Planters in the Window

I am reusing plastic bins from Organic Spring Salad Mix as planters. I had a sweet potato vine that I’ve started from a sweet potato that I didn’t eat quite fast enough this winter. I will probably eat the leaves rather than wait all season to harvest sweet potatoes in the fall.

I also planted a maple seedling that I pulled out of the flower bed last summer. It rooted in water for months. The leaves turned red in January and most of them fell off. It still has one…and I hope to see the bud at the tip of the stem begin to enlarge soon. It should enjoy having its roots in soil – although it is too early to know for sure if it will have a second season.

I’ve also planted radishes and lettuce seeds - that have now sprouted. If they do well, I’ll harvest them both for salad. Even the ones I pull to thin out the bin will be good eating. I like radish leaves and always am disappointed that the tops in the grocery store are generally wilted.

I haven’t decided whether I will transplant any of these except to bigger pots on the deck. Our area has an overabundance of deer and our yard seems to be in a main thoroughfare from the forest behind our house and into our neighborhood. Everything gets thoroughly sampled….and sometimes browsed…by the deer passing through.

Brookside Garden Scenes

Gardens are more than just plants. Brookside Gardens has some good examples of physical structures that provide framing for the living part of the garden.  I photographed forsythia in two settings: with a curved brick wall

And reflected in the pond. Which scene do you like the best? I’m always partial to reflections.

The color of pots – and their shape – frame the flowers within.

The bench provides a sense of scale for the holly and redbud.

The maze is quite simple – a place to walk around slowly…and contemplate.

The conservatories always hold treasure like this bunch of bananas. Soon the roof will get a white wash to keep the conservatory from getting too hot during the summer.

This part of the conservatory will be used for the butterfly exhibit in a few months. Right now you can barely see the water in the center and the surrounding rocks…they are just enough to give platforms and backdrop to the dense plantings.

So – walls, ponds, benches, a maze, conservatories, bubbling water and rocks….there is more to Brookside than plants!

Celebrating New Growth at Brookside

There is a lot to see during the spring months at Brookside Gardens. Many bulbs and wildflowers bloom in the spring. Sometimes I get in the mood to look more closely at the smaller flowers rather than the great swaths of hyacinths and tulips planted in the garden.

Bursting buds are everywhere on bushes and trees that have been bare all winter. The way the leaves are packed into the small space and then unfurl always seems amazing to me – and it isn’t just the horse chestnuts and ginkgoes that I’ve already posted about!

The bald cypress – a deciduous conifer – begins to get its greenery again too. This branch has a small cone on the end.

And the deciduous magnolia has both flowers and leaves popping out of their buds!

Fern Feathers

When I was at Brookside Gardens in late March, I thought at first I was seeing feathers sticking out of the brown bald cypress and moss mulch. But it was dried ferns from last fall! They were close to the boardwalk – protected from being stepped on because they were lower than where everyone walked.

I looked at the structure more closely and it was obvious they were ferns that had simply dried and remained standing.

Some of them almost glowed in the dappled sunlight that

Made its way through the still bare branches of the trees above.

I wonder how long they will last into the spring and summer. I’ll look for them again each time I go to Brookside.

STEM Fair as Prompt

I was a judge for out county’s STEM (Science – Technology – Engineering – Math) Fair last Saturday. It was a well-organized event and I enjoyed it just as I have in years past. Every year the students seem to be better prepared and their projects even more interesting. This year I was judging 8^th grade projects and afterwards I thought a lot about how much things have changed since I was in 8^th grade. It’s been close to 50 years!

I did not participate in a Science Fair when I was in 8^th grade although I was in a general science class. It was not a required class and I was 1 of 2 girls in the class. These days the need for STEM literacy is even greater than it was 50 years ago and the schools are striving to upgrade curriculum to keep pace with the needs of the modern world. The students participating in the STEM Fair were the best from their school – and there were more girls than boys. I’m glad that more girls are participating these days but it’s very important for all students to be savvy about these topics.

