Category: Nature

Sandwiched In

Eight Photographs of Five Flowers

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After spreading 15,000 square feet of crabcrass/fertilizer and before attending a frigid first baseball game of a grandson, I capture eight photographs of five different flowers from our home.

More about the Magnolia, from Wikipedia: The name Magnolia first appeared in 1703 in the Genera of Charles Plumier (1646–1704), for a flowering tree from the island of Martinique (talauma). It was named after the French botanist Pierre Magnol.

More about the Hydrangea, from Wikipedia: Hydrangea is derived from Greek and means ‘water vessel’ (from ὕδωρ húdōr “water” + ἄγγος ángos or αγγεῖον angeîon “vessel”), in reference to the shape of its seed capsules.

More about these Quince, from Wikipedia: Although all quince species have flowers, gardeners in the West often refer to these species as “flowering quince”, since Chaenomeles are grown ornamentally for their flowers, not for their fruits.

More about Forsythia, from Wikipedia: The genus is named after William Forsyth (1737–1804), a Scottish botanist who was a royal head gardener and a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society.

More about Forsythia, from Wikipedia: Narcissus is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil, narcissus, and jonquil are used to describe all or some members of the genus. Narcissus has conspicuous flowers with six petal-like tepals surmounted by a cup- or trumpet-shaped corona. The flowers are generally white and yellow (also orange or pink in garden varieties), with either uniform or contrasting colored tepals and corona.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Fair Weather View

Cumulus Clouds and Forsythia

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I read the New York Times on our porch on a spring Sunday afternoon, taking a moment to capture these fair weather cumulus clouds. Visible are Ithaca’s East Hill, downtown, and a forsythia bush in flower.

More about the flowers, from Wikipedia: Forsythias are popular early spring flowering shrubs in gardens and parks, especially during Eastertide; Forsythias are nicknamed the “Easter Tree”, the symbol of the coming spring.

More about this view, from Wikipedia: Cumulus clouds can form in lines stretching over 480 kilometers (300 mi) long called cloud streets. These cloud streets cover vast areas and may be broken or continuous. They form when wind shear causes horizontal circulation in the atmosphere, producing the long, tubular cloud streets. They generally form during high-pressure systems, such as after a cold front.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Waiting for a Ride

at the roundabout

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On our way back from “The Train at the End of the World” and sailing the Beagle Channel, these two young people came into view. Sitting at the foot of the a tower welcoming airport arrivals, who must transit this roundabout, is a pair of young people. In my imagination they were brothers waiting for a ride. In the first long wide shot the older is taking their selfie with the Ushuaia.

Here we at at the “center” of this city set spectacularly against the Fuegian Andes, the southern continuation of the Andes mountain range immediately south of the Strait of Magellan. with a West-East orientation. They occupy the mountainous and mountainous portion of the southern archipelago of Tierra del Fuego.

In this second, close photo, he is talking to the ride on his smart phone, after sending the selfie. The roundabout is named “Hipólito Yrigoyen” after an Argentine politician twice elected President.

Here is more information about the man:

Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Yrigoyen (Spanish pronunciation: [iˈpolito iɾiˈɣoʝen]; 12 July 1852 – 3 July 1933) was an Argentine politician of the Radical Civic Union and two-time President of Argentina, who served his first term from 1916 to 1922 and his second term from 1928 to 1930. He was the first president elected democratically by means of the secret and mandatory male suffrage established by the Sáenz Peña Law of 1912. His activism was the prime impetus behind the passage of that law in Argentina.

Known as “the father of the poor”, Yrigoyen presided over a rise in the standard of living of Argentina’s working class together with the passage of a number of progressive social reforms, including improvements in factory conditions, regulation of working hours, compulsory pensions, and the introduction of a universally accessible public education system.

Yrigoyen was the first nationalist president, convinced that the country had to manage its own currency and, above all, it should have control of its transportation and its energy and oil exploitation networks.

