Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Lunar Eclipse: Yes!

The clouds cleared away as if on cue last night at the beginning of the lunar eclipse. I present to you two photos. Not because they were done well, but because they were done at all. My tripod was unavailable and these are the best I could do without it.

Not long after that the camera went into a snit and refused to do anything further, so I put it away and enjoyed the view through binoculars. At its darkest, the moon was a sort of dusty orange color, with a brighter glow on the right side that never quite disappeared. I called it a night when the shadow started to recede.

Labels: astronomy

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Lunar Eclipse

Wish for clear skies tomorrow night because there's going to be a total lunar eclipse and we won't have another one for almost 3 years.

For times and locations, see this detailed writeup. The cloud forecast for the US is here.

And here's an interesting rumor - the Navy may be firing a missile at the falling spy satellite at about the same time as the eclipse.

Labels: astronomy

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Venus and Jupiter

If you're up just before dawn tomorrow and if you have clear skies (here in Virginia, we won't), look to the southeast to see Venus and Jupiter very close together.

Skies were clear this morning and I couldn't help but notice brilliant Venus; then I saw she had a companion. I assumed it was too bright to be a star. A quick check on Stellarium told me it was Jupiter.
Stellarium screenshot
larger image here

Tomorrow morning they'll be as close as they're going to get, but the view should be good for another few days after that. More info from NASA here.

Labels: astronomy

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Back to Work with Earlier Sunrises

The 12 Days of Christmas are over and it's back to the salt mines for me. If we were all living in a time and place where the holidays kept going until January 6, the return to work would happen at about the same date when the sun begins to rise earlier (at about 40 degrees N latitude). Is this a coincidence?

We've been gaining daylight at the end of the day since early December here, and the sun is setting about 15 minutes later now than it was then. Now it's time for the days to lengthen at the end and the beginning. But human arbitrariness has intruded once again on the natural rhythm of things. While I was cruising the internet looking for interesting links about the latest sunrise, I found this interesting observation: because the end of Daylight Saving Time was moved to the first weekend in November in 2007, we actually had our latest sunrise in official government-approved clock time in early November. In the vicinity of Washington DC, the sun rose at 7:36 AM on November 3, and today rises at 7:26 AM.

As Chuck B. has gently reminded me in a comment on the previous post, the Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't really a circle, but an ellipse. Because of that slightly squished circle (OK, ellipse) we're closer to the Sun now than we will be in June. I realize that this fact has nothing whatever to do with the current weather, but yesterday felt like spring break instead of back-to-work. And it isn't just here. Tornados in northern Illinois in January?!?!? I can hardly imagine such a thing, probably because the last time anything like that happened was before I was born. I sure hope Edwards Apple Orchard is able to recover from the damage - in addition to excellent apples and cider, they have some of the best cider donuts ever.

Meanwhile, the benign side of springtime is almost on display here. The snowdrops were just showing a few pointy green leaves last week, but now the flower buds are clearly visible. Pictures later - it's still dark as I type this. Those earlier sunrises will be very welcome.

Labels: astronomy, seasons, snowdrops, weather

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Earliest Sunset and Cool Software

Later sunsets starting tomorrow!

Around this time of year I'm intensely interested in the motions of the stars and planets - most particularly the Big Star without which none of us would be gardening. It's only a couple of weeks until the winter solstice and longer days, but nature is kind (sometimes) and provides us with longer afternoons even before the solstice. I thought I knew when the earliest sunset of the year occurs, and that it occurs about December 8, but that turns out to be true only if you are located at about 40 degrees N latitude. For those further north, who I'm sure would be even happier to have longer afternoons, you'll have to wait a few more days. For those further south, you're enjoying later sunsets already.

