Gleanings of the Week Ending March 26, 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.

Forests reveal lingering effects of native cultures – The researchers looked at patterns of honey locus in the Southern Appalachian region. The article drew my attention because the native culture in the area was Cherokee (maybe some of my ancestors) and I had read something similar about the native stands of bananas.

Goodbye, America. I’m becoming a nomad (again)! – Mike Elgan is currently in Cuba and blogging about the experience….a lot more about daily life in Cuba that the Presidential visit.

Pregnant T. rex could aid in dino sex-typing – A T. rex with a medullary bone – the same as modern birds (female) have to shell their eggs. It comes and goes with the bird’s reproductive cycle so not only indicates that the fossil was a female --- but that it was also in the egg laying part of its reproductive cycle.

Climate variations analyzed five million years back in time – We have to go back into the geological history of the Earth a very long way to find a climate as warm as what we are heading towards and we cannot detect the detailed variations….but we already know that there were abrupt climate shifts back then.

Artist Paints Elaborately Colorful Scenes Using Only Her Fingers – This is quite different than a child’s finger painting? My favorites are the lily pads with the fish underneath, the deer looking through yellow leaves, and the curled up fox.

Tunable windows for privacy, camouflage – I would enjoy not having to add blinds and/or drapery to windows….but it would have to require very little electricity to be opaque (since that is the mode that probably would be wanted most at night when solar energy was least available).

Bald Eagle Cam (DC) – Just in case you have not seen the story elsewhere. This article has a link for the live cam and the twitter feed. Yesterday when I looked the day was warm enough that a parent was standing to the side of the nest while the babies slept (they are still young enough that they fall over in a ‘food coma’ after they eat!

Potential Zika virus risk estimated for 50 US cities – A very scary map. It has been long enough ago that German measles caused birth defects when pregnant women contracted the diseases…this time we don’t have a large number of people in the population that have immunities from having the disease previously so if the US does have an outbreak it would have traumatic outcomes.

Chocolate Chemistry – On a happier note – chocolate. Dark chocolate is my favorite ‘splurge’

21 Enormous Man Made Holes – Mines, nuclear explosions, wells…lots of reasons humans have made giant holes on the surface of Earth.

Zooming – March 2016

In February – birds dominated the zooming post. This month there is more variety. The first two collages are from Brookside Gardens – and are all plants in the conservatory.

Outside the plants were mostly dried vegetation from last falls – but the collage below contains a feather too.

And then we get to some birds: snow geese and a yellow legs. I liked the shell within a shell shape.

Shelf fungus and pine codes --- pine needles as background for heads of a Great Blue Heron and an egret.

A splintered tree trunk – a physical reminder of how power storms can be. Tundra swans with sunrise colors in water and sky as background.

Close up of two birds revealed the red in their eye. The frog looks happy to be surveying the pool with lots of eggs already laid. The daffodil is just the beginning of the spring flowers.

Beautiful Food – March 2016

I am enjoying unadorned whole foods for snacks and realized that they have a beauty all their own. Walnuts with their convoluted surface. I always put them in a very small container so that I don’t eat more than a serving (1/4 cup).

Blueberries (partially) thawed from the freezer. There glistening purple color is quite a contrast from other foods.

Oranges are a day brightener both because of the beauty of their namesake color and their taste. I like to eat them standing at my kitchen sink watching the birds at the bird bath. I take off the skin before eating the pulp so I can chop the peel up to dry or include as extra peel in a batch of orange marmalade.

The is the time of year I begin to make the transition from foods I enjoy on cold days like soup (butternut squash curry with lots of topping: pumpkinseeds, broccoli flowerets, and a hardboiled egg) and

Breakfast for dinner (pancakes with apples cooked in cinnamon butter on top)

To foods that are best eaten cold – like the colorful spring leaves that have quite a mixture of green, purple and read leaves.

They are all part of the beautiful meals of March!

Belmont Manor and Historic Park – March 2016

I’ve been to several Howard County Conservancy training sessions at Belmont this month. The short hike associated with the first training was into the nearby woods. The trees were still very much in winter mode. A few of the young beeches retained dry leaves from last season. The large trees in this forest are beech, tulip poplar, sycamore and oak (fewer oaks, and they are smaller than the other trees).