Between the 1916 general election and the 1930 coup d’etat, political polarization was on the rise. Personalist radicalism was presented as the “authentic expression of the nation and the people” against the “oligarchic and conservative regime”. For the ruling party, the will of the majorities prevailed over the division of powers. The opposition, on the other hand, accused the Executive Branch of being arrogant and demanded greater participation from Congress, especially in matters such as the conflictive federal interventions.

Reference: Wikipedia “Andes fueguinos” and “Hipólito Yrigoyen.”

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Thunderhead Sunset 3

the rest of the story

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Here are the rest of the images captured in that August 2014 sunset.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Thunderhead Sunset 2

a highly idealized fantasy world

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The combination of water vapor in all its forms and the sun dipping below the horizon combined to form these magical images.

Maxfield Parrish refined his art to duplicate these effects in oil.

Parrish’s art is characterized by vibrant colors; the color Parrish blue was named after him. He achieved such luminous color through glazing. This process involves applying layers of translucent paint and oil medium (glazes) over a base rendering. Parrish usually used a blue and white monochromatic underpainting.

His paintings/illustrations were unique in that they depicted a highly idealized fantasy world that was accessible to the public. Although you will rarely see a glimpse of that color in reality, he was and still is linked with a particularly bright shade of blue that coated the skies of his landscapes. And it was not an easy task for him to complete. He invented a time-consuming process that involved a cobalt blue base and white undercoating, which he then coated with a series of thin alternating coatings of oil and varnish. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the resins he employed, known as Damar, fluoresce a shade of yellow-green, giving the painted sky its distinctive turquoise tint.

Reference: “Maxfield Parrish” from Wikipedia

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Thunderhead Sunset 1

Just the Facts

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Cumulonimbus (from Latin cumulus ‘heaped’, and nimbus ‘rainstorm’) is a dense, towering vertical cloud, typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents.

Above the lower portions of the cumulonimbus the water vapor becomes ice crystals, such as snow and graupel, the interaction of which can lead to hail and to lightning formation, respectively. When occurring as a thunderstorm these clouds may be referred to as thunderheads. Cumulonimbus can form alone, in clusters, or along squall lines.

Graupel also called soft hail, hominy snow, or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets in air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of crisp, opaque rime.

Graupel is distinct from hail and ice pellets in both formation and appearance. However, both hail and graupel are common in thunderstorms with cumulonimbus clouds, though graupel also falls in winter storms, and at higher elevations as well.

These clouds can produce lightning and other dangerous severe weather, such as tornadoes, hazardous winds, and large hailstones. Cumulonimbus progresses from overdeveloped cumulus congestus clouds and may further develop as part of a supercell. Cumulonimbus is abbreviated Cb.

Reference: “Cumulonumbus Cloud” and “Graupel” from Wikipedia

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

A large and varied genus

“Water Banana”

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Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. We discovered this seeming lily growing from the muck along the Treman Woodland Walk. Scientific Name: Lysichiton camtschatcensis. Common names: Asian skunk cabbage, white skunk cabbage, Far Eastern swamp lantern or Japanese swamp lantern.

This is a plant found in swamps and wet woods, along streams and in other wet areas of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and northern Japan. The common name “skunk cabbage” is used for the genus Lysichiton, which includes Lysichiton americanus, the western skunk cabbage, noted for its unpleasant smell. The Asian skunk cabbage is more variable: plants have been reported in different cases to smell disgusting, not at all, and sweet.

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All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.