8^th grade for me was ‘junior high’ but the more popular term these days is ‘middle school.’ My junior high was fed by neighborhood elementary schools and reflected the racial and ethnic diversity of those neighborhoods which were very homogenous (later racial integration would be achieved via busing); 99% of the student body were Caucasian. In my area now, the neighborhood elementary schools still feed the middle schools. The big difference is that the neighborhoods are racially and ethnically diverse so the student body is too. The students at the science fair were representative.

When I was in 8^th grade there were only a few instances when I was asked to present anything; it was not a focus in junior high at all. In high school – debate teams provided that experience to a few students. Now, the ability to present your ideas or work is part of the educational experience. It was clear that the 8^th graders had practiced their presentations and had anticipated the types of questions the judges were asking. Some of the projects were done by 2 person teams and their presentation was orchestrated so that both students talked and interacted with the judges.

Many of the students acquired things for their experiments that would have been very difficult to obtain (if they existed) 50 years ago: mealworms, empty gel caps, open top field chambers for saplings, iPads/smart phones to display pictures, and an online memory game. It is easy to acquire things like this now. I suppose that the student could have grown mealworms…but it would have made the experiment much more time consuming and maybe even distracted from the experiment.

The families of these students are most likely different than those from 50 years ago too. Fifty years ago fast food was an infrequent thing, most mothers worked part time or were at home when students got out of school, the school was not air conditioned and that was true for a lot of homes too, there were no computers, most students had one or more siblings, and jeans were not acceptable attire in many schools.

The big scary thing in the 1960s was nuclear war. As an 8^th grader it was something I was well aware of. It was related to science/technology just as the new big scary thing is for these students: climate change. Several of the students related their project to climate change --- one quite passionately.

There have been a lot of changes and as I think about them now – it is important that we integrate everything into the way we really want to be for right now and into the future. The students I met at the STEM Fair seem to be achieving that. I applaud them and the people (parents, teachers, friends, etc.) that support them.

Family Web Sites

My daughter and son-in-law are graduate students at University of Arizona and they have set up web sites. It’s one of the things grad students need to do as they prepare for the next step after grad school. Both of them have some outreach items that are of broader interest:

My daughter’s site has instructions for how to make a Pluto globe.

My son-in-law’s site has a video of buzz pollination (slow motions…taken with a high speed camera).

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 9, 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.

Surgery, Stem Cells Treat Cataracts – Removing a cataract damaged lens but leaving the individuals lens epithelial stem cells (conventional cataract surgery removes them) allows the lens to regenerate. Initial results are good; if sustained this may be the new ‘conventional’ treatment for cataracts.

Man-made Earthquakes are on the rise, but they don’t have to be and As US Oil Production Increases, More Americans at Risk of Man-Made Quakes – Two articles about man-made earthquakes. The second one includes a map. Central Oklahoma has a risk of a damaging quake this year as high as the risk in California! Are the building codes in Oklahoma taking earthquakes into account? If they do, it is probably a recent update since earthquakes were not common in the state until recently.

Beware of Food Fraud – Olive oil is at the top of the ‘food fraud’ list evidently.

Streamer – USGS site that traces steams/rivers upstream and downstream. I you even wondered where the river near you comes from or goes --- this is an easy site to use. It map based so it is a simply as zooming to the river of interest and selecting upstream or downstream highlighting.

A Treasury of Prairie Wildflowers – This is a great time of year to get out and look for wildflowers no matter where you live. Even dandelions have their own charm (particularly if viewed with a magnifier).

6 Primary Transformative Paradigms for the Auto Industry – You’ve probably read about most of these in some form. I like collections like this that help me develop a framework for areas of technology (in this case ‘cars’).

Restoring the American Chestnut – Evidently there are blight resistant cultivars of American Chestnut but it is challenging to grow the 100s of seedlings for field trials and then restoration planting. This article is about experiments to optimize root production in the seedlings.

