Monthly Archives: November 2018

Milkweed Seed

Photograph taken on Sunday, November 11, 2018 by Henry
Milkweed Seed

Milkweed Seed

It turned cold over the last few days. Not bitter, winter cold, but relatively cold with lows down in the mid 30s. This morning it was below freezing for the first time this fall and the forecast is for more of the same. In the sus this afternoon it was pleasant enough if you’re like me and prefer cool weather to hot. The insects are starting to be less in evidence and Cathy was actually looking for dead insects in the yard to send to a friend (it’s probably just about as weird as it sounds). She found a carpenter bee and I took pictures of it before making sure it was dead with a little chloroform in a jar. I also took pictures of holly berries on the tree at the corner of our house. Then I spotted this milk weed seed on the top of a drying Verbena bonariensis stem and decided that’s what I’d use for today’s photo.

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Dot’s Quilt

Photograph taken on Saturday, November 10, 2018 by Henry
Dot and tsai-Hong

Dot and tsai-Hong

Tsai-Hong and I went over to mom’s this evening and put up some art in her apartment. She’s been there a while but there were other priorities and she also wanted to take a bit of time to figure out what should go where. We haven’t finished and there is a sheving unit that needs to be hung on the wall, for which I needed a few pieces of hardware. But we were able to get Sir Roger up, as well as her quilt hanging rod, behind the sofa and shown holding up one of her recent quilts in this photo. We also had a nice dinner together. She has more art than she has wall space to display it on, but we’ll do our best to get a few more things up before Thanksgiving and then she can decide what to do with the things for which there isn’t room.

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Baronessa’s Pizza Oven

Photograph taken on Friday, November 09, 2018 by Henry
Baronessa's Pizza Oven

Baronessa’s Pizza Oven

There was a time, not really that long ago, when pizza wasn’t a known thing to many Americans. When my dad went away to college in the mid 1940s, he had never had pizza before. But New Haven had a Neapolitan community and he was introduced to what was called apizza (/əˈbiːts(ə)/, with the final vowel basically silent). Now, of course, there are many different pizza chains and generally Italian restaurants have pizza on their menu, even if pizza is not their main thing. There is an Italian place called Baronessa not too far from where we live and we’ve gone there off and on for years. It changed ownership a while back and the new owner installed a wood-fired pizza oven. The owner is rightly proud of the oven and enjoys taking diners back to the kitchen to see it. I’ve seen it before but having taken a good picture of it so I asked if I could do that this evening. He was happy to let me get a few pictures. It’s a bit hard, because the light levels are pretty extreme, dark except for the fire, which is very bright, but this one shows the pizza cooking on the left pretty well. If you’re looking for a good pizza, you could do a lot worse than visiting Baronessa on E. Gude Drive. And ask to see the pizza oven before you leave.

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Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

Photograph taken on Thursday, November 08, 2018 by Henry
Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

I was a bit surprised this afternoon to see this butterfly and was happy to be able to get close enough for a pretty good photograph. It turns out that the commas overwinter as adults and they can be seen on warmer days, such as today. The name comes from a curved, comma shaped mark on the underside of their hind wings. Another species in the genus has a question mark (and therefore is called the question mark instead of a comma). It’s a pretty little thing and it really brightened up my day to come across it.

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Phalaenopsis Orchids

Photograph taken on Wednesday, November 07, 2018 by Henry
Phalaenopsis Orchids

Phalaenopsis Orchids

I had planned to go out and take some pictures around my office building today. The sky was clear as I came in this morning, which was welcome after the two days of soaking rain we’ve had. By midday, however, the sky had clouded up again. It didn’t rain but was a lot more gloomy than the morning promised. Of course, colors are often more intense under an overcast sky, but I never managed to get outdoors to take advantage of that. By the time I got home, of course, it was dark. That’s one problem with this photo-a-day thing in the winter. I have a lot less opportunity to get pictures outdoors. I can stop on the way to work or go out during the day, but otherwise, I’m confined to pictures in the house (or night-time pictures, which are hard). But we have this orchid in bloom, so I got pictures of it and that will have to do.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Tuesday, November 06, 2018 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

Cathy and I left work a little early and we took her mom and all went to vote this evening. The lines were not too long, which was nice and especially so since we were told that it had been pretty busy all day. As we were leaving, I didn’t want to hang around because I could see the sunset was shaping up to be something really nice and I hadn’t brought my camera with me. I didn’t expect to need it on the short drive to the elementary school and back and I hadn’t considered that there might be something like this waiting for me.

