Birds (Great Egret, Northern Shoveler, Great Blue Heron, Northern Pintail, Red-tailed Hawk)….evergreens…dried (or frost damaged) plants…Texas sky - January was good month using the optical zoom on my camera! The locations were Texas (Carrollton, Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge) and Missouri (Nixa, Springfield). Enjoy the slideshow!
A few days after Christmas – a cold morning in Carrollton TX.
I ventured out a little after sunrise – when the clouds were still tinged with orange.
The oxalis edging the pavers that had all been green when I arrived a few days before Christmas had transformed to a layer of frozen, deteriorating leaves protecting a green layer underneath.
Even the kale was different after the very cold temperatures – oddly looking more like a light-colored flower with green leaves below.
As few minutes in the cold…the sky had brightened…I took one last picture and went indoors.
Kittens – holiday lights – plants in winter – a great blue heron….pictures made possible by the Zooming capabilities of my three cameras: phone (Samsung Galaxy S10e), small point and shoot (Cannon PowerShot SX730 HS), and bridge (Canon PowerShot SX70 HS). The one I have with me all the time is the phone; the point and shoot fits in a coat pocket so it is easy to take along, the bridge camera I need for the optics (i.e. the greatest optical zoom of my cameras). Enjoy the December zoomed images!
After the leaves have all fallen off the deciduous trees, plants that retain their color in the cold of December stand out against the background of browns and grays. Here are three of my favorites:
Kale lasts into the winter – particularly in protected area around houses. The plants I photographed were in a location where frost covered the grass nearby…and the water droplets from an overnight rain were probably icy. I like the color transitions on the leaves…from the new leaves that are all purple/pink…the older ones with the purple/pink near the stem then the gray/green around the edges. The oldest leaves are all gray/green..
Conifers are the dominant greens of winter…and the cones that remain on the tree are interesting too. Is this a pattern from nature that we follow when we decorate our Christmas trees?
We have some hollies in our yard, but they are young enough that they don’t have a lot of berries. The hollies at my daughter’s house are large trees and are full of red berries. While the berries last, the tree displays Christmas colors! At some point there will be enough freeze/thaw cycles for the birds to decide they are edible – sometimes the berries disappear very quickly. Note that these hollies are varieties that don’t have the prickly leaves of the wild American Holly.
The joys of early winter….
Walking around a familiar place….composing images of my favorite plants. In my parents’ yard, the red yuccas are always a big draw. This time of year, they are a mix of bids, flowers, and seed pods of varying maturity. I photographed them on a couple of mornings while I was in Carrollton. My favorite of the images I captured with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) was the one with the black background…a flower hanging like a flower moving like a bell over the buds and very green seed pod.
With my phone (Samsung Galaxy S10e), I used its digital magnification to capture macro images of the same plants. The developing seed pods always fascinate me. They were a few pods beginning to split open. By the time I am in Carrollton again (later this month), a few will be split open with visible seeds.
There were other things that were surviving the Texas heat – although more stressed than the red yucca. The kale that is multiple years old is probably too tough to eat!
One plant was so green in macro view that I couldn’t resist the macro shot – for the color and texture of the apex growth. It was benefiting from its proximity to a automatic sprinkler!
Finally – after the sprinklers one morning I enjoyed finding water droplets in the purple heart wandering jew…in the joint between two leaves where new leaves and flowers begin.
I’ve come to appreciate places I can photograph again and again….seeing them in a little different way each time and beginning to capture the specialness of the place that I associate with the longest relationships of my life.
When I took my car in for service before I left on my road trip to Texas – I noticed the kale that overwintered in the planters while I was waiting for my car to be driven out of the garage…took a few minutes to photograph the foliage and the flowers.
When I took my car in for service before I left on my road trip to Texas – I noticed the kale that overwintered in the planters while I was waiting for my car to be driven out of the garage…took a few minutes to photograph the foliage and the flowers.
I am realizing that finding little pockets of beauty around me – wherever I happen to be – is something I’ve trained myself to do. In this case I was surrounded by concrete, asphalt, car dealership…but the planters were what I noticed while I waited. The pandemic has probably heightened my need and skill in finding/savoring beauty – often documenting it with some phone photography. It’s one of the coping skills I do almost automatically these days.
Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Arriving bugs. We ordered them back on 3/18 and are letting it sit on the living room floor for a few days – let any viruses die. Then we’ll start our photography project!
Savoring favorite recipes of the past week. I’ve enjoyed experimenting with food a bit this week.
Kale‘n’eggs. I got a bag of kale pieces in my grocery order over a week ago. I’d been using them in smoothies but thought to do something different – maybe as a spinach substitute in scrambled eggs. I chopped the pieces in to small bits using my small food processor, sautéed them a bit before I added the beaten eggs. As little Mrs. Dash for seasoning. Tastey!
Sweet potato soup. I had baked a larger sweet potato than I could eat with the rest of a meal, so I had it left over in the refrigerator along with some chicken. I made a light broth with chicken bouillon and dried onion then added the mashed sweet potato and cut up chicken. Fried onions (the store brand like French’s Fried Onions) made a great topping…or I could have used black bean chips.
Whole wheat biscuits. I don’t eat breads very often. When I do – a batch of drop biscuits is probably my favorite thing to make. It’s a highly modified version of the recipe in my 1960s cookbook (the one I got about the time I became a teenager): Set the oven to 450 degrees. Combine in a bowl (2 cups whole wheat flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1 scant teaspoon salt). Combine in a measuring cup (1 cup milk (I used non-dairy), 6 tablespoons olive oil). Pour the milk and oil into the dry ingredients then blend with a fork to form the dough. Drop onto an oiled cookie sheet; I tend to like a heaping teaspoon size drop biscuit. Eat them hot with butter or orange marmalade or ginger preserves. I usually eat about 1/3 of the biscuits on the 1st day and freeze 2 packages for other days.
Getting a grocery delivery. The only time slot available when I first tried to do the order was for delivery between 8 and 9 on Saturday night! I took it. The order was left on the front porch and we brought it into the house…to the floor of the foyer. We put the refrigerator items away then put the non-perishables in the back of my car in the garage – with the intent of simply waiting 48 hours for any coronavirus contamination to dry up and die before the items were put away in the panty.
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
On the national level, there were 75 cases of COVID-19 at the beginning of March and 188,000+ at the end; 1 death to 4,000+ deaths in the same time period. Things have changed on a personal level too…and that is what I am thinking about today. Here is the timeline for me:
3/1 Touch Tank and Discovery Cart at Robinson Nature Center
3/5 Grocery store early. No crowd. Used hand sanitizer when I got in the car. Washed my hands with soap and water before and after putting the groceries away.
3/7 Cancelled trip to Texas originally planned for later in the month; decided not to go to training or volunteer gigs after 3/8
3/8 Touch Tank at Robinson Nature Center
3/9 Carload of ‘stuff’ to landfill
3/10 Following “stay at home as much as possible” guidance from CDC
3/11 Grocery store early buying to keep 2 weeks of food in the house always in case we got sick. Store not crowded.
3/15 Starting the daily “Filling a Day of Social Distance” series of blog posts
3/16 Last trip to the dentist for me (finishing some prior work)
3/17 Last trip to the doctor’s office for my husband
3/18 Grocery store early…but they had changed their hours to open an hour later. More crowded. Carts outside. Wipes and hand sanitizer at the door to use before shopping.
3/19 Another grocery store early to find things we couldn’t at the previous store. Not crowded…found a few things
3/20 Another grocery store during senior hours still looking for a few items. More crowded than I expected (all older people too).
3/25 Scheduled 1st grocery delivery…deciding to make do with what we could get delivered
3/27 Telemedicine appointment for my husband
3/31 Gutter clearing – all arrangements made online
During March, we started changing in ways that are fast becoming habitual: more frequent hand washing, using a lot less toilet paper (water spray bottle and toweling), eating at home all the time, appreciating home and family more consciously. We are also paying attention to keeping ourselves mentally healthy…engaging in activities we enjoy and exercising rather than watching the news all the time. Yes – we are worried about family and friends near and far. But we’re all taking precautions to stay healthy. I try to accept that and move on to whatever activity is next in or around our home.
