Eastern Painted Turtle at Kenilworth Gardens

On one of our visits to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, there was a crowd around one of the ponds looking at – not lotuses or water lilies – but a turtle. I think a child had spotted it first but then everyone around looked too. It was surprising how difficult it was to see it in the pond. It was a rather small one and it was sitting in a puddle of water on a lily pad.

It seems more interested in the bees that were visiting a nearby flower than it was the people at the edge pf the pond.

I took enough pictures to identify it as a young Eastern Painted Turtle when I got home. On other visits we saw other turtles but they were in the water and not very photogenic. Maybe it was the season. We are past the time when the turtles need to sun on logs to get warm!

Charlottesville VA in 1980

I recently scanned pictures from a conference my husband went to at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville back in 1980. At the time, we didn’t even think about me accompanying him; I was working full time but we were both still in graduate school…and very conscious of living within our means. So – the one or two roles of film he took on the trip was the extent of my experience of the trip. I think my favorite image from the beginning was the oculus skylight from The Rotunda at the university. Evidently there was a tour offered to conference participant to Monticello as well.

The thing that I realized as I was looking more closely at these pictures was that we still take very similar pictures today but, because we don’t have to worry about the cost of film and its processing, we take many more images and probably try more experiments. Enjoy the slideshow of the University and Monticello in 1980!

I picture that my husband was surprised by was a picture of a Ryder truck that had gotten stuck under an overpass! It was with the pictures of Charlottesville so it was probably something he came upon as he was walking around the campus.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 16, 2016

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.

The Chemistry of Bell Peppers – Green to Yellow to Red….the chemistry of the pepper’s color change.

Ancient Brazilians occupied the same homes for centuries – Homes that were never abandoned…just extended with new floors on top of old ones, different types of ceramics and new building techniques.

Photography in the National Parks: Don’t Forget to Pack Your Flash or Reflector for Some Fill Light – This post shows images in bright sunlight with and without flash/reflector….a good ‘lesson’ in improving photos of flowers particularly.

Discover Your World with NOAA: An Activity Book – For kids and educators. The Earth Origami activity was one I looked at. This is quite a treasure trove of activities…all available online.

How to Raise Brilliant Children, According to Science – An interview with the author of Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children. She defines 6 Cs: collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creating innovation and confidence spread across 4 levels of development (summarized as seeing is believing, multiple points of view, opinions, and evidence/mastery/intricacies of doubt).

Professor finds positive effects for bringing physical activity to the desk – A positive link between mood, motivation and physical activity without detracting from work or study effectiveness…what’s not to like. For me – the Swopper chair seems to have these effects.

The People vs Coloring Books: The verdict is in – For children…the overall message may be to ‘step away from the coloring book’ and celebrate difference rather than conformity. When I was cleaning out my daughter’s papers from 1^st grade (over 20 years ago) I found a lot of lightly used coloring book type pages; it appears that she didn’t like them very much. She recognized them for what they were – busy work.

Incidence of cancer in patients with large colorectal polyps lower than previously thought – 92% of the colorectal patients referred for operation were noncancerous! My family had this experience and it is interesting to find out that it is not uncommon. Hopefully the more advanced endoscopic techniques can replace the traditional operation in some of these cases.

7 ways to find things to do in nature near you (US Edition) – Good ideas!

Butylparaben can have several endocrine disrupting effects – This is an ingredient (preservative) in many cosmetics and skin care products. Whatever testing was done in the past on the chemical probably did not even check for this kind of issue. And now we have a pervasive chemical that is impacting our biology in a negative way.

Lotuses at Kenilworth Gardens

The lotuses at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens are in bloom in June and July each year. We’ve visited three times so far this year…and the lotuses were the most numerous and largest flowers of the place. They grow in shallow ponds and range in color from white to darker pink. The leaves are lived out of the water on stalks; the leaves are large and round with veins that radiate from the center.

The stalks that end in buds, flowers, or seed pods rise above the leave layer. The ponds contain many stages of lotus development during this season. Eventually – only the pods will remain.

I’ve organized some pictures to show the development toward seed pods….starting with buds and newly opened flowers. Dragon flies often alight on the tips of the buds – a good perch for them because of the small diameter and relative stability of the stalk in the breeze compared to the stalks with full flowers.