The only green around were plants close to the ground protected by the buttress roots of trees or

Moss growing on tree trunks.

The next training had a hike that went out to the cemetery on the property. Just outside the fence is a huge tulip poplar. There is a hollow place on the side of the trunk toward the fence and it is unclear how far up the tree that hollow goes.

There is a row of White Pines with picnic tables underneath. I’ve never stopped there for a picnic but last summer the area under the pines was a good place to look for mushrooms to photograph.

We hiked back to the front of the manor house and I finally got around to photographing the date on the plaques above the front door. CPD stands for Caleb and Priscilla Dorsey – the builders of the oldest part of the house.

It was a wet day – but the view from the drive in front of the manor house was still scenic with the large magnolia on the lawn and the pond beyond – a bald cypress standing vigil at the water’s edge on the left.

The dampness gave the gum balls on the ground more color. The wind had trimmed one of the nearby white pines recently to add to the arrangement.

On some of the old trees the lichen on their trunks looks more robust than the tree.

During the third training we hiked through one of the fields and I found a blue jay feather – a little battered from being on the ground for several days.

After the training I decided to stop at all the turnouts along the one lane wide road. The part of the road that has been newly paved now has speed bumps. This is the entrance to Belmont showing the trees along the drive.

A lot of trees have been cut along this newly paved section – supposedly to winnow out unhealthy trees. It has been going on for the past several years. I made a slide show of the pictures I took of the stumps. Can you tell which ones are not part of the recent cutting? (1, 4, 9) One looks like an unfurling scroll to me. (3)  There were several that I wondered why they were cut – they weren’t hollow so there must have been something else that made them candidates for the saw. One such was (11 and 12) --- but then I noticed the space between the bark and the rest of the wood; something was definitely wrong. The one with the biggest hollowed out area would have probably fallen soon had it not been cut (13). Some of the wood from a large branch looked very spongey (14) so clearly the tree was rotting. Still – it is sad to see so many trees cut down at one time.

3 Free eBooks – March 2016

So many good books to peruse online….so little time.

There are two botanical print books this month:

Parsons, Frances Theodora. According to the season. New York: Scribner, 1902. Available on Hathi Trust here. This one is in color and included skunk cabbage. I couldn’t resist including the fiddleheads image too for this book!

Audsley, George Ashdown; Greve, W. Ornamental Arts of Japan. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1884. In two volumes from Hathi Trust available here. Mixture of chromolithographs, photoaquatints and carbon prints….beautiful work. I always like the cranes in Japanese art work.

Edwards, George Wharton. Alsace-Lorraine. Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company, 1918. Available from Hathi Trust here. Some of the plates are in color. The aspect that interested me the most was the artists emphasis on capturing the light just as it was on the subject.

Mt Pleasant Farm – March 2016

There are signs of spring at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm but the trees still look very bare. Earlier in the month I posted about the Wood Frogs in the Honors Garden pool. Last week, the frogs (and their loud clacking) were gone, but the tadpoles were beginning to hatch. They were easiest to see on the rocks. They are algae eaters and the little pool has plenty for them to eat. Notice that there is also a tiny snail just above the water line.

The moss growing on the parts of the rocks above the water looks very green right now. Soon there will be a lot more tadpoles in the water below since there is a large egg mass that has not hatched near this rock.

I took advantages of the absence of leaves to capture a stump that is usually hidden by brush. It has shelf fungus

And wood pecker holes

And lots of moss growing on it.

It is near the spot where skunk cabbage grows (previous post is here).

The streams are gurgling (and the paths are usually muddy) this time of year.

The farmhouse is visible from the meadow with the deciduous trees still bare.

I stood photographing a mockingbird for several minutes. At first I thought the breeze was ruffling the neck feathers but then I realized that the neck moves a lot as the bird creates his sounds (mockingbirds have quite a repertoire).

Squirrels are still finding last season’s nuts – and eating them noisily. I would not have noticed this squirrel without that noisy munching.

The maple ‘tree within a tree’ is still one of my favorite stops along the stone wall. Theorizing about why it is that way….and looking for snake skin sheds which seem to be there frequently…are always a hit with hiking groups.

These shelf fungi caught my eye – like little steps up the large branch.

Last season’s dogbane still holds some of its seeds in the meadow.