What’s planned for April? The calendar is empty. We have arrangements to spend even more time at home than we did in March…keeping healthy.
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.
Hummingbirds' rainbow colors come from pancake-shaped structures in their feathers -- ScienceDaily – Hopefully they’ll produce some illustrations for these findings; this article and the materials it came from are just text.
New Discoveries in Human Anatomy | The Scientist Magazine® - It’s surprising the things we are just now discovering about our anatomy. Back in the 1970s when I was getting an undergraduate degree in biology, I remember being disappointed that there was so much obviously missing….and then realizing there were also unknown unknowns (thing we didn’t even know we didn’t know)! In the intervening years more has been researched, but we still have lots to explore.
Processed foods highly correlated with obesity epidemic in the US -- ScienceDaily - I have kept a food log for the past few years and now am paying more attention to reducing the processed and ultra-processed foods that I buy and eat. Most of us probably intuitively know that the store-bought cookies, chips, snacks, etc. are not what we should be eating. And they aren’t even more convenient than foods like carrots or apple or grapes. I’m skewing my purchases at the grocery store to the produce aisle!
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Doves and Pigeons - Wild Bird Revolution and Nectarivorous Birds - Wild Bird Revolution – Two groups of bird photos this week…catching up on the backlog.
Image of the Day: Flock in the Night | The Scientist Magazine® - A huge flock of birds picked up by radar going from Cuba…over the Florida straits…on to mainland Florida.
The chemistry of snow and ice – We haven’t seen much snow and ice in Maryland this winter...but it’s a good time to bring up this topic.
Children to bear the burden of negative health effects from climate change -- ScienceDaily – We need to use these types of articles to motivate us to action rather than indifference/depression.
FS1205: Tree-Dwelling Lichens (Rutgers NJAES) – A short description of lichen. Did you know there are at least 13,000 species of lichen?
The 2020 Community Power Scorecard | CleanTechnica – A map of the US and the scorecard with some details – state by state. There is progress being made in the transition to renewable energy!
New, more appealing varieties of kale in the works - UPI.com – I like kale. I buy it in a bunch to avoid plastic bags or containers…use it in smoothies or stir fries or soups (the whole leaf and stem) and as chips. I rarely use it in salads (particularly during the winter when I tend to want something hot rather cold for meals). Chopping it up in the food processor (like in smoothies or before adding it to soups) makes the toughness of the stem and leaves a non-issue. Still – I would try the new varieties. I wonder how long it will be before some of them show up in my CSA share.
I was in Texas last week (Carrollton near Dallas to be precise). They were experiencing their first round of cold weather. The first morning I got up to early enough to see the sunrise (not hard this time of year).
The garden still had a surprising amount of green I wondered how long it would be before the plants succumbed to frost. There were some that already had dried to brown (leaves and flowers) but the soft greens of oxalis and sedum
And the brighter colors of kale dominated the view.
I took my pictures and hurried back inside…it was cold. Little did I know that the next 3 days would be cloudy…and then wet.
Yesterday was the beginning of the weekly shares from Gorman Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I picked strawberries last week and picked up a head of lettuce that seems to be in overwhelming supply right now….but this was the first really share. They enlarged the layout for the pickup so the ‘medium share’ subscribers have a whole side to themselves; it’s much easier to move around – weigh what needs to be weighed, find a place to perch the bags if things are too heavy. I was surprised that zucchini was already in the distribution this first week and have already found my favorite zucchini bread recipe to use the increasing amount that will probably come in the upcoming weeks; a pound seems easy enough to use over the next week or so.
When I got home I piled it all on the top of the stove…it took most of the space. From left to right – the overage head of lettuce and garlic scapes in the plastic bin, kale and butter lettuce and tatsoi next, and then charge and pac choi last.
I’m glad my daughter is coming to visit this weekend. I’m going to send home one head of lettuce with her and more. For once, I am not going to be overwhelmed by the first week of the CSA!
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Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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