When we got home, I rushed to the back yard and took a few dozen photos. It just got better and better. The clouds were moving to the north east quite quickly so the sky was changing patterns even faster than it was changing colors. This vertical shot was taken with the 100mm lens, looking between the trees almost due west. I had a hard time picking one from all the good pictures I got.

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My New Reading Room

Photograph taken on Monday, November 05, 2018 by Henry
My New Reading Room

My New Reading Room

The room isn’t new, of course, but it’s been in the process of becoming my reading room for about 10 months. There were piles of boxes in it and not a lot of space until recently. There are three full and one half height bookcase on the right, five full height against the far wall, and another full and half height on the left wall (off the left side of this photo). Behind where I’m standing is another bookcase that’s the equivalent of three more full height bookcases). The sofa in the lower left, along with most of what’s on it and the wooden chairs in the lower right are all destined to go away. I may get a more comfortable small sofa or futon at some point but the three arm chairs are enough for now. The books need to be organized, of course, and there are going to be at least a few that I get rid of once I see what’s what. But it’s coming along.

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Cosmos

Photograph taken on Sunday, November 04, 2018 by Henry
Cosmos

Cosmos

It was an absolutely gorgeous day and after church we decided to drive out to Rocklands Farm (http://www.rocklandsfarmmd.com/) and enjoy being outdoors. We walked around and I took some pictures of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) growing on fence posts. The little fruits were quite lovely in the afternoon sun. I also took some nice pictures of the barn reflected in the pond that’s below it. I decided to post this picture, though, because it’s a little different from the fall colors that have so dominated my posting of late. This is a cosmos flower photographed from behind and I think it’s quite pretty in an understated sort of way.

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Dogwood

Photograph taken on Saturday, November 03, 2018 by Henry
Dogwood

Dogwood

There’s an old joke that you can easily identify dogwood by its bark but you can also spot them this time of year by the color of their leaves. The deep, burgundy color really stands out, particularly against the much more common yellow of many of our other native trees. The oaks tend to be dark orange or rusty reds. The maples range in color from bright red (as in the Japanese maples seen in yesterday’s post) to pure, electric yellow. It’s really a lovely time of year and unfortunately seems to be the shortest of the seasons. The rain last night knocked down a lot of leaves and the forecast for the coming week is for a lot more rain, so by this time next week, it may only be the oaks and beeches holding onto their drying leaves.

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Japanese Maples

Photograph taken on Friday, November 02, 2018 by Henry
Japanese Maples

Japanese Maples

I’ve photographed these particular Japanese maples before. They are at the other end of the neighborhood and they have just about the most beautiful fall color of any trees I know. Individually they are lively but in combination they are spectacular. The near tree, on the left in this photo, is nearly red, with orange undertones. The farther tree is more orange and lighter and brighter. There is also a third Japanese maple on the right, further away still. That one is a deep burgundy color. I think this photo is improved by the small amount of gree from the azaleas in the foreground. I took quite a few pictures this morning and I like most of them. A woman walking her dog passed me and we agreed that these trees were special.

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Porcelain Rhinoceros

Photograph taken on Thursday, November 01, 2018 by Henry
Porcelain Rhinoceros

Porcelain Rhinoceros

We don’t know a lot about this porcelain rhinoceros. In fact, I don’t know for certain that it’s made of porcelain. It’s some sort of ceramic and it’s white, which generally implies kaolin clay and porcelain. It’s glazed mostly green and it has an interesting pattern in the glaze, possibly from the firing technique. It gives the figurine a more natural appearance, because rhinoceroses are not a uniform color (or course, they aren’t green, either, but that’s another matter). There are currently five extant species of rhinoceros, two native to Africa (the white and the black rhino) and three to Asia, the Indian, the Javan, and the Sumatran rhinos. I’m going to go with this being an Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and guess that the figurine came from central Asia somewhere, but of course it could easily have been bought in the United States.

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