Then the flower is fully open and insects are frequent visitors. As long as the central portion is yellow – the flower has not yet been pollinated.

The flowers follow the sun. These are my favorite images of the flowers…when they glow with the sunlight through their petals.

Eventually the flower has been pollinated and the center part turns green and the rest of the flower begins to fall apart. This flower grew up into the lowest branches of a bald cypress.

The petals fall off and the seed pod is all that remains. The pods start to mature. They dry out as the seeds mature but none of them are at that stage yet this year. The petals last a little longer if they fall onto leaves rather than into the water but they decay very rapidly even on the leaves.

Most of the time the leaves are above the water forming shallow bowls that undulate in the breeze but there are exceptions. If they are on the water surface – they often have large beads of water that last much longer than dew on a summer day. They reminded me of glass pebbles used with flower arrangements or a form of abstract art.

The Grand Canyon in 1971 and 1983

I posted about our visit to Grand Canyon National Park back in January 2015. My scanning project has digitized the pictures I have from 2 earlier visits! The first was in March of 1971. The two pictures below were probably taken through a bus window.

We hiked down a little way down the Bright Angel Trail. The wind was cold and a light snow started to fall. You can see some of the accumulation in the rocks.

But the sun came out soon. I remember getting sand in my contact lenses (this was before the soft contact lenses were invented…so it hurt a lot) and being very teary eyed on the hike up because I was afraid the lenses would blow away if I tried to take them out.

Back at the rim – it’s easy to see that the clouds with the snow are moving away…and the dust on the color slide that I didn’t get off before I scanned it.

Skipped forward to late May of 1983 – we got up at dawn and caught the sunrise on the rocks.

We started early for a hike down to the plateau.

We could see the river soon enough.

See how brown the river looks? I looked up when the Glen Canyon Dam came online because I knew that when it did the sediment in the river was dramatically reduced...but discovered that it was completed in the 1960s. The Wikipedia entry did mention that in the spring and early summer of 1983 the water level in the dam was very high (and climbing) because of the runoff from the heavier than usual snow that fell the previous winter. The dam almost failed and a lot of water was being released…along with sediment...during the time we visited the Grand Canyon!

It appears that there were people on rafts in the river in 1983!

The path down is a lot of switch backs then a downward slope of the plateau.

We were walking but there were people on mules on the same trail - all the way down.

Looking up to the sky…..from inside the canyon...good memories.

Buttonbush – Pickerel Weed – Horse Nettle

There are other plants at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens besides water lilies and lotuses. Three that I noticed – and was pleased that I recognized – were buttonbush, pickerel weed, and horse nettle. The button bush grows at the edges of many of the ponds – often under a larger tree so that the bush is at least partially in the shade.

The flowers form round balls on the plant. They are green toward the center then white.

And the bees love them at certain stages of their bloom.

The pickerel week grows at the edge of ponds – in wetter ground that the button bush – and it likes full sun.

The arrow shaped leaves point upward.

The flowers start blooming at the bottom and move up to the tip of the stem….keeping the bees happy for the duration.

I spotted horse nettle near the ponds as well. This is a weed that is native…and very common to our area. It grows in our front flower bed (where I promptly pull it up) and in the meadow at the Howard County Conservancy. During the fall hikes the children always comment about this plant’s yellow fruits that look like tomatoes….and I tell them right away that they may look like tomatoes but they are definitely not tomatoes; the fruits are poisonous.

Kenilworth Water Lilies

The two dominate plants at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens during June and July are the water lilies and the lotuses. The sign for the visitor center has a water lily design. The flowers rest at almost the same level as the leaves very near the water surface while the lotuses are above the water – the leaves being a layer that flutters below the flowers that are higher still. I like photographing water lilies – particularly ones that have a lot of color and the background is dark enough to set off the color.

I always wonder what causes the plants to grow only in part of a pond. Perhaps it has to do with water depth.

During our visit in late June there were quite a few geese in one of the ponds that was filled completely with water lilies. They moved through the heavy foliage. They just swim through the foliage and the plants close behind the big birds. I zoomed in (series below) to get a closer look at the geese and noticed that some were juveniles – just beginning to get their adult markings.