So even at the end of winter – beginning of spring, there is a lot to see here. It is a calm before the riot of growth that comes in April and May.

Photographs through a Window – March 2016

March has not been the best month for ‘through a window’ photography because 1) there have been a lot of cloudy days (i.e. bad lighting) and 2) I have been out and about away from home/my favorite window on a few too many mornings when the birds are most active. The cardinals are still around. This one seemed to be looking right at my camera!

Early in the month we had snow and the heated bird bath was popular but no birds stayed around very long.

The snow made caps on the tops of the sycamore seed balls and coated the tree’s limbs.

But it was soon gone and robins are around our yard again. This one was fluffed up with the cold.

I usually don’t photograph sparrows but this one looked more distinctive – a chipping sparrow. The juncos are still around too but maybe on the verge or leaving for their summer homes much farther north since there do not seem to be as many.

I’m still tickled when I catch a mourning dove blinking. The light blue color of the lid is a surprise. The pink of the leg and foot is good on this one too. The dove may look a little scruffy because it was cold and wet when this picture was taken. The blur of red behind the dove is a maple in bloom…and the little bit of yellow is a neighbor’s forsythia at the edge of the forest.

Yesterday I saw a red winged blackbird at the feeder. I was surprised that he was light enough to not pull the spring down to cover the seed hole! He enjoyed his snack!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 19, 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.

Eyeglasses that can focus themselves are on the way – I’m not sure whether this is the technology that will actually do it….but I sure would like glasses that adjusted to my needs rather than the static versions we have now.

Thickly Layered Paintings Literally Pop Off Artist’s Canvas – Bright and colorful….good paintings to pair with a spring day!

Down the Drain: Here’s why we should use rainwater to flush toilets – Good rationale but it seems like the retrofit for an existing house would be expensive. Our house had 3.5 bathrooms and they are not close together. The logistics of getting the collected rainwater to the toilets would take some design work.

Time to rethink your vegetable oil? – Research about what is good about linoleic acid. The study was funded by NIH (better than if it had been funded by lobbyists pushing grapeseed oil).

World Average Temperature Could Rise by 1.5 Degrees as Early as 2020 – This is close enough to be in the lifetime of the majority of us.

On-the-spot diagnosis of certain cancers and other diseases is closer to becoming a reality thanks to sensitive biosensor – If this technology is effective and done for a lot less cost than current methods (mammograms, colonoscopies, ultrasound, x-rays, biopsies, etc) – it will be quite a boon for patients. But will the vested interests of our medical system allow it to replace all that infrastructure in place for diagnosis?

An Interactive Timeline of the History of the Earth – A resource listed for the Big History Course I am taking. After landing on the page – click on the red triangle on the left of the screen and the timeline beginning with the Big Bang appears. Click and drag the triangle to the right and see more details on the progression along the timeline. When the triangle gets to 1 billion years ago, another bar will appear below with a new triangle on the left. Continue in this mode to the present. The page gets very busy!

Potential new therapeutic target for hypertension may offer less side effects – This therapy seems to be focusing on something closer to the ‘cause’ for age related hypertension which is very appealing. The more we understand about the body as a biological system, the more therapies will be of this type.

These 27 Solutions Could Help the U.S. Slash Food Waste – When I saw the picture of the food scraps at the top of the article – I realized how far I’ve come in the way I prepare food. Some of those green ‘scraps’ (stems and green leaves) looked good enough to go into a stir fry or soup! If everyone learned to use the produce they buy more completely – there would not be as much waste to deal with.

Facebooks is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard – In 2012, 30 million users with Facebook accounts had died…some estimates claim that 8,000 users die each day. Just as Facebook has changed the meaning of ‘friend’ and ‘like’….it leaves digital legacy of its users.

Skunk Cabbage

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is some of the earliest ‘green’ sprouting from the cold ground in spring around here. I start looking for it in March. There wasn’t any up at Brookside Gardens in the first week of the month. By March 16, they were making an appearance at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm.

The leaves will be large and turning the previously brown leaf mulch bank into a vibrant green very quickly. Skunk cabbage are a welcome color change and a sure sign of spring (but stay far enough away from them to not smell them)!

