am thrilled with the machine at this point but it took be about a week to make it so.

The main part of office is on a corner table (set up now with old laptop, new monitor, and new laptop in view and a printer taking up the extra space in the corner which used to be needed for the monitor before flat screens became the norm). And just behind and to the right of the new laptop is a great view of the forest leading down to the Middle Patuxent River.

Personal Metrics - September 2015

Back in January 2012, I wrote a series of posts about personal rhythms (daily, weekly, monthly). They were not specifically about personal metrics…but enough that I am looking back at them today and realizing what has changed - and what has not - during my first few post-career years.

What has changed:

• I no longer use an alarm clock (unless I need to wake up for a very early plane) so I am rarely jarred from sleep before I am ready to wake up.
• I am more consistently in the ‘normal’ weight range for my height (I was still slightly overweight when I retired). Weight is something I check every day.
• I pay more attention to exercise - specifically to my level of activity during the day and strive to have at least 30 ‘active’ minutes (measured by Fitbit).
• I went through a period where I closely monitored the nutritional content of my diet and stopped taking some supplements so that I would not get ‘too much.’ I eat more whole foods - particular produce now. This has been helped along by joining a CSA (5 months of the year). I have dramatically reduced the artificial sweetener and caffeine in my diet.
• My reading/book browsing goal for the month has increased slightly (to 100 per month). The Internet Archive and eBooks from the library are so easily available that there is no excuse!
• The volunteer naturalist gigs are a significant part of my interactions with people outside of my family…in some ways similar of interactions during my career but different because of the wider range of ages and backgrounds of the people…and being outdoors.
• A Zentangle a day.

What has not changed:

• I still sleep between 7 and 8 hours a night…going to bed about 10 and getting up between 5 and 6 most days.
• My exercise goal is still 12,000 steps per day and I reach it unless I am travelling for a large portion of the day.
• I still do household chores are a weekly cycle…although I sometimes realize that some cleaning chores have been ignored for too long.

Beautiful Food - September 2015

I decided to do a monthly post on ‘beautiful food’ and am finding that it easy to select foods that are luscious looking and tasting to me. I thrive on variety! Our CSA prompts some of the variety; in September the tomatoes were still abundant and we had sweet potato leaves one week. Somehow eggs were prevalent in my diet than usual this month. So here’s the top 4 ‘beautiful foods’ for September:

This month I enjoyed toasted pita wedges with homemade orange/lemon marmalade (recipe here),

Egg salad (hard boiled eggs and hummus in a food processor until ‘spreadable’) wrapped in sweet potato leaves (only available for a short time, just before the sweet potatoes are harvested at our CSA),

The jewels of small tomatoes,

And eggs in a nest (recipe here). I went a little overboard on the ‘nest’ so this was a hearty dinner!