Tag Archives: nature

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

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What’s “Up”?  This week’s photo challenge theme…a movie I never saw…my youngest child’s very first word (although she said it ‘uppy’ meaning, “Please pick me up, Mommy!”).  What’s up with me?  I’ve been working at Discovery World Museum and keeping our home business, Scholar & Poet Books, running, so I haven’t been online for two days.  But I am up for this! (and down with it as well)  The sky’s the limit!  Things are definitely looking UP!
The rooftops of Wauwatosa
Playing with my dad, 1971.
My treehouse
Blannerhasset lantern

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The Illuminating Blogger Award

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light bulb concept

A new-found kindred spirit in the blogosphere has nominated me for the Illuminating Blogger Award.  I’ll allow her to introduce herself from the description on her About page:

“Sally W. Donatello is an educator, photographer and writer. Until recently she worked at Special Collections Department in the University of Delaware Library. Her interests are eclectic, but her passions focus on art, gardening, human nature, nature and reading. Mostly, she prides herself in being a lifelong learner.”

Typically on a Friday, I would be posting a Weekly Photo Challenge entry, but this week, the prompt is Phoneography Challenge: My Neighborhood…and I don’t have an iPhone.  But Sally recently began her own iPhoneography challenge for Mondays, so check out her stuff!

(in case you haven’t caught on, all the underlined bits are links to those places. 🙂 )

Now, I’m going to share one random thing about myself and then nominate some others for this award.  Here goes:

As a fellow lifelong learner with Sally, I am thrilled to have learned a new word this year.  Phenology.   Spell check hasn’t even learned this word!  Phenology is “the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors”.   Aldo Leopold, a Wisconsin naturalist and hero of mine, took this study quite seriously.  I’ve been going to naturalist classes at the UW Madison (where Leopold taught) Arboretum for the last few months, and at every class break, the hostess has asked the group if they have any phenology to report.  Well, today, I have field notes that I can share at the next class.  I heard the first red-winged blackbird of this year singing his territorial song!  I was thrilled.  There’s something about the liquid melody of this bird that just makes my spirit soar.  The sun is shining brightly on the piled up snow.   The days are longer and all my photo sensors are doing a happy dance…I feel dazzled as a Tahoe skier, except without the raccoon face tan.  Temperatures are inching up well past the freezing mark, and we’re told to expect rain this weekend.  Yipee! 

Maybe that’s not so random.  It may be integral.  I love nature; I love sunshine; I love being outside.  How about this?  I had a job interview at the US Postal Service yesterday.  Yeah, that’s pretty random.  I have another interview, coming up next week, at Discovery World museum.  I think that one would be a better fit for me.  Okay, on to the nominees for Illuminating Blogger.

I’m not sure if these fine people accept blog awards, so I offer these nominations simply out of my own appreciation for the enrichment they have brought to my experience.  Any response is entirely up to them. 

Interesting Literature.

Jose of JoseRaSan66. I don’t read Spanish, so I miss a lot, but I do love photography and gain on that account.

Jamie Dedes of The Poet By Day 

I’m supposed to share 5, but I’ve only added 3 blogs to my follow list since the last time I gave out awards.  Instead, I’ll share a photo of my neighborhood.

neighborhood

Yup, that’s my car at the bottom of the shot.  But today, a red-winged blackbird sang!  I am illuminated, lit up all around.

 

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Valentine’s Day is For The Birds