Chincoteague Sunset…and Sunrise

Chincoteague was the only refuge on our 4 refuge trek that the weather was good for late and early day photography. We chose a place with water and pines for sunset and got there when the color was just starting in the sky and the reflections in the water were very clear.

I adjusted my camera to get the color and let all the vegetation be in silhouette just as the sun was at the tree tops.

And then it was in the trees.

Two Great Blue Herons flew to a snag behind us and waited there while the light faded still more.

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The next morning we were up an entering the refuge when it opened at 6 AM (this was before daily light savings time and the refuge was on winter hours). The sky was already rosy by the time we got to our spot – a little further along the road that we had used for sunset.

There were birds already busy in the water that took on the color of the sky.

A contrail was reflected in the water closer to us.

The light became more yellow and the geese continued their morning grooming and breakfast.

Then the color turned to orange. The sun was above the horizon.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

The last refuge on our trek was Chincoteague. I’ve posted about our two prior trips (fall 2014kingfisher, egrets, cormorants, herons, gulls, lighthouse, and sunrise/sunset; spring 2013vultures, blue grosbeak, and egrets). We always see Great Blue Herons at Chincoteague. When I photograph them now I am looking for something a bit out of the ordinary. There was one that was all fluffed up in the cold – standing very still on one leg – framed by dry grasses and brush.

Another Great Blue Heron was perched on a branch over some water – preening.

I noticed a lot more dead and splintered trees this trip and found out that the pine bark beetle had been particularly hard on the pines the past few years and

Winter storm Jonas brought such high winds that is brought trees down on the refuge.

There were tundra swans that we saw in greater numbers at Eastern Neck

And snow geese (sleeping here) that we saw in greater numbers at Blackwater.

This ring-billed gull (adult non-breeding) was not pleased that we pulled up on the road shoulder near him.

We saw a few pintail ducks (and some buffleheads which, again, were difficult to photograph – and I am refraining from posting another blurry picture!).

The birds I had to look up on allaboutbirds were this marbled godwit (I think)

And a juvenile black-crowned night heron (my husband is the one that spotted this one in the brush over the water where we often see other herons).

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge

The third refuge on our trek was Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. It was a gray day --- but at least the rain happened while we were driving to the refuge than while we were there. One of our nav systems took us to a road through ponds but not to the visitor’s center. It was part of the refuge and we saw some Great Blue Herons

And Yellow Legs – very active in catching fish in the shallows.

Fortunately, we had another nav system that did chart a path to the visitor center and we did some hiking. Again – there was construction on one of the trails near the visitor and it was noisy enough that most of the wildlife has found someplace else to be for the day. On our hike I found a number of shelf-fungus. None of them were very large.

But one was a brilliant green color.

I tried to photograph them several from the top

And bottom.

The biggest one was growing on a stump near a boardwalk

And the gills underneath were more colorful than the top.

We headed out of the refuge and on toward Chincoteague….the topic of tomorrow’s post.

Daylight Savings Time

Aargh! Changing our clocks by an hour – forward in the spring, back in the fall – is a massive synchronized exercise. Almost every state in the US does it even though more and more studies have shown that its supposed ‘benefits’ are outweighed by the negative impacts that arise from simultaneously messing with the whole population’s circadian rhythm.

This year I tried to go to be a little early on Saturday night and I did wake up about the normal time (according to the clock…so really an hour early) on Sunday morning. It was very dark. I was rested but it was a downer in winter darkness during my breakfast. Every time we change is annoys me a little more.

I can remember a great aunt that didn’t change the main clock in her house because it was too hard to set – or that was her excuse. Now I realize that there are too many ‘clocks’ in our house and cars that change automatically on their own so I can’t make a similar decision.

Hopefully more states will decide to stay on either standard or daylight savings all year long…and then the whole country will make the decision. The status quo is not healthy!

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge MD was the second refuge we visited on the Eastern Shore. The high point of the visit was probably snow geese. They were all over the ponds closest to the visitor center.

Some were very close indeed. Most of them just calmly kept an eye on me (I was using my 30x zoom to photograph them).

But one of the younger ones seemed hyper aware of my presence – maybe this goose was smarter than average.

Of course there were Canadian geese as well – ignoring everything but their own business.

In lesser numbers but just as impressive: Great Blue Herons. Note the spring plumage on the head.

The day was very cloudy. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon but already looked like dusk as we drove around the wildlife loop.

We stopped to photograph a pair of bald eagles perched on an old osprey nesting platform. They were too far away to get a really crisp picture. But I always like to see them. Blackwater was the first place I ever saw a bald eagle in the wild – back in the spring of 1990.

As we got ready to leave – a group of Canadian geese honked their departure too.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 12, 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.

Dragonfly is world-record flier – Confirmed by genetic analysis…this insect makes transoceanic flights.

Identity unearthed: How excavations in Sudan reveal the transformation Egyptian, Nubian culture – Cultural blending in the ancient world…with a lot of individual choice involved: Nubian bed or Egyptian coffin, wrapped like a mummy or not, Egyptian-type amulet or Nubian jewelry (or both).

Fitting into what I’m learning in my Big History class: Mysterious cosmic radio bursts found to repeat, Hubble breaks cosmic distant record: sees universe soon after big bang, and Einstein’s gravitational waves ‘seen’ from black holes – Every time I take a course, it seems like there are a lot of relevant articles coming out in the news feeds!

Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe – Student companion site for the Charles S. Cockell text. Includes chart sets for each chapter – if all you want is an overview of the topic. The book is developed to support the Coursera Astrobiology course taught by the author (which I took last year).

Migrating Monarch Number Rebound – Hurray! The good news is from analysis of the numbers of butterflies at hibernation sites in Central Mexico. There were 3x more butterflies than the year before. Still – the area is still a lot lower than the 45 acres in 1996. The area was 10 acres in 2015, 2.79 in 2014, 1.66 in 2013. Outside of the hibernation sites – more people are planting or conserving milkweed which is needed for monarch survival and keeping that focus on increasing milkweed availability in the environment is what we in the US can do to help.

Toward diagnosing diseases such as cancer in their earliest stages – But can it be done very inexpensively? So far a lot of these diagnostic tests have added cost to the medical system and there a lot of people that are not going to have the disease (i.e. there is a lot of cost of lots of testing to find the few people that need treatment).

Can some birds be just as smart as apes? – Research with corvids (crows, jays and their kind) and parrots reveals that they are capable of thinking logically, of recognizing themselves in the mirror and of empathy. Even though the brain structures and size appear quite different…both birds and apes have a prefrontal brain structure that controls similar executive structures.

Irish Eyes Soda Bread – Something to bake for St. Patrick’s day – coming up on the 17^th.

Uncovering the Roman Roads Cutting Across England - An amateur archeologist using LIDAR…reveals roads the Roman’s build for trade and rapid deployment of troops (follow the ‘full story’ link at the bottom of the article to see a map).

Who Sleeps? – Sleep conserves energy and may be why so many species sleep…but there may be other benefits at all. This an article that summarizes our current understanding of sleep in some major types of organisms (marine mammals, birds, insects, and mentions ongoing research.

Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge

The first refuge on our road trip was Eastern Neck, an island located in the mouth of the Chester River as it flows into the Chesapeake Bay. It is north east of Maryland’s Bay Bridge. We stopped at the visitor center first and walked down the Tidal March Overlook trail from there.

It was muddy and we didn’t quite get to the Tidal Marsh Overlook. I did find some seed pods that had lasted through the winter.

Next we drove down Bayview Road and walked the Bayview Butterfly Trail (no butterflies this time of year). There were buffleheads on the water (although too far away for a really good picture.

And seeds still hanging onto stalks at the water’s edge even this late in the winter season.

The Bay Bridge is in the distance. It was a cloudy day; next time we go to Eastern Neck I’ll want it to be sunny.

Then we headed to the Duck Inn trail that looked back toward the Chester River (toward the east). There was a lone feather near the beginning of the trail.

There were some very muddy places along the trail but this bank of green moss was almost a glowing green. When we came back down the trail toward the car, there was a small child that was enjoying the moss with his family.

We managed to avoid any deep mud encounters on the path and made it to the shore. Where the water meets the land is rounded stones and shells.

Further up the beach, the shells accumulate.

There were some in the grass – indicating that sometimes the water gets very high indeed.