I've recently discovered some amazing software. It's easily the most beautiful astronomy desktop program I've ever seen. So it costs big bucks, right? Wrong. It's free. And open source. My only complaint, and it's not that big a deal to me, is that it's a wee bit programmer-y. If you're running it on Windows, you'll see something that looks like a DOS window open and close before the program itself opens, and once the program is open the controls are not quite intuitive (to me). There's a basic control bar at the bottom of the screen, but certain functions require keyboard commands, and you have to remember what those are, or open the help screen for a list. But, hey, you can't beat the price, and did I mention that the display is beautiful? If you're even the least bit curious about the stars and planets, go to stellarium.org and check it out.

Labels: astronomy

Friday, November 09, 2007

Miscellany and Oddities

I should amend the title of the previous post to "I Was Half-Right". The subfreezing temperatures were enough to kill off the least cold-hardy plants, but the tough ones are left standing. This introduces oddity #1: A 90% frozen Alternanthera with one perfectly fine branch. The only thing I can think of is that the unfrozen branch was protected by some nearby zinnias, which then collapsed in a heap the morning after the freeze? Either that or there is some very strange microclimate stuff going on.

Today's pictures are from central Virginia, where I found the lettuce and spinach green and happy under a double layer of Agribon-19. On the way to the undercover greenery, I spotted oddity #2: one of my supposedly deer repellent plants - a nice little rosemary - was broken and chewed. Just last weekend I was admiring how nicely the 4 rosemarys anchored the corners of the potager. All spring and summer I fretted about how I was going to keep the deer away from the edibles, and all spring and summer they didn't bother much of anything. And now, when the tomatoes and peppers are frozen dead and gone, the critters come back to eat the "critter-proof" plants. I tell you, there's never a dull moment in gardening. Some of bronze fennel had the tops chewed off too. Apparently whoever did this was just tasting because the chewed-off pieces were left on the ground. BTW, something also chewed off the top of an Illicium earlier in the year - another reputed deer-proof plant.

There are foot-(hoof?)-prints all over the newly planted garlic beds too, but I can't see that anything was dug up. The soil is so sandy there that the prints are indistinct.

Maple leaves
from the November album
It's kind of a gray, ugly day today, but we have a bit of fall color in the woods, even though a lot of the leaves just turned brown and dropped during the drought. The black gums and sweet gums were pretty a few weeks ago and now have shed their leaves, but the wild blueberries and the maples are looking spectacular.

We've been busy lately and I've been neglecting my blog reading. I opened Google Reader this morning and found 150+ unread gardening posts. I'm almost hoping for a rainy weekend so I can sit around and drink tea and read blogs....

But then again, I need clear skies to look for Comet Holmes. Have you seen it? I didn't even know about it until this morning when I was blog surfing and found it on a birding blog, of all things. I started at A DC Birding Blog, where I learned that this year may bring large numbers of winter finches to feeders in the US. More on this later. From there, I read his Friday roundup, and went to check out the Harris's Sparrow on Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog. I noticed there a recent post on Comet 17P/Holmes. I think I need to set a timer to limit my internet time.

Anyhow, the reason I was interested in the winter finches was because yesterday I think I saw a small group of pine siskins in the tulip tree in front of the house. I've never seen a pine siskin before, so I'm not 100% sure, but they were streaky all over with wing bars and very pointy beaks. I didn't get a real good look. This site claims that they eat tulip tree seeds, and I think that's what they were doing, so it makes sense.

So in keeping with the season, my gardening activity is moving indoors to books, catalogs and the internet, and my outdoor activities have more to do with the sky than with the earth.

Labels: astronomy, birds, critters, frost, seasons

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Autumnal Icon

You know those old-time Halloween illustrations showing a witch silhouetted in front of a huge full moon? You'll get a chance to see a huge full moon later this week, but if you see a witch gliding in front of it I'd like to hear about it.

I swear the full moons are bigger in the midwest, but perhaps it's just the way it looks over the flat horizon there. I've read about the moon illusion, but it's more fun to just look at it and believe it's bigger when lower in the sky. However, this month's full moon (aka the Hunter's Moon) really is going to be larger. The moon makes its closest approach to Earth this calendar year very close to the time of the full moon.

So far, our autumn has been hardly distinguishable from summer. I'm not