As usual – I looked particularly to find flowers that be being visited by bees. Do you think these two bees are the same kind of bee? The lighting makes it hard to tell.

Dragonflies at Kenilworth Gardens

Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in June and July is my favorite place to practice photographing dragonflies. We’ve been twice so far this year and seen at least three different kinds. There are the ones that are powder blue with green eyes – their wings almost clear.

There are darker ones – that look almost black….and their eyes are glossy black.

Last but not least, are the ones with black and white markings on their wings. There were not as many specimens of this particular kind so I only got two pictures.

All of the swoop among the lotus flowers and buds – alighting long enough for photographers. I captured all the above pictures with my Canon PowerShot SX710 HS…. attached to a monopod. I wanted to capture some of them dragging their abdomens in the water laying eggs…but didn’t see any so far. There were some that were defending territory; there was some noisy mid-air collisions!

Spent Lotus Flowers

We are making weekly jaunts to Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens since the later part of June. The lotuses and water lilies are in bloom during this time. It’s a good place for photography projects. One of my experiments the last time we went was to capture recently jettisoned flower parts on the big round leaves. I liked the colors – white, yellow, green…and occasional tinge of pink – and the curves. The first on I photographed still had water droplets left from the rain during the night.

The petals don’t last long once they fall. This one was a little past its prime but I liked the curves at the attachment end of the petals and the undulation of the leaf.

Sometimes they curve back onto themselves. The edges furthest from the attachment end of these petals have a tinge of pink…and the veins of the leaf under them seem to be radiating from the petal-as-sculpture.

Sometimes other parts of the flower spill onto the leaves while the larger petals slide down into the water below.

This leave held almost an entire flower with the petals turned in different ways. The pink edge shows on one of them. The veins of the leaf underneath don’t look as straight as when seen from the top.

I wondered how the flower parts came to be arranged. These seem neatly stacked!

I have a series of posts planned with images from the aquatic gardens...so stay tuned for lotuses, dragon flies, water lilies, and other things observed at this special place.

Washington DC in the Early 1980s

We moved to the Washington DC area in summer of 1983. I recently scanned the slides from those first few years and thought I’d post them on the 4^th of July since there are so many celebrations of our national history in the city. We made a house hunting trip in March 1983 and took time out to do a little sightseeing. The best pictures are of the capitol,

The National Gallery of Art,

And the Supreme Court building.

Thirteen months later (April 1984), my parents came for a visit. My favorite pictures from that visit are of the Lincoln Memorial

And the Einstein statue (with my mother in the picture holding a deciduous magnolia blossom that she picked up from the ground nearby).

In August 1984, we evidently made the trek into the city at night. The pictures my husband took of the monuments were quite good: The Lincoln Memorial,

The Washington Monument, and

The White House.

And then from the top of the Washington Monument: The White House,

The Jefferson Memorial, and

The Capitol.

I know that we made the effort to see the fireworks from The (Smithsonian) Mall at least twice during the subsequent years of the 1980s but I haven’t found any slides from those visits. I’ll save them for the next 4^th of July!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 2, 2016

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.

8 Ways to Protect your Eyes if you stare at Screens All Day – You probably have heard of most of these before….but how many do you actually include in your day to day screen time? I just recently got computer glasses…now wish I would have done it years ago.

The Rabies Vaccine Backstory – A little bit of medical history for the week.

Ten simple rules to use statistics effectively – The report is intended for the research community – but it seems like just about everyone needs to understand these. We are bombarded by statistics at every turn…and many times they are coming from outside our area of expertise; we have to make a conscious decision about how ‘real’ what they reveal might be.

Are your pipes made of lead? Here’s a quick way to find out – With Flint, Michigan’s problems with lead in their water supply being in the news, why not do a quick check to see if the pipe bringing water into your house are made of lead?

CDC to Track Algal Blooms – Evidently algal blooms have become enough of a health hazard to warrant this step.

4,200-year-old Egyptian Temple Discovered to have Remarkably Well Preserved Artwork – Images of the same temple from several photographers. One show half the ceiling cleaned…half still covered with soot. I wondered if the soot actually served to protect some of the pigment from being scoured by sand over the years.