7 Citizen Science Projects for Bird Lovers – Another motivation to get outdoors this spring!

CDC expands range of Zika mosquito into parts of Northeast and Zika Attacked a Baby’s Brain as Doctors Watched – Scary stuff. I am already gearing up to walk around the yard and make sure we don’t have any standing water (and empty and refresh bird baths every other day). This is going to be a tough battle to keep the virus from spreading (and if it does keeping the mosquitos that carry it from continuing to spread it).

Successful dying: Researchers define the elements of a ‘good death’ – The themes culled from 32 studies were: preferences for a specific dying process, pain-free status, religiosity/spirituality, emotional well-being, life completion, treatment preferences, dignity, family, quality of life, relationship with the health care provider and "other." The bottom line is to ‘ask the patient.’ That seems to be common sense but how often is it actually asked by medical professionals and family member?

Horse Chestnut

There is a Horse Chestnut at the end of the row of trees along the drive to Belmont Manor and Historic Park. I’ve been photographing the opening of its buds over the past few weeks and arranged them in a series for this post.

The first photographs I took were on a morning after some high winds that had broken off a large dead branch and it had broken off a smaller branch that was very much alive with swollen buds almost ready to open.

The unfurling starts with the bud opening at the top

And the tight packed leaves beginning to emerge (note the scarring on the stem from last year’s growth)

As they open begin to separate from the tight fold – it is obvious that there is a fuzziness about them.

The bud begins to look very crowded with a lot of leaves

And that perception continues as the leaves unfurl enough to look like leaves but still retaining the fuzziness on their undersides.

I will continue the project until the blooms emerge….I’m not sure at this point where the blooms originate. Remembering from last year they are large clusters of flowers that appear well after the leaves unfurl completely.

Ginkgo Buds

Ginkgo trees are often included in ornamental plantings; the male trees are appreciated more than the female tress because the fruit smells like rancid butter or vomit. The trees I’ve photographed so far have been male trees. I started about a week ago with a tree at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. The buds were just opening and the leaves were spiraled into themselves.

The male cones were tightly clustered around the leaves.

The next day I photographed the ginkgo buds on the tree near the conservatory at Brookside Gardens. The stems of the leaves had elongated a bit making the leave poke above the rest of male cones.

I took pictures that showed the whole bud since they are quite different than other trees.

The buds are so long that they look like short branches.

The tree begins to look tufted with the new growth.

Yesterday, I was at Belmont again and took pictures of the ginkgo again. The leaves have grown significantly; they are large enough to identify the tree as a ginkgo – even though the buds give it way earlier.

The male cones are now at right angles to the bud

Or drooping down over the bud.

The tree is full of greentuffs: male cones and leaves.

I learned that there is a female tree somewhere at Belmont since there was a problem last year with stinky fruit. I’ll look for it next time I go to Belmont.

Brookside Wetland

The boardwalk between the Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center goes through a wetland where a little stream of running water runs and after rains the ground is soggy. The fence to keep the deer out of the garden crosses the area and the boardwalk. By the end of March, the skunk cabbage is rapidly spreading its leaves under the Bald Cypress trees (see the cypress 'knees' in the picture) and the red winged black birds are screeching and move around in the trees jockeying for territory and mates.

A few of the of the skunk cabbage have blooms – those odd looking purple and white structures hugging the base. In other years those blooms can be seen when snow is on the ground but this year March was very warm.

The plants like to very wet areas but not necessarily in places where the water is constantly in motion.

Most of the time the cypress knees look old and worn. But they must be growing too this time of year since many of them amongst the skunk cabbages has a smooth reddish sheen that was new growth.

As I neared the gate going back to the nature center, there was a cardinal in a holly – on the garden side of the fence. I posed with its feathers fluffed…between songs.

The little stream that runs between the wetland and the parking lot has a rocky bottom – probably scoured with the runoff from every rain. Wet rock always looks more colorful than the dry.

