Miscellaneous

Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

Photograph taken on Sunday, July 16, 2023 by Henry
Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

Mom and I came home from North Carolina today, after yesterday’s reunion. Cathy had been to church and was visiting her mom when I got home. We drove to the Ag. History Farm Park where there were a few dahlias in bloom and we walked through the garden to see them and then through the demonstration garden. In the sun it was really hot and the humidity was stifling. Sitting in the shade where there was a slight breeze was bearable, but even that was quite warm. We moved to the other parking area and walked down to the trail by the stream, walking through the woods. We were out of the sun, although the air was quite still. We saw a great blue heron, but only as it flew away. I took a few pictures, but not many. By the time we got back to the car we were drenched in sweat. This monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) was in the meadow as we returned to the car.

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New Cabin Steps

Photograph taken on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 by Henry
New Cabin Steps

New Cabin Steps

I went up to our Pennsylvania property today to meet with Dorothy and her friends. We had two things on the agenda for the visit. First, we put up the new steps on the front porch. The stringers had finally rotted so I a made new set, using one of the old as a pattern template. I made them with treated 2x12s and they fit pretty well. If they last as long as the first set I’ll be very pleased. The stair treads are untreated lumber and, as you can see, they are entirely un-weathered. They will turn grey over the next year and won’t be so stark. We actually plan to replace the decking on the porch, also, but that’s not a rush. There is a pile of 2x4s in the loft, so we’ll use those.

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Water Main Repairs

Photograph taken on Wednesday, July 05, 2023 by Henry
Water Main Repairs

Water Main Repairs

Dorothy mentioned, when we were in Alaska, that there was a small amount of water coming out the joint where our driveway meets the road. I asked her to call the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) to let them know. When we got home nothing had been done and the water was still flowing, although it wasn’t a huge flow.

This morning the workmen showed up and dug up the road, trying to find the break. They started on our side, since that’s where the water was reaching the surface. They found the pipe that left the main and supplies water to our house but the leak wasn’t in that part of the pipe. So, they repeated to digging on the other side, being careful of the gas pipe running down the middle of the street.

They eventually found the leak almost directly under the gas line between the two holes. They replaced that length of pipe and filled in both holes. Another crew should come to out down proper pavement but we have water again now. All is well.

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Rock Balancing

Photograph taken on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 by Henry
Brian and Henry, Balancing Rocks

Brian and Henry, Balancing Rocks

As you might guess, although I take most of the pictures with my camera, Cathy took this shot. We had driven to the end of the road and then walked to the shore just past Echo Cove. This is as far as you can drive from downtown Juneau. It was sunny and hot, which is unusual for Juneau, but we enjoyed being out. Cathy and Lisa were down near the water and Brian and I sat higher on the rocky beach and started balancing stones. It’s a fiddly thing but soothing in its own way. We each managed to get a respectable cairn built and Cathy took a few pictures as we worked on our final stones. The horse flies started to bother us, so we headed back to the car and back to town for the evening.

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Sea–Tac Airport

Photograph taken on Saturday, June 17, 2023 by Henry
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

A few months ago Cathy and I bought tickets to fly to Juneau, Alaska. The plan was to leave here on June 17 and return July 3, allowing us to have a free day on July 4 to recover before returning to work on July 6.

Our outbound flight left Dulles Airport at 5:00 PM and we had an uneventful five and a half hour flight to Sea-Tac (Seattle–Tacoma International Airport). As is often the case on travel days, I didn’t take many photographs. I don’t think I’ll be giving too much away when I say that I took almost 2,500 photos during our trip, however, so the posts following this one will give you a very brief glimpse of what we saw and did.

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Ship Puzzle

Photograph taken on Sunday, June 11, 2023 by Henry
Ship Puzzle

Ship Puzzle

It’s time for another installment of Henry and Cathy’s puzzle collection. This one looked nice so I bought it and we finished putting it together a couple days ago. The water in the foreground and the sky were the most challenging parts, which isn’t too surprising. The stern of the ship and parts of the rigging were done first (after the edges, of course, which are almost always finished before much else has been done.

We don’t absolutely always have a puzzle going, but lately we’ve tried to. We’re running out of them, though, with only a few more on hand, so I’m not sure what we’ll do after that. We also like crossword puzzles, sometimes doing them together but more often, separately. We have crossword puzzle books, published by Simon and Schuster and The New York Times. For quite a while now, my mom has saved the puzzles from the Washington Post and gives them to me, so I work through those. They are generally a bit easier than the other two sources and I actually do them in pen (and sometimes without actually making mistakes, although certainly not all the time).

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Venice Puzzle

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 by Henry
Venice Puzzle

Venice Puzzle

Our most recent puzzle adventure was this scene from Venice. As you might imagine, the clouds and sky were the most difficult part, and took us a while after the buildings had been completed and the water in the foreground got filled in. But, as it usually the case, giving it a little attention each day, finding one piece now and then, eventually it got finished. We have two more puzzles on-deck and will start the first of those shortly. We find it mentally stimulating and something we can easily do easily while chatting.

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Bible Puzzle

Photograph taken on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 by Henry
Bible Puzzle

Bible Puzzle

We completed another puzzle this week. I’m not sure where we got this one—illustrating “Great Events of the Bible”—but it’s been in our basement a while without ever being put together. It was a relatively easy puzzle, compared to others we’ve done lately. That’s partly because there is text scattered around and any piece with text on it is easy to orient. With some puzzles it’s very difficult to know which way many of the pieces sit. There also are no large areas of similar color in this one, as there are with images with large amounts of sky, etc. Still, it was fun putting it together. Next we will work on puzzle with a view of Venice, Italy.

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Lamprocapnos spectabilis (Bleeding Heart)

Photograph taken on Saturday, April 15, 2023 by Henry
Lamprocapnos spectabilis (Bleeding Heart)

Lamprocapnos spectabilis (Bleeding Heart)

Cathy and I went to the airport this morning to pick up Dorothy and then dropped her off in Bethesda, where she had left her car. Although it’s a little early for most azaleas, we decided to visit McCrillis Gardens, since we were near by. A few azaleas and rhododendrons were in bloom and there were other things to see. Fern fiddleheads were unrolling, there was quite a bit of Solomon seal (Polygonatum species). In the middle of the yard, under a large tree, there is a huge mound of bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis). It’s quite pretty and we probably should plant some, if for no other reason than that it would fill in some of the gap between the early bulbs and the later spring blooms.

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Proverbidioms Puzzle

Photograph taken on Monday, April 10, 2023 by Henry
Proverbidioms Puzzle

Proverbidioms Puzzle

We finished another puzzle in the last couple days. This one was much, much easier than the previous couple. That’s not to say it was simple, but nothing like the Dahlia, Mandala Stone, or especially the William Morris, “Garden of Delight” puzzle. Some of the proverbs or idioms in the puzzle are obvious. Others are either obscure or were unfamiliar to us. Nevertheless, we enjoyed trying to make sense of the illustrations. As is usual in a large puzzle, the large areas of sky with little to differentiate them was the last to get finished. Next up is a scene of Venice, which will be a little more challenging than this one, I think.

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My Office Building Lobby

Photograph taken on Thursday, March 30, 2023 by Henry
My Office Building Lobby

My Office Building Lobby

The building my office is in has a somewhat dated look. It’s exterior is red brick and glass and is even referred to at my company as ‘RB’, which stands for ‘Red Brick’. The lobby had a red brick floor and built-in red brick planters along the front windows and on the interior walls. It wasn’t beautiful but the large plants were pretty nice, as that sort of thing goes. With a two storey height, the fiddle-leaf figs (Ficus lyrata) were especially impressive. For what seems like an eternity, it’s been undergoing a makeover. The new, modern lobby is nearing completion and I can’t say I’m overly impressed. As you can see, there are some plants in containers against the far windows. I assume those will be placed around the lobby once it’s done. But it’s fairly stark, in my view.