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Our first Valentine’s Day together, Steve and I attended a presentation on raptors at the Volo Bog Nature Center.  We got to hear about and see up close some beautiful birds of prey and learn more about their habits and how they differ from what the presenter called “sissy birds” – birds who migrate to avoid our Northern winters.   Then we went and had sushi at a nearby restaurant.  The next Valentine’s Day, we went to a presentation on animal mating habits at the McHenry County Conservation District education center.  They provided some great chocolate snacks, warm drinks, a slide show on various courtship behaviors, and a candlelit ski trail hike.  They played a recording of coyote calls to try to entice some real responses, but there were none.  Still, the eerie, cold hillside was suitably mysterious and romantic for those of us who are simply in love with nature.  This morning, we took off from Milwaukee to Madison for our weekly Naturalist Enrichment course at the Arboretum of UW Madison.  We heard a professor from the zoology department give a presentation entitled “Why Do Birds Sing?”  One of the main purposes for bird song is, of course, to attract a mate.  Thus, the Valentine’s Day connection was made again.  Steve asked a question of the presenter to try to find some explanation for the early morning activity of birds in our neighborhood. “What’s the best time of day to sing a love song?”  Several audible chuckles and giggles were heard in the audience, which is predominantly silver-haired and female.  The presenter talked about the morning chorus and the ability for sound to be carried further in the chilly predawn air.  I smiled down at my notes and pressed my knee against his leg.  After the talk was over, a nice lady with short, white hair and a thickly knit sweater came over and leaned across me.  To Steve, she said, “You can sing your love song ANY TIME you want!” 

I love hanging out with retired professors! And I love that my daughter lives just a few blocks away from the Arboretum and invited us over for “breakfish” afterwards.  Valentine’s hugs all around and more conversation about her upcoming wedding.  Very satisfying way to spend the day, indeed.

Nerd love and natural love to everyone!  What a wonderful world!

cardinal

Did I mention it's still cold here?

Did I mention it’s still cold here?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

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I really like the photo posted on The Daily Post at Word Press today for the photo challenge.  The single, blooming red tulip in a field of budded yellow ones is an immediate visual image of what it means to be unique.  Outstanding in your field, the only one of your kind, different from all the rest.  Snowflakes.  People.  We’re all unique like that…so does that make being unique – not so unique?  Tricky concept, really. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time this week photographing vintage games, toys, and books from an estate and putting them up for resale on e-Bay.  Part of that time has also been spent researching the object to find out if other people are selling it and for what price.  Manufactured goods are not so unique.  They’re usually mass produced.  But after 50, 60, or 70 years, they begin to be more rare.  Others of their kind have been destroyed or lost for good.  They begin to show wear in unique ways: non-duplicated tears, rubs, bumps, scratches.  But usually, there is another one of that item’s “siblings” out there, somewhere.  I guess what I’m learning is that differences and similarities are rather fluid.  We are the same AND we are different at the same time.  We are connected in mass and atom and substance in numerous ways that we only dimly understand.  Categorizing and separating is something that we like to do because it narrows the overwhelming complexity of the world into an order that our little brains can comprehend.  But it’s all a game, really.  The truth is closer to wonder, the moment when you see something and exclaim “Look at that!” not because it’s necessarily different or special or anything else but just because it IS!  Wow!  There it is being the way it is and isn’t it marvelous!! 

Okay, with that in mind, here’s something I picked up at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and I didn’t know what made it the way it was, but it seemed familiar and strange at the same time. 

unique

My best guess is that these leaves are from the tulip poplar tree.  The lobes are not formed in the typical way on these individuals.  Mutants?  Perhaps.   I only found one that was like a perfect heart.  The yellower one was a relative, sort of the link to the “normal” tulip poplar shape.   I examined the edges very carefully to determine whether someone had shaped them on purpose.  They appeared to be completely natural. (oh, and the acorn is just for composition and because it had a really sexy luster!)

Variety, diversity, uniqueness.  “And I think to myself…….what a wonderful world!”

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

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Gaaauugh!  Why’d it have to be LOVE today?  Being in a couple relationship is a whole lotta hard work.  Honestly.  Hearts & flowers & violins just aren’t on the horizon here today…did you have to remind me?!  Okay, I’m gonna take another tack completely.  Here it is, my interpretation of love….this is me and a Ponderosa pine in New Mexico.  They smell like vanilla in the sunshine.  Warm, honest, natural love without that mess of human complication: I give you TREES, ladies and gentlemen. 

love