National Arboretum at the end of March 2016

Last week we walked around a small part of the National Arboretum. The day was sun and the sky was a great backdrop to the spring greens of these new leaves

As well as the evergreens with cones on their branches.

There were a lot of trees in bloom.

The camellias were nearing the end of their season

Leaving a carpet of temporary color at the base of the trees.

We were a little late for the deciduous magnolias but I enjoyed the walk through the section of the arboretum anyway.

The trees still had plenty of color at eye level

And looking up.

One tree only had three blooms left – but one seemed perfect to me.

Or maybe this pair are the best. It’s hard to choose.

There were several kinds of white deciduous magnolias blooming as well.

Sometimes the seed pods left after the petals fall away are as interesting as the flowers!

Wood Duck at Brookside Gardens

Last week I saw my first wood duck – a lone male sharing the pond at Brookside Gardens with a lot of Canadian Geese (the usual birds there) and at least one red-eared slider. The first picture I took was from pretty far away but I knew it was not a mallard right away.

The bird swam around gleaning edibles from the water surface. I took pictures from every angle and have selected my favorites for the slide show below. I was fascinated by the bird itself – sometimes the water being calm enough to reflect the head and the red around the eye – other times the water creating moiré patterns – the color of the water changing depending on the way the light reflected. The 4th image of the slide show has the red-eared slider poking hits nose out of the water; based on the side of its nose, it must be a big turtle. I hope the wood ducks find a pond near their nest with fewer turtles since the turtles at Brookside are big enough to take ducklings.

As I started away, I overheard a little boy point out the duck to his mother. She told him that it was probably a mallard. He, very confidently told her, “No, it’s not.”

The wood duck flew up and out of the garden as I continued my walk. 

When I got home I watched the video of wood duck ducklings dropping from their nest that I included in my gleanings list back in June 2012. The male is not involved with the ducklings….but the video is still fun to watch.

Zentangle® - March 2016

I tended to do more than one Zentangle each day in March.  I continued to experiment with color and plant inspired patterns. I also name each tile – but sometimes when I look at the name later I realize that I have completely forgotten what I was thinking about when I selected the name!

 

Most of the time I am using card stock tiles cut to a standard 3.5 x 3.5 inch size. But I also used a pad from a hotel when I travelled in March…and old business cards.

I chose a project to make the alphabet using the same pattern for all the letters. I finally used up one of my Micron pens (some of the lines got very faint but I decided I liked the effect of the sputtering pen). It felt good to finish all 26 and move on to other patterns again.

As the month progressed, the trend seemed to be toward more color. I told myself that I was trying to us up the colored pencils that are over 40 years old…but it might just have been the moved I found myself in. After finishing the alphabet!

I did try another experiment in March - photographing tiles before I colored them with the idea of creating pages suitable for coloring. The white tiles were not bad but the off white ones were too gray looking. When I use up the card stock I have, I'll switch to white and it will be easier to create those coloring pages!

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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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 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.

19 Different Foods that Surprisingly Bloom Beautiful Flowers – Great visuals and informative too. Think of all the different kinds of pollinators needed for these flowers too.

Fulfilling Water Needs as Big as Texas – The Nature Conservancy has created the Texas Water Explorer – wish Maryland had a similar app although I did find Water Quality Assessment Maps for Maryland which have much of the same information. I liked the picture of the Pedernales – brought back memories of a vacation in the state park along the river almost 40 years ago.

New knowledge for managing tree-killing bark beetles – After learning more about the southern pine bark beetle when I visited Chincoteague, I’ve been more aware of the damage it is causing…noticing articles like this one. There is really no good news.

Monet-esque Micrograph and Bug Brothers and Subterranean settlers and Zika viron and Cretaceous Chameleon – The Scientist almost always includes an image in its newsletters. Here’s a collection from March.