Uptate: They added some furniture, so it isn’t quite so empty now. But it feels very artificial and not somewhere I’d go to sit and chat. Time will tell, I suppose.

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Great Falls, Maryland (from Virginia)

Photograph taken on Sunday, March 19, 2023 by Henry
Great Falls, Maryland (from Virginia)

Great Falls, Maryland (from Virginia)

We met our good friend Jean today and went to the Virginia side of Great Falls (which are in Maryland, because the state boundary is the Virginia shore line). It was a chilly day but beautifully clear. Most photos were taken with my long lens, including one of a heron across the river and an immature bald eagle flying overhead. I almost got a good photo of a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) fairly close overhead but it’s only about 60% in the frame. Tracking and focusing such a large, heavy lens on a moving subject is still more than I can do reliably. I switched to my 100mm, which I carried in a pouch on my belt, for two sets of images that I stitched into panoramas. This is one of those two, which I’ve also cropped down and will use as my site’s banner image for a while. The previous banner, of Portland Head Light in Maine has been the banner since late 2015 so I thought it was time for a change.

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Another Puzzle

Photograph taken on Thursday, March 16, 2023 by Henry
“Garden of Delight” Puzzle

“Garden of Delight” Puzzle

As mentioned, we’ve been doing puzzles recently. We started one with a photo of succulent plants while at the beach last summer and finally got around to unrolling it and finishing it early this year. The next one, the 1,000 piece Dahlia Puzzle (Friday, January 20, 2023) was considerably harder. Then we did the larger, 1,500 piece Mandala Stone Puzzle (Monday, February 6, 2023). We didn’t exactly plan for each puzzle to be harder than the one before but this one, although only 1,000 pieces, was considerably harder than any of the preceding three. It’s a photo of a tapestry called “Garden of Delight” made by William Morris (March 24, 1834 – October 3, 1896). He was, according to the bio on the box, “a British textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist.” There were times when we despaired of ever finishing it, but, eventually we did. There were times when I basically picked up every piece and tried it in every available spot until I found where it went or put it aside and went on to the next piece, starting over once I had been through all the pieces. In that way, eventually, it came together.

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Glenstone Museum

Photograph taken on Saturday, March 11, 2023 by Henry
Glenstone Museum

Glenstone Museum

Dorothy’s friend Tony got five tickets to the Glenstone Museum (https://www.glenstone.org/) for today asked Dorothy if she wanted to be one of the five. She said she did and asked if I could be the fifth. They’ve both been a few times before but this was my first trip to the museum. It’s on a 51.9 acre property on Glen Road in Potomac, Maryland. As art goes, I can’t say that I was particularly impressed. The landscape is very nice, even now, before spring has come, it’s quite lovely. The ‘Pavilions’ (sic) is an interesting building but not at all my style, except for the water-filled courtyard, which I like quite a lot. This room, however, room 7, appropriately called the Viewing Gallery, is very nice. Not so much for the room itself but for the view. The front wall and a portion of the wall on the left is filled with a single, very clean pane of glass. In the room is a lovely, curved wooden bench that is wonderful. I could sit there for a long while. Overall, the landscaping is fairly young but nice and it will improve as it ages. I’d love to go in summer and see how different it is. Again, not so much for the art, which I can take or leave (and would probably leave). But for the outdoor areas. Regardless, I enjoyed myself and I’m quite thankful for being included.