Journey Through the Largest Cave in the World – It’s a cave discovered in 2009 in Vietnam. There are sinkholes that allow light into parts of the cave…a jungle inside the cave.

No association between ‘bad cholesterol’ and elderly deaths – Systematic review of studies of over 68,000 people…questions about the benefits of statin drug treatments for them. Older people with high level of a certain type of cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein) actually live as long, and often longer, than their peers with low levels of this same cholesterol. This implies that what is true for cholesterol for young and middle-aged people is not for older people!

A virtual field trip to the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland and Siccar Point, Scotland – Some online geology!

Hubble Images of Jupiter’s “Northern Lights” are Amazing! – Something new to know about Jupiter – it has a much stronger magnetic field than Earth…and Aurora’s along with it.

Mesa Verde in 1980

I posted a picture of our camp in Mesa Verde from August 1980. We cooked everything over a camp fire or on our Coleman stove. It rained every afternoon but we still managed to see quite a bit of the National Park. We drove around the park and got pretty good at spotting identified ruins and ones that seemed to be in every nook of the cliffs. Can you find the ruins in each of the images in the slideshow below?

Of course – there are some that are possible to get a better view – close enough to see the complexity of the places. As I look at these now, I realize that they would have all had flat roofs when they were inhabited…and that would make them look very different.

The pit houses on top of the mesa were quite different from the cliff dwellings structurally - and more exposed to the weather and enemies. I picked up a pinion pine cone at one of the stops and got sap on the dash of our car…and left the pine cone at the next stop.

Closer to the dwellings, it was possible to tell more about how they were constructed – how beams were placed to make floors,

How the walls were plastered and designs painted on the inside,

Very narrow steps down into a kiva,

T shaped doors,

And a spiral made on a stone.

My husband enjoys botanical photography as much as I do….so there are those kinds of images in the set of slides as well.

We haven’t been back to Mesa Verde since 1980. It would be interesting to see what has changed…what has stayed the same. This time my husband would not be the only one with a camera.

Brookside Gardens – June 2016

I had guests over the past two weeks and Brookside Gardens is one of the places that just about everyone enjoys. We got their early enough to be part of the first group into the Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. The butterflies inside were pretty much the same as we saw in late May that that I posted about early this month. I did get to see caterpillars for the black swallowtail. I had them on parsley growing on my deck a few years back – so many of them that the parsley was demolished!

There were insects in the gardens that were active because the day was already warm: dragonflies like the garden rooms that include a water feature and

Bubble bees seem to be everywhere.

There was a mockingbird that made lots of noise from the pinnacle of a small tree.

Every bush in the rose garden seemed to be blooming.

I like the ones that seemed to glow from within in the bright sunlight.

A succulent has been planted in an urn where it was blooming and spilling over the side.

The early summer flowers were at every turn.

The tadpoles near the Tea Garden pavilion were huge – about 6 inches long. since the tail was still so long I wondered how long it would be before they made the transformation to frogs.

The native dogwoods are already done with blooming for the year but the Asian ones were still in bloom. I liked the soft pink of one so much that I took a lot of pictures of it. My three favorite images are below.

Bandelier National Monument in 1980

The first time I visited Bandelier National Monument was in the spring of 1971; I didn’t take any pictures on that trip but remembered the place and wanted to return. An opportunity to visit again didn’t come until August of 1980; I recently scanned the images my husband took and remembered that visit. We had driven from our home in Plano TX. It was quite a road trip through New Mexico – camping along the way.

There is a large D shaped ruin on the canyon floor and eroded rocks everywhere.

There are ruins along the side of the canon that used eroded spaces for storage. Some of plastering and black markings from fires remains from the long ago uses of the place.

Post holes into the rock show that the ruins once had multiple floors along the canyon wall.

Here is a close up of a row of holes for a floor/ceiling support and some pecked images in the rock.

Some of the designs made in plaster had been protected from the elements.

Some areas were left as they were but the black at the top of the cavities show that they once had fires. Perhaps there are ruins under the rubble at the base of the cliff.

These rooms are probably restored although some of the posts look battered and may be original. There has been a lot of study of the tree rings in ruins like this and a sequence has been established to date construction via tree ring analysis.

The canyon was a great place to hike. I remember that we hiked all the way down to the Rio Grande. When I looked at the web site for the monument now I saw that they had experienced flood damage to that trail and it is closed past the upper falls. Unfortunately -  I haven’t found the slides from that part of the visit – yet.

Mount Vernon

I’ve posted about Mount Vernon before – back in the summer of 2013. This time it was hotter and the wind was blowing hard enough to kick up dust. There were a lot of people. I enjoyed trying to photograph the magnolia flowers again while I waited for them to call our time slot for the house tour but the wind had contorted their petals; none of them were symmetrical! Based on the signage about them - most were planted in the 1860s.

I took a picture of the ‘necessary’ at the corner of the garden. This was the area that had overgrown boxwood when we first visited Mount Vernon in the 1980s. Now the garden beds are surrounded by small boxwood and there are flowers and vegetables planted there.

I didn’t remember the shutters over the front door. This is the view from the line for the house tour…on the land side of the house.

Standing further back on the circular drive – on sees the breeze ways on both sides of the house. There used to be steps on the route from the kitchen (on the left) to get to the house but now the line for the house tour goes there and they have a raised floor so that the house can be entered via wheelchair.

The river side of the house has comfortable chairs that are used by almost everyone for a few minutes after they finish the tour - a pleasant shady spot on a hot afternoon.

This is the view of the Potomac River from the house.

The cupola is worth looking at from several vantage points: the river side of the house,

from the side where there are other out buildings, and

from the front.

I’ve noticed lightning rods in all of the older trees before. This time I also saw them on all the outbuildings.

There was also a building that had been newly shingled – not yet painted red. There must always be some maintenance going on even during Washington’s time. One of the outbuildings actually was for storing paint!

Last but not least – I had never really looked at George Washington’s signature….it’s everywhere in the visitor’s center.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 18, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How dirty is your air? – Based on this article – I am trying to get in the habit of turning on the vent fan when I am cooking….and opening some windows when the outdoors temperature is pleasant.

Serious Putty – A clay with antimicrobial properties…even against resistant strains! More research is needed – but it is exciting that this could be a totally different mechanism for fighting infection that the current antibiotics on the market.

Snow in Vietnam and Other New Climate Patterns Threaten Farmers – This is from the Business Report section of the MIT Technology Review. The article focuses on farmers in Vietnam in an area that got snow for the first time in their life time (and historically) last winter and how weather patterns are impacting their finally honed rhythm for crops. It would be interesting to hear stories from farmers around the world. Climate is changing globally – but not always in the same way.

Sunflower Spirals: Complexity Beyond the Fibonacci Sequence – The results of a crowd sourced look at sunflower spirals: 1 in 5 did not conform to the Fibonacci Sequence. Some of those non-conformers approximated it and others approximated more complex mathematical patterns! Either way – I like the look of sunflower spirals.

Genome Digest – Recent findings of genomic research on giraffes – carrots – zebrafish and gar – herring – Atlantic salmon. A lot has changed since I got my biology degree in the 1980s.

Seeing the Inevitable, companies begin to adapt to climate change – Most companies are aware that climate change is likely to affect their future but are not planning for it with any consistency or depth. Those furthest along are those already dealing with climate change on a daily basis: agriculture and insurance. Ikea and Ford are two companies used as examples in the article.

Tranquil Impressionist-Style Paintings Showcase Beauty of Natural Parks Around America – Eye candy for the week!

Life in the Dark – Photographs of sea and cave creatures that live their whole lives in the dark.

C40’s Executive Director Mark Watts on how mayors are changing the way we think about food – Area of focus are food: procurement, production, distribution, and waste.

Frog, Turtle Species Being Reintroduced to Yosemite Valley – The California red-legged frog (the largest native frog in the western US) and the western pond turtle are being reintroduced to lake, river and meadow habitats.

Valley Forge National Historical Park

Last week – the day following my visit to the Scott Arboretum – I walked around Valley Forge National Historical Park. I’d been there before but had never had time to see all of it. I remembered the cannon that were point at meadows. This time I wondered about how they were maintained. The one I looked at more closely had a fleck of paint that had flaked away and some rusty areas.

I remembered reconstructed log structures.

The structures help one imagine how miserable it must have been at this place in winter. The structures were very crowded - lined with crude bunks along the walls - with a crudely made fireplace for warmth.

We drove around as far as we could on the road that loops through the park but we came to a section that was closed because of damage to a bridge and construction of a replacement sewer line. We followed the detour signs through a beautiful older neighborhood (one of the highlights of the trip) and back to the visitor’s center to check the map more carefully on how to get to the other parts of the park. My sister was keen to see the DAR tower at the Washington Memorial Chapel.

I was fascinated by the eagles on the four corners of the tower.

Further down on the corner facing the chapel, there is a statue of George Washington.

There is a cannon in front of the chapel that points into the main area of the park and an obelisk.

There are numerous cool courtyards with statuary and dedications. The chapel area was getting ready for a Flea Market the next day but even with the extra activity, it was a serene place.

Further along the road was Washington’s Headquarters. There as a statue of George Washington that has been replicated in other places because

His family indicated that the face depicted him better than any other.

The headquarters was a house…that was crammed full of people when it was the headquarters. The house part was never changed structurally. The kitchen part (to the left) was ‘modernized’ in the 1800s but is now back to the way it would have been in the 1770s.

There is a train station near the Headquarters that provided transportation for people to visit the park up to the time it became a National Historical Park. The addition of the railroad created a tall berm between the headquarters area and the Schuylkill River which would not have been there in the 1770s; it changed the relationship that then encampment had of the river but may have protected many of the structures from flooding.

The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College

Last week I walked around some of the Scott Arboretum while my sister did some genealogy research at the McCabe library. It was not an ideal day for photography because it was very windy. Fortunately, it was bright enough that the shutter speed froze some of the motion and I was able to get some flower pictures.

 

The arboretum is integrated with the college buildings and I like the quiet places with benches (lush vegetation spilling around them) and just having the structures as backdrops to some of the garden (in particular in the rose garden).

The vintage buildings appear to be well maintained…with exteriors much as they were when they were first built.

There was a cloister type courtyard with the bell tower and chapel.

When I first walked to it there was a person sitting in the shade reading – enjoying the space out of the wind.

There was climbing variety of hydrangea along the arches of the courtyard.

I definitely want to plan another trek to Scott Arboretum and explore it more thoroughly – without a time constraint and on a day when the wind is not a problem.

Conowingo – June 2016

I stopped by Conowingo Dam on my way to Philadelphia. It was not a great day for birds. The water was low and the large number of birds we saw last time (probably many newly fledged Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons) were foraging elsewhere. The picture of the point of rocks that always seems to attract at least one heron illustrates the low water (the white marks are how high the water is normally).

We saw a few eagles fishing. After I looked at one of my pictures on a larger screen, I realized there were more than I thought. Click on the image below to get a larger view of:

• 3 eagles on the abutments (a juvenile and adult on the closer one, an adult on the further one),
• 3 black vultures near the center of the picture, and
• 3 or 4 cormorants on the rocks in the lower right!

We took a few pictures and continued our road trip.

Last of the Spring Field Trips at Mt. Pleasant

It’s about time for the school year to end – even with the elongation due to snow days last winter. The last of the spring field trips scheduled for the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant Farm happened this past week. I took a few pictures before the last few hikes. Many of the formal plantings are blooming: peonies,

Flags, and

Sweet bay.

The gingko is shading the picnic area.

On one hike there was a flock of gold finch in the meadow….and an indigo bunting.

I took pictures of the milkweed plants in the meadow a few days later; they’re getting ready to bloom.

A little further down the path -  I spotted the first monarch I’ve seen this season. Is this one that flew from Mexico or released by the school children that are raised monarchs in their classroom? Maybe it doesn’t matter – because Mt Pleasant has milkweed for the butterfly to lay its eggs and for the Monarch caterpillars to eat.

Monjoy Barn gets a little shade in the mornings but by the time I came back with my hiking group it was in full sun.

The children enjoy seeing the orchard with the still-small apples (and pears too). In the fall, the fruit will be the size they see in the grocery store.

The tulip poplar is mostly done with flowering and the seed pods are beginning to form.

The trees around the farm house are in full summer green. Time for “school’s out for the summer.”