Blood test can predict risk of developing tuberculosis – It would be good if a blood test could do this. I remember having to get chest x-rays for my job since I responded to the TB skin test (i.e. was a latently infected person) …and repeated chest x-rays are not a good thing.

It has fast become antiquated to say that you ‘go online’ – Living constantly online…it’s becoming the norm for more and more people. And even when we turn off our devices, our online world continues while we are away. It is the new normal.

Developing better drugs for asthma, high blood pressure – The point of the project is to avoid complications from drugs that require treatment – separate from the original reason the person was taking the drug in the first place. It’s a good goal but I prefer the research toward interventions that address the root cause of a problem rather than starting with a drug that works most of the time and trying to avoid complications from it – which seems to be the goal of this research.

Sleep: The A B Zzzzs and  Learning with the Lights Out and Desperately Seeking Shut Eye and Under the Cover of Darkness (infographic) and Who Sleeps? And Characterizing Sleep (infographic) – The Scientist has had a number of interesting articles about sleep. I wonder how often a person’s sleep (or lack of sleep) is the primary cause of a health issue….and how often doctors decide to treat a sleep problem unless is overwhelming obvious that sleep is the problem. Some sleep problems may be very difficult to treat and may require a significant change in lifestyle which is often very difficult.

These Ancient Trees Have Stories to Tell – I like trees…and these are artfully photographed. They were printed in black and white; I think I like trees in color more.

The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now – I like the idea here – particularly that it takes into account the patient’s history and circumstances…not just symptoms. One of the things I have observed is that doctors typically key off one or two recent test results rather than taking the patient’s full history into account. They have the problem – like all of us – of being overwhelmed by data. Having an AI that would take all of that into account would benefit the doctor by saving a lot of patient history review time and the patient would get a more informed diagnosis and treatment.

Learning Log – March 2016

March was a huge month for classes...both online and traditional classroom/field work.

The 6 modules of Coursera’s Big History were a whirl wind discussion beginning with the Big Bang to the present and then initiating the importance of our understanding Big History as we contemplate our actions into the future. This is unlike any history course I’ve taken before in that it integrates a lot of disciplines rather than the traditional view of history. In Big History - wars and memorization of dates are way down on the scale of importance. Instead thinking about increases in complexity and energy flows are the drivers of change….and human history is in the context of the universe rather than insular to our species. I still have some references from the course to read/view but I was so fascinated by the material that I did all the lectures in March!

I finished 9 of the 11 modules of Coursera’s Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Unit 2: Belief Systems. This is a continuation of Unit 1 which I finished in February. This part of the course is delving more into neuroscience and psychology. I’ve enjoyed it.

The Howard County Conservancy provided volunteer naturalist training for the spring field trips that will beginning in April for pre-school through middle school students. There was quite a range of topics: rocks, history of the places where we hike, insects, habitats, watersheds, literacy, seasons, and Bioblitz. In each of the 7 sessions, there was a classroom segment and then a hike to demonstrate the types of things we would do with the students. We looked at macroinvertebrates in the stream, learned to use iNaturalist, explored the hiking routes in detail, and sometimes pretended we were students. The first field trip is next Monday….so we’ll see how prepared we all are very soon!

Then there were all kinds of experiential learning going on – here are my top three for March:

Observing the effect of the combination of pine bark beetles, tree age, salt mist, and big storms at Chincoteague

Noting the large number of Tundra Swans at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge and Snow Geese at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Seeing two organisms I knew about from books and pictures but had not seen in the wild: the hemlock woolly anelgid (see previous post here) and a wood duck (more images coming in an upcoming post).

Cherry Blossoms

This week was the week for cherry blossoms in our area. We didn’t get down to the Washington DC Tidal Basin but I enjoyed the trees at – even though it was breezy and cold when I was there yesterday. It is spring break for a lot of the schools in our area so the garden was full of more than just week-day regulars: there were lots of children enjoying the gardens too.

