Giving

We are hearing a lot these days about disasters around our country and the help that is needed as a result of them. Front and center are the fires in the west and the hurricanes in the Gulf and Atlantic. The devastation of it all is overwhelming to see and hear about.

A few of the supplies I'm collecting for the hygiene kits.

But that's not all that is catching my attention. I look around and see local children who need things for school and animal shelters that need help to care for abandoned animals. When I turn on the radio, I hear about people around the world dying by the thousands in earthquakes and typhoons, as well as losing their life trying to escape corrupt governments. At home, I see a neighbor who has just lost her husband and the child who needs attention that they aren't getting at home. I see the nursing home residents who could use a visit.

The needs of the world are endless and this overwhelms me. So what do I do when I'm inundated with all of these cries for help? I try to just do something. Tune out the rest and focus on one thing at a time. If I don't do this, I become immobilized and don't do anything.

My current focus is on Hurricane Harvey. I lived in Houston for ten years before moving to Maryland and I still have several friends there. I watched as Harvey wreaked havoc on familiar areas and felt that I needed to help in some way. There are many ways to do that, but I have chosen something concrete.

I am making, with friends and family's help, hygiene kits that have been requested by my church's relief organization, UMCOR. These are standard kits with soap, toothbrush, towel, etc. that are given out around the world and are much needed in the Houston and surrounding areas. I hope there will not be a great need for them with Hurricane Irma, but the kits can also help there.

So besides trying to be kind and respectful to others in every day life, focusing on one thing at a time is how I try to help in my small way. Sometimes it is putting together hygiene kits, sometimes it's making a monetary donation, and sometimes it may be writing a letter to an elderly relative. I try not to overthink things, which is my normal mode of operation. and just take some kind of action. That's what works for me. How do you handle the overwhelming needs of others that surround you?

A Second Look--August 31, 2017

This yard is a little less wild than the last one, so on the surface it seems as if it's not as interesting. But all I have to do is look and sometimes take a Second Look, and there are interesting bits of nature everywhere.

Here are a few of those things that I saw recently in my yard.

After taking a break during the heat, the osteospormum are blooming again.

Besides the purple, I have two other colors of them.

This sedum came from a small volunteer that was in the middle of some lily of the valley a friend gave me. I planted it and the sedum has established itself and started to bloom.

And speaking of volunteers, this dill plant came seemingly out of nowhere. I'm hoping to collect the seeds and have several plants next year.

As far as herbs go, the basil is doing very well. You can see the variegated plant is pretty tall and the globe one is growing well, also. (I trimmed all of the blossoms off of it after I took this picture.) Some of the other herbs are just barely surviving. I think it's all due to location, location, location. I'll have some better ideas where to plant them next year. 
Note: The blue yard stick is approximately 1 meter long. 

While cleaning out one of the beds, I uncovered some day lilies enough for one of them to bloom.

The purple sage has started to bloom again and the skipper butterflies are enjoying them. Notice the butterfly's proboscis arching out of its head into the flower for a drink of nectar.

And in this picture you can see actually where it's coming out in the front.

I find it interesting that bumble bee's proboscis is shaped very differently from the butterfly's. It has a shorter, stouter one that can not get into as many flowers. However, it has somewhat made up for this by having a triangular shaped head that will go further into the blossoms.
You may remember this picture from another Second Look. In that one, I noted the yellow pollen baskets on the bee's back legs.

Thankful Sunday--August 27, 2017

I am thankful to be able to dig in the dirt.

When the weather permits, I've been trying to uncover a couple of flower beds around my house. Both are covered with invasive weeds and this has been the first step in determining if the beds can be saved or need to be totally reworked. As I've been pulling and digging weeds, I have been enjoying some of nature's curiosities that I am finding.  So for the chance to dig in the dirt and discover bits of nature, I am thankful.

Below are pictures of some of the things I found.

I was totally fascinated by this white thing that looked a like bean sprouting. I left it to see what was going to happen with it.

Five days later, this is what I found. Then it dawned on me. It was a violet seed pod. It was ghostly white when I found it because it had been so covered with weeds and no exposure to the sun. All of these seeds from one pod helps to explain why there are violets everywhere.

In the same bed, I found these marble-sized white balls with root-like ends. I was pretty sure they were some kind of fungus and an internet search confirmed that. They were immature fruit bodies of the stinkhorn fungus.

If there was any doubt about the identification, it was validated a week later when I found these mature stinkhorn fungi growing in the same place. They were supposed to be really stinky, but I didn't notice anything.