In Japanese it is known as mizubashō (lit. “water-banana”) from a supposed similarity to the Japanese banana, a name with poetic rather than malodorous associations. It is not closely related to the true cabbage.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Stone Bench Memorial

Old Testament

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Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. We found a path new to us, with this memorial stone bench, a biblical quote engraved on the seats. Biblical Quote on bench: “What doth the lord require of thee / but to do justly and to love mercy / and to walk with thy god.” Micah 6:8

The Book of Micah is the sixth of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Ostensibly, it records the sayings of Micah, whose name is Mikayahu (Hebrew: מִיכָיָ֫הוּ), meaning “Who is like Yahweh?”, an 8th-century BCE prophet from the village of Moresheth in Judah (Hebrew name from the opening verse: מיכה המרשתי). The book has three major divisions, chapters 1–2, 3–5 and 6–7, each introduced by the word “Hear,” with a pattern of alternating announcements of doom and expressions of hope within each division. Micah reproaches unjust leaders, defends the rights of the poor against the rich and powerful;[ while looking forward to a world at peace centered on Zion under the leadership of a new Davidic monarch. While the book is relatively short, it includes lament (1.8–16; 7.8–10), theophany (1.3–4), hymnic prayer of petition and confidence (7.14–20), and the “covenant lawsuit” (6.1–8), a distinct genre in which Yahweh (God) sues Israel for breach of contract of the Mosaic covenant.

Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.

All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.

In the quote tract, (6:6–8), Micah speaks on behalf of the community asking what they should do in order to get back on God’s good side. Micah then responds by saying that God requires only “to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Thus declaring that the burnt offering of both animals and humans (which may have been practiced in Judah under Kings Ahaz and Manasseh) is not necessary for God.

Reference: “Micah” Wikipedia

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

A Personable Tree

Gifts from the past

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Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. Found here growing outside native range, being the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to southern Pennsylvania, the Table Mountain Pine is named after the landform, not a particular mountain.

Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.

All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.

Its pinecones drew me to this scraggly, ungainly, poorly formed tree. All general mankind finds useful in the, scientific name, Pinus pungens, otherwise known as Hickory Pine, Prickly Pine and Mountain Pine, is to grind it up for pulp or chop it for tinder.

Last of the Mohicans

That said, the final scene of the 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans takes place in a nice Pinus pungens stand on a rocky mountaintop in North Carolina.

Personality

The tree has personality. Pinus pungens is the Lonesome Pine of the 1908 novel The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox, and popularized in the Laurel and Hardy film Way out West: “On the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine” Several “Lonesome Pine” hiking trails have been waymarked in the Blue Ridge Mountains and elsewhere in the Appalachians.

Pinecone Bud

Pinus pungens prefers dry conditions and is mostly found on rocky slopes, favoring higher elevations, from 300–1,760 meters (980–5,770 ft) altitude. It commonly grows as single scattered trees or small groves, not in large forests like most other pines, and needs periodic disturbances for seedling establishment. The three tallest known ones are in Paris Mountain State Park, South Carolina; they are 26.85 to 29.96 meters (88 ft 1 in to 98 ft 4 in) tall.

Reference: “Pinus pungens” Wikipedia.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Bluestone Monuments

Gifts from the past

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Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. A type of sandstone popular with Cornell monument builders, called “Lenroc” after a mansion build by Cornell’s founder, was used for these benches built into the hillside of the FR Newman Arboretum. The views are more interesting than the bench, the arch of stone in midground in one photo.

Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.

All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.

The stone is mined locally from surrounding hills. Calling it “Lenroc” (Cornell spelled backward) is a misnomer as the stone is mined widely throughout the region.

Feldspathic Greywacke

“Bluestone from Pennsylvania and New York is a sandstone defined as feldspathic greywacke. The sand-sized grains from which bluestone is constituted were deposited in the Catskill Delta during the Middle to Upper Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era, approximately 370 to 345 million years ago…..

Glacial Landscape on an early spring day, Easter 2023

Textures

…The Catskill Delta was created from runoff from the Acadian Mountains (“Ancestral Appalachians”). This delta ran in a narrow band from southwest to northeast and today provides the bluestone quarried from the Catskill Mountains and Northeastern Pennsylvania. The term “bluestone” is derived from a deep-blue-colored sandstone first found in Ulster County, New York.”

You can feel the origin of this bluestone from these macros of two pavers from a monument bench.

Reference: “Bluestone” Wikipedia.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved