May 10, 2020

2020 – eBotanical Prints

May 10, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

2020 05 IMG_9511 (4).jpg — **The first hour of the day.** Somehow there was a lot to observe when I first went into my office yesterday. There was ice in the birdbath. It is cantilevered off our deck railing about 1 story off the ground and tends to freeze before things at ground level. The ‘freeze watch’ forecast had been right.

2020 05 IMG_9511 (2).jpg — Then I noticed that one of the buds on the iris stalks I brought in yesterday was open. I have a very flowery office at this point.

2020 05 IMG_9511 (3).jpg — I was cleaning my glasses when a bird flew to the roof of the covered deck and dropped something blue that rolled down into the gutter. I put my glasses on and could see that the bird was a robin before it flew away. Then I used the zoom on the camera to see what was in the gutter: a partial robin eggshell! The bird was doing some nest maintenance. I hope the baby bird was kept warm by the other parent.

2020 05 IMG_9511 (9).jpg — A few minutes later, there were two birds fluttering around in the air a little way from the bird feeder. I got up and took pictures of them after they flew to the sycamore. One flew off to the forest and shortly after a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak arrived at the feeder and the remaining bird flew off to the forest with the male. I think the two birds in the sycamore were female Rose-breasted Grosbeaks! I am glad we have the birds coming to our feeder occasionally this year. Maybe they did in previous years too…I just didn’t see them.

The flowers of the tulip poplar look unharmed by the cold weather.

Browsing Life Magazine from 1958. Internet archive only has 2 issues from 1958 (March and December) – the year another of my sisters was born. There were a lot of articles on the entertainment industry. I collected some of the ads (click on the image to see a larger version). Some of the brands are still around: Disney, Campbells, Coke, Pepsi, General Electric, American Airlines, Northern, Jell-O. There were also a lot of ads for cigarettes and various kinds of alcohol.

**Tangle background for the poppy.** I used light colors to fill in the blank areas of the tiles around the poppy image that I had ‘colored’ the day before.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now for the monthly post about the digital botanical print books I browsed through in April 2020….

There are 15 new books this month. The first 3 are by Anna Atkins and are cyanotype photographs (process invented by Sir John Herschel) of algae/seaweed. Then there were 11 volumes of Flora fluminensis – Brazilian plants publish in the 1820a. The last book is much more recent (2006) and about Hollies; the illustrations are photographs in this one.

The volumes are all freely available on the Internet by clicking on the hyperlinked title. The whole list of 1,879 books can be accessed here. Sample images and links for the 16 new ones are provided below. (click on the sample image to see a larger view). Enjoy!

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V1 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V2 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions V3 * Atkins, Anna * sample image * 1853

Flora fluminensis - V 1 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 2 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 3 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 4 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 5 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 6 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 7 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 8 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 9 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 10 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Flora fluminensis - V 11 * Velloso, Jose Mariano da Conceicao * sample image * 1827

Hollies foor Gardeners * Bailles, Christopher; Andrews, Susyn * sample image * 2006

May 08, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/7/2020

May 08, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Grocery delivery. We have settled into a weekly rhythm for the grocery delivery but it’s still true that each one is a little different and a learning experience. This week the part of the app that allows approval of substitutions didn’t work so I had to do approvals via texts. The shopper started a little earlier than I expected but I noticed right away. Only one item was out of stock although there were substitutions for some things. I was surprised that all the meat items on the list were available because of the stories about potential meat shortages. The whole process including delivery took about an hour (an indicator that the shopper was experienced).

**Iris in a vase.** I noticed when I was distributing the groceries from the front porch (non-perishables to the trunk of my car for a few days and the refrigerator items into the house) that an iris was blooming. I brought it inside and put it in a vase. It was very wet from the rain during the night, so I left it on the kitchen island for a few hours. Now it is upstairs in my office.

Browsing Life Magazines from 1956 – the year one of my sisters was born. There were picture stories about Grace Kelly, the convention/election for Eisenhower’s second term, Princess Margaret visiting Africa, and the University of Mexico. The ads were interesting too – electric skillets, Carnation evaporated milk and Lady Borden ice cream!

Finishing Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

2020 05 IMG_9404 (4).jpg — **Appreciating the wall of green.** The trees have filled out in our forest and the view from my office window is achieving the look of summer….filled with the gently moving wall of green leaves. My office is 2 stories from ground level, so see the middle of the trees over the roof of our covered deck. The red maple is in the foreground with very tall tulip poplars behind.

Photographing the nictitating membrane of a male red-bellied woodpecker. The bird was enjoying breakfast at our feeder and one of my pictures happened to catch the blink!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now - a Nuthatch Pause….

Last week a white-breasted nuthatch sat on the railing of our deck…very still. Its eyes were alert and it sometimes moved its head slightly. Usually the nuthatches come to the feeder and quickly get their seed and fly off. They seem hyper. This bird was just opposite. Then it suddenly turned its body by 90 degrees…and went back to normal behavior with quick, purposeful movements…flying off to the woods.

I remembered that I’d seen a downy woodpecker in the almost the same location a few days before and wondered if there is something different about the scene from between those two knots in the wood that causes birds to be wary/stay still.

May 04, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/3/2020 - Dogwoods

May 04, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Browsing Life magazine (on Internet Archive) from around the time I was born (mid-1950s). There were articles about Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and exploration of the artic. I was surprised at the number of ads for cigarettes and alcohol. The two images I picked to show as samples were both ads: IBM Electric Typewriters (not yet the Selectric models that had the golf ball-like type element which the company made up until shortly after I joined the company in the 1980s) and a passenger train through the Southwest.

Photographing tiny leaves on our red oak with the digiscope (smartphone attached to spotting scope). The branches of the tree are too high to get close enough to do macro photography (I’m not confident enough to use a ladder that high). We put the spotting scope on the front porch, and it was able to focus on the top branches of the tree. We waited until the sun was in the west to provide good light on the leaves…make it possible to ‘freeze’ the motion caused by the breeze.

**A picture of a cat visitor in Missouri**. There is a cat that comes to visit at my daughter’s house periodically (started about the same time the pandemic did). It meows loudly at the door to be let in, visits, then goes home. I was talking to her when it appeared on Saturday evening about dusk. She sent us a picture of the cat that appears to be very much ‘at home’ in their house. It probably belongs to a neighbor although she isn’t sure which one.

Experimenting with Procreate App features. When I make Zentangle tiles on the iPad with the Apple Pencil, I use the Procreate App in its simplest form…changing colors occasionally or changing the intensity of the lines. I experimented with the ‘liquify’ feature on some old tiles. The original is on the left and the right is the one I augmented with a few swipes.

And then I did another with a partial ‘recolor’…quite a change from the original! It was fun to experiment although I think I enjoy the creation of Zentangle tiles in digital form that relies on my own drawing rather that the razzle-dazzle features.

2020 05 IMG_9435.jpg — **Receiving a new computer for my husband.** Fed Ex delivered it on a Sunday! We were not expecting it until Monday and my husband was still doing backups of his old machine when it arrived.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now for the neighborhood dogwoods…

I photographed white and pink dogwoods in our neighborhood during last week’s walk. They were all in front yards and I was able to photograph them standing in the street. The white ones seemed to be a little bruised…might have been out longer than the pink ones. But both were still beautiful. I like the dogwood flowers because they are a springtime feature of our area, the way the trees move in the breeze with their delicate leafy branches in the summer and then the red of the leaves/seed clusters in the fall. I probably like the white ones that are native to North America the best.