I first noticed some cicada skeletons on the underside of some leave that were trimmed. Then I started to notice them everywhere. Apparently we've had an unexpected emergence of cicadas here this year. 

In another bed, I found this sluggish woolly bear. Soon we should be seeing a lot more of them traveling to find a place to hibernate for the winter.

A few minutes later, I found this virgin tiger moth which is what a woolly bear caterpillar grows into. I'm not sure if there's a relationship between the two I saw, but it was a pretty cool association.

This little leaf hopper was hiding among the leaves. I uncovered it with my weeding.

When I stood back to view my progress, I noticed this piece of bark that had wrapped itself around a branch. It had literally exploded off a nearby tree that was hit by lightning recently.

Today I hope I get a chance to enjoy the nice weather and do a little more digging. Just hope my back holds out.  :)

Anticipation and Annoyance

As the sun peaked into the bedroom this morning, I stirred with excitement and anticipation of the eclipse today. While many are getting tired of the hype it is getting, I'm not. This solar eclipse is another reminder of the power that nature has. Plus, how cool is it that it is going to be dark in the middle of the day.

Eclipse shadows on the sidewalk.

That's the beginning of a post I wrote yesterday. I was very excited with anticipation of the solar eclipse that was going to happen. After that beginning, I was going to develop a theme of how anticipation is sometimes the best part of an event. Yesterday may have been an exception to that as I was totally awed by watching the sun disappear.

However as I sat down to finish this morning, I just got over the whole eclipse thing. It went from being awe inspiring to annoying. What did that for me? When I first started the computer, one of my news feeds reported that Sarah Jessica Parker said that the eclipse was a life changing experience for her. Good for her. She seems to be a nice enough person and that's sounds important for her. But I don't care. That little item took away from my "after the eclipse glow." I guess that it because the reporting had gone away from the actual event to inventing news about how celebrities felt about the event.

So I need an attitude adjustment. I need to be annoyed with the "news" and remember how excited I truly was with yesterday's celestial events.  I viewed the eclipse at home with Ward and Theo and we had no parties or no special refreshments, just solar glasses and clouds that parted enough times to give us several views of the disappearing sun. Although we didn't experience a total eclipse (we had 82% coverage), it was magical all the same.

That's what I need to remember and my ramblings here have helped with that. Thanks for listening.

Note: I guess I'm avoiding the real subject here--the state of the news today. Don't get me started on that anger-inducing subject because I'm smiling about the eclipse again and I don't want to ruin it.

Thankful Sunday--August 8, 2017

I am thankful for creative people. 

Recently, I've seen several things that have caught my fancy and made me smile. There are some pretty creative people out there thinking up these things. For these creative minds and what they produce, I am thankful.

Here are a few of them.

The summer reading theme this year at our library is "Build a Better World". We have gone with the building theme in several ways and here is one of them.  Various staff and volunteers built an igloo from milk jugs. It is big enough that most adults can stand up inside. The kids love it in there and the adults are grunting a bit as they crawl in and out (me included).

The inside is my favorite part of the igloo. The milk jug lids give it an unexpected look.

My son, Theo, and I recently took a walk through a marsh where we found this fun bench. It's a little hard to make out the details, but notice the ripples on the seat and the two duck bottoms above them. It looks like the ducks are diving underwater. Very cute.

Here's the creative part. When we looked under the bench, we saw the heads of the two diving ducks. That was definitely a fun discovery.

Last weekend, my niece got married and had an outdoor reception. She decided it would probably be too hot for cake, so she had cookies instead. They were all made by another very creative aunt of hers. Everyone especially smiled at these bride and groom sugar cookies she made.

She also made some very elaborate cookies that had to be slowly baked in a spring form mold. They were very impressive and tasty. Some of you out there probably know the name for these German cookies. I can't remember it.

Now I'm going to toot my own horn. This is something that I made for a storytime about elephants. Remember the song, Five little elephants went out to play, Out on a spider's web one day...? I used this for that song. What I'm happy about is this was very simple to assemble, and I was able to use things I had around the house. The base, where the pink elephants are, is a ice holder from the freezer we no longer use. The spider's web is on an old piece of foam core we had and it is friction fitted to the base with an piece of packing Styrofoam we got with our new freezer. I was very pleased that it was light weight and very stable. I didn't actually have the elephants laying around. They are puppy chew toys I ordered. I am going to donate them to a shelter when I'm done.

A volunteer sunflower on my deck. Wasn't I creative to happen to have a planter below the birdfeeder, to give the dropped birdseed a place to sprout? :) As usually happens with volunteer plants, this one is doing much better than the sunflowers I formally planted.