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Mandala Stone Puzzle

Photograph taken on Monday, February 06, 2023 by Henry
Mandala Stone Puzzle

Mandala Stone Puzzle

After the Dahlia puzzle (see Friday, January 20, 2023) we decided to put out a new one. This time it’s a picture of painted mandala stones. At a glance Cathy and I thought they were Murano (Venetian) Glass Paperweights but looking a little closer, they clearly are not glass. Ravensburger’s title for the 1,500 piece puzzle is simply “One Dot at a Time.” This turned out to be even harder than the Dahlia puzzle. We’d go for long stretches without finding any pieces and then we’d get a bunch all together. Each stone became a separate entity, although a few of them were similar enough that it was sometimes hard to know to which a certain piece belonged. Especially without the box to look at (because that would be cheating).

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Dahlia Puzzle

Photograph taken on Friday, January 20, 2023 by Henry
Dahlia Puzzle

Dahlia Puzzle

Cathy, Dorothy, and I have been putting together puzzles lately. The first one we’ve done recently was started at the beach over the summer but wasn’t completed. We rolled it up then and it’s been in that state since then. We finished that a while back and put out this as our next. I was pretty challenging. Nevertheless, we made continual progress on it and finally finished it this evening. It’s a 1,000 piece puzzle.

Our family is in the “you don’t look at the box” camp. Yes, that makes the puzzle somewhat harder (and sometimes considerably harder). But it also gives more satisfaction and gratification when the puzzle is eventually completed. I know we were all pretty pleased with ourselves when we finished this one. We have put it away and put out our next one, which promises to be at least as hard. It’s also larger, with 1,500 pieces.

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Rooster

Photograph taken on Monday, January 16, 2023 by Henry
Ayam Kampung Rooster

Ayam Kampung Rooster

Chickens are thought to have originally been domesticated from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) native to multiple regions of southeast Asia. The Ayam Kampung chicken is a breed from Indonesia and Malaysia. It is a dual-purpose breed, raised for both meat and eggs. They are considered poor performers in terms of their egg laying ability, providing somewhere under 100 eggs per year. Of course, this one, a male (rooster) won’t lay any eggs at all. He’s a handsome bird, though, I think you’ll admit.

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Woodland Detritus

Photograph taken on Saturday, January 14, 2023 by Henry
Woodland Detritus

Woodland Detritus

We’ve walked the Kengla Trail a few times, always in the winter. We took this trail from Muncaster Mill Road (MD 115), under the Intercounty Connector (a.k.a. the ICC, MD 200) and then up towards Norbeck Meadows Neighborhood Park. There isn’t a lot to see, honestly, although I wish I had brought my long lens, because we had a flock of bluebirds in the trees just in front of us for a little ways, moving further ahead as we got closer. I took a few photos but nothing of outstanding beauty, I’m afraid. I do like the patterns in these fallen branches. There is one point north of the ICC where the trail crosses a side stream where the steam goes between two very large sycamore trees whose roots have grown into a solid mass of wood. I’ve taken photos of Cathy there on each occasion but decided to go with this photo instead this year. We really should come back and walk this trail in the summer, though.

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View of Venice (Detail)

Photograph taken on Thursday, December 29, 2022 by Henry
View of Venice (Detail)

View of Venice (Detail)

Dorothy and I went to the National Gallery of Art today. We’ve been enough ties we generally know our way around but there are always small changes to what’s on display. This year’s big surprise was a woodcut that represents a view of Venice. I took a few detail shots but somehow managed to miss getting an overall shot but there’s a very good image on Wikipedia. The sign for this work read as follows:

Jacopo de’ Barbari
Venetian, (c. 1460/1470 – 1516)

View of Venice
1500
woodcut on six sheets of laid paper

National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection

View of Venice was unprecedented in scale and ambition. To make his drawings, Jacopo de’ Barbari relied upon the work of surveyors, who likely took sightings from bell towers across Venice. They borrowed tools from other trades: compasses and astrolabes were used for navigation, and instructions for measuring angles and distances existed in treatises on gunnery. De’ Barbari’s genius lay in being able to integrate these views to form both an overview perspective and a city map. Master woodcarvers then used his drawings to create blocks for printing. The project took three years to complete.