But the best tree for me this year was the one in my own yard. I trimmed some of the longest scraggly branches last summer and the tree has been spectacular this year.

And it has the advantage of being near at hand to photograph on every sunny day until the wind blows the last blooms away. This little clump of blooms was growing on the trunk just as it transitions from smooth bark with large lenticels to the rougher bark of the trunk. There is even a bit of lichen growing just below the clump of new growth.

The first 6 images of the slide show are from 6 days ago. The rest are from yesterday. In the earlier pictures there are still some flower buds visible. They start out very pink. The petals are pink too until the flower opens almost all the way. It is that little bit of pink that I like the most about the cherry trees. Enjoy the show!

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

I’d heard about Hemlock Wooly Adelgid killing the hemlocks in the Eastern US….and this morning I saw an infested tree at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. Aargh! Those white, cottony tuffs are the egg sacs.

They were not as thick everywhere on the trees. I thought the branch with the cones that I photographed was relatively free of them but now that I look at the image more closely – there are some tuffs here too.

On the plus side – I wondered if the lady bug on one of the branches was eating the insects or the eggs. The branch looks damaged (black) and there appear to be some hatched insects in the lower right corner of the image. But the lady bug looks covered the adelgid fuzz and goo.

(All images can be enlarged by clicking on the image.)

March Sunrise…and Sunset

The horizon around our house becomes blocked by trees after March – so this is probably one of the last sunrise/sunset posts from our home until late fall/winter rolls around again. Even in winter the bare tree branches are pretty thick between our front porch and the sunrise but the colors are good through their silhouettes.

The robins like our oak and generally seem to be facing the sunrise while they sing the morning awake.

The sunrise is visible from our back porch – and my office window. The trees are mostly tulip poplar – very tall. On the other side of the trees is a horse boarding area…so a relatively thin forest that still lets the color through as long as the trees are bare.

Somehow noting the colors at the beginning of the day – the clouds that add definition to the sky…is always worth a photograph.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – March 2016

Many years – March is a mix of winter and spring, skewed toward spring. This year it has been heavily skewed toward spring.

I celebrated:

A sunny day for a hike (it was often muddy but the temperature was pleasant enough)

Blooming skunk cabbages (this year leaves are unfurling very quickly)

Birthdays of 3 family members. It happens every year, but somehow have 3 in cluster increases the attention to celebrating.

A road trip to 4 Eastern Shore wildlife refuges

The rapid leafing of a sprouted sweet potato once I put it into dirt

The rediscovery of a small purse that is perfect fit for my camera, id, and chapstick. I getting more comfortable with minimalist fieldtips!

The opportunity to dissect an owl pellet and finding 2 rodent jaws.

Feeling prepared for spring field trips at Mt. Pleasant Farm and Belmont (after training that happened this month)

The weather warmed enough to keep the window in my office open --- hearing the birds at our feeder and at the edge of the forest.

Staying focused on what I want to get done – there is no ‘spring fever’ happening to me this spring at all!

Field Trip Training

I attended all the training sessions this month for the spring field trip volunteers by the Howard County Conservancy. The field trips for elementary and middle school students will start soon even though this year the weather has been warm enough they could have started earlier than mis-April. Some of the training sessions were the same as last spring – but I learn something a little extra each time…and I enjoy the short spring hikes that are incorporated into the training. Things change so fast along the paths in spring that there is always something new to notice.

Once the field trips start – the challenge will be to focus on the hiking groups and guiding their discoveries. Every hike is different. Sometimes it works to stay totally on topic…other times there is something along the trail that captures everyone’s attention so we just celebrate the serendipity. Last spring several of my groups just stood for several minutes and watched tree swallows building a nest in blue bird box! I was impressed with how quiet the second graders could be when their interest was focused. Will the same happen this spring? I hope so.

I have a little break for a week and then the flurry of spring field trips start. It will be over by mid-June (even with snow days delaying the end of the school year). It's a great volunteer gig!