The next stop was the high point of the trip – the Tubby Cove and Tundra swan board walks. There were a lot of tundra swans. The ones with gray heads are juveniles. All the swans seem to bob heads at each other when they are facing each other and it is hard not to interpret the behavior as a greeting or acknowledgement….it may not be the swan’s intent at all.

When they are intentionally moving rather than just floating on the water – their legs are often visible.

I took a series of pictures of one swan that was preening. A swan’s neck is certainly flexible!

Eastern Shore Wildlife Refuges Road Trip

Last weekend we made a 3-day trip to 4 National Wildlife Refuges on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia.

• Eastern Neck (Maryland)
• Blackwater (Maryland)
• Prime Hook (Delaware)
• Chincoteague (Virginia)

I’ll be posting about each one of them in the days ahead but today is about the driving part of the trip….the beginning and ending of the trip. WIth my husband driving - I am free to take pictures through the windshield.

We started out early enough that there was still some color in the cloudy sky and we neared the entrance to the interstate that would be the beginning of the drive – for a very short distance before we were on good roads, but not interstates.

There is something about a treed cloverleaf that is appealing to me – although it can be disorienting if you are not familiar with the area since the trees block the broader view.

Maryland’s Bay Bridge was along the route a little later but the clouds made the day so dim that it was mostly a silhouette.

Skipping ahead to the journey home – we left from Chincoteague and got stopped in traffic on the road near the perimeter fence for NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. A pickup had gone over the guardrail into a deep ravine and a crane had been brought in to get it in – stopping traffic on the two lane road for about 15 minutes. I used the time to photograph a blue bird on the fence. Note how centered the bird it between the barbs!

Continuing on ---- Maryland’s Bay Bridge from the other direction as we got closer to home.

Next time we'll have to make a stop at Sandy Point State Park.

Wood Frogs

The Wood Frogs were active yesterday in the little pool in the Honors Garden at Mt. Pleasant Farm. It was a warmer day than we’ve experienced anytime recently – getting into the 70s. Some of the frogs were warming in the sun on the rocks beside the pool

Or lounging on the surface of the water.

There are so many of them that they tend to float into each other and then there is a flurry of activity as they loll on the surface.

There are already some eggs in the pool. It’s only the beginning. And then the pool will be teeming with tadpoles eating everything in sight.

Eventually the tadpoles will become frogs and the pool will be cleaned out and the pump turned on – the pool becomes the welcoming fountain of the Honors Garden in the summer.

Old Slides

I was motivated by the story about Spruce Tree House closing at Mesa Verde to dig through boxes to find slides from when we visited many years ago. I found them! We were there in August 1980. During that time my husband was doing all the photography and I did the filing. The Mesa Verde slides were in a notebook with each page (with pockets for each slide) neatly labeled. We don’t have a working slide viewer any more so I put together an ad hoc light table with a lamp on the floor and a piece of white acrylic resting on the top of the lamp shade.

Using the loupe to gain the magnification was not satisfying (field of view too small…and blurry around the edges) so I decided to try using just my camera.

The slides appeared to be in reasonable shape – not deteriorating over the 30+ years.

But – converting them to digital via a camera is really not the way to go. This one was done hand-held and is not as sharp as I want – and the set up to mount the camera and then feed in slides were be cumbersome.

My husband and I are talking about buying a slide to digital converter….and I’ll be adding another ‘project’ to my list.

Projects

Old habits die hard. My whole career was built around projects – things that has a plan, with milestones, and culminated in something. Now I find myself organizing some aspects of retirement that same way – into clumps of activities that are very focused on an objective.

Virtually all of our vacations are projects – with a definite plan, some pre-vacation study or activities, and then the vacation itself. Afterward I almost always write some blog posts about it so that wraps up the project. You’ve probably noticed the series of posts about Hawaii and Tucson most recently.

Another type of project is the Winter Tree Hike at Belmont guide I developed as part of my project to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. That’s one I have finished recently. Now I need to create the Spring/Summer version.

I’m starting a group of photography projects around themes like model trains, seed pods, stumps or reflections. They are not as cleanly projects since the ‘end’ will be determined by the accumulation of enough images to warrant a blog post on the topic!

It always feels good to put the last flourish on a project; it is the biggest appeal for thinking about collections of activities as a project rather than just activities that merge with all the continuing activities of day to day life.