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Freezer Thaw

Photograph taken on Wednesday, December 28, 2022 by Henry
Freezer, Pre-Thaw

Freezer, Pre-Thaw

Freezer, Post-Thaw

Freezer, Post-Thaw

The freezer that we have in our garage has been frosting up slowly over the years and I’ve been meaning to empty it and get it cleaned up. Recently, the door didn’t get shut properly, partly because of that same ice buildup, and the inside became even more choked with ice. Two days ago I emptied it into two coolers (it’s below freezing outside so I wasn’t worried about losing my food) and moved the freezer out of the garage onto the driveway. I put pans of boiling water in it, replacing them as they cooled, until all the ice was gone. As you can see from the before and after photos, that did the job quite nicely.

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Seneca Creek Bluffs Trail

Photograph taken on Sunday, October 30, 2022 by Henry
Cathy on Seneca Bluffs Trail

Cathy on Seneca Bluffs Trail

We decided to take a walk on the Seneca Bluffs Trail today, heading downstream from where Seneca Creek goes under Maryland Route 28 (Darnestown Road). We walked about 2.3 miles each way, which was farther than I expected we’d go. For the most part this section of trail is not near the creek. At a few points you can see out into the fields that are on Sugarland Road. The trail has some ups and downs, reaching an elevation of just under 300 feet above sea level, from a low point about 90 feet lower. At one point the trail goes through a stand of eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), which is quite different to the surrounding deciduous oak, hickory, and tulip poplar. I’m not sure I’d do this section again unless I made plans to go all the way to Rocklands Farm, another eight tenths of a mile from where we got. If we had a car at both ends then that would have been very nice.

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Great Falls, Virginia

Photograph taken on Sunday, October 23, 2022 by Henry
Great Falls, Virginia

Great Falls, Virginia

After church and also after running a few errands today we drove to McLean, Virginia and took a nice walk at Riverbend Park. We went northwest on the Potomac Heritage Trail about a mile and a quarter. The view of the river isn’t all that good for most of the way, but there were a few good spots for seeing out of the trees. There is a nice bit of trail where it climbs about 50 feet over a knoll into a beech and oak wood before coming back down to the river.

From there we drove to Great Falls Park and walked to overlooks 2 and 3 (where this photo was taken). Because I now have a lifetime senior pass, short trips to parks that we would normally not do to avoid the $20 entrance fee are basically free. As you can see in this photo, the river is quite low right now. We’ve seen it when most of the rocks in this photo are totally covered.

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Jack-O’-Lantern

Photograph taken on Thursday, October 20, 2022 by Henry
Jack-O'-Lantern

Jack-O’-Lantern

Did you know that in 17th century Britain jack o’lantern was a name for lantern-carrying night watchmen? That’s what Webster says, anyway. Reading there I also found out that the first known use of jack-o’lantern in print is in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Great Carbuncle (1837), which I happened to read earlier this year. Note that the carbuncle in the story is a deep red gemstone, not an abscess. Anyway, this pumpkin was carved by one of Anna and Greg’s sons and was greeting folks outside their front door. I think it’s a pretty well executed jack-o’lantern.

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Crane Outside My Office

Photograph taken on Monday, October 10, 2022 by Henry
Crane Outside My Office

Crane Outside My Office

The building my office is in needs a new heating and air conditioning system and the replacement was lifted onto the roof today. The back door to the building, which I normally use to get in, was blocked off and this crane was in the back parking lot, lifting the heavy equipment up onto the roof. This picture wasn’t actually taken out my windows, because I look out on the end of the building, so I went to a few different offices to take pictures. I admit it, I’m a sucker for heavy machinery. I’ve been told it’s a guy thing but I think it’s just certain people, both male and female.

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U.S. Capitol Dome

Photograph taken on Thursday, September 29, 2022 by Henry
U.S. Capitol Dome

U.S. Capitol Dome

We were at an event at the American Pharmacists Association building this evening where a friend of ours was honored by a non-profit that he’s worked with for about 40 years. The initial reception for our friend (and another honoree) was on the ground-floor terrace. Then we moved up to the rooftop (The Potomac View Terrace) for the main event, which was a benefit and fund-raising reception. The view from there was pretty nice, especially as the sun was setting and lit up the U.S. Capitol dome. The smaller dome on the right is above the National Statuary Hall, also part of the Capitol building. Between those two is the dome of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History bisected by a flag pole on the roof of the FRB Federal Credit Union building, two blocks from where I was.

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Sunfish Pond

Photograph taken on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 by Henry
Sunfish Pond

Sunfish Pond

We walked in the park this evening, getting as far as Sunfish Pond before turning around and heading back. It was a pretty afternoon and it was really good to get out into the woods. The sun was low in the sky as we approach the equinox but from this side of the pond, the lighting wasn’t a problem. People fish in the pond and with a name like Sunfish Pond, I have to think there might be sunfish in it, but I’ve never actually tried. Maybe I will one day.

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Dot’s Quilt

Photograph taken on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 by Henry
Dot's Quilt

Dot’s Quilt

I went over to mom’s this afternoon to take photos of a few quilts that she’s made. One was a fairly old quilt, made in 1996, which was patterned after a photo of Iris and Steve in a hammock. She is giving a talk on that quilt and needed a good picture of it. While I was there I also photographed two other quilts. One of those two is made up of 12 rectangles, each made by a different person. Mom took a photograph and cut it up into 12 equal pieces and enlarged them to the size she wanted the quilt pieces to be. Then each person in the quilt group got one and made their section with the only real requirement being the overall size. Mom combined them to make the completed quilt. The final one was the unfinished quilt shown here. It doesn’t have a name yet (or if it does, I don’t know it). But it’s quite nice, I think.

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Evening Light

Photograph taken on Thursday, September 08, 2022 by Henry
Evening Light

Evening Light

We were out at Anna’s for an evening of singing. The light was beautiful as it filtered through the trees onto the lovely, stone building. I was afraid the dynamic range would be too much but this photo captures it pretty well, I think. It lasted about five minutes and then was gone. The structure was built circa 1817 but by 1940, only a stone shell remained. It was rehabilitated in the 1940s for residential use and that’s when the current doors, wi11dows, hardware, etc. were installed. It was built as the Seneca Baptist Church and is one of the oldest Baptist Churches in Montgomery County.

In addition to Dorothy, Adam, Michael, and Andrew came and played while we all sang into the evening. A good time was had by all. At least I think so. I certainly enjoyed myself.

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Euptoieta claudia (Variegated Fritillary)

Photograph taken on Sunday, September 04, 2022 by Henry
Euptoieta claudia (Variegated Fritillary)

Euptoieta claudia (Variegated Fritillary)

Late this spring we were given a box of dahlia roots by our friend Anna. I planted a bunch of them in what was originally my vegetable garden. That garden transitioned from vegetables to herbs a few years ago and has since been overrun by oregano. I dug out over half of the oregano, which won’t slow it down all that much, to plant the dahlias. We have our first buds and I took a few pictures this afternoon. Then I noticed this variegated fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) in the yard and was able to get one good picture before it flew away.

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A Grand Day Out

Photograph taken on Saturday, September 03, 2022 by Henry
Cathy and Margaret at Rio

Cathy and Margaret at Rio

Cathy and I took her mom out for lunch today, taking her to Rio where we could see lots of people. It was a lovely day and there were plenty of people walking around the pond, playing on the playground, and riding in the paddle boats. The boardwalk wasn’t the smoothest thing to push the wheelchair on, but it wasn’t terrible. We had a really nice lunch at Silver Diner. This little girl (whose mother is just out of the frame) was interested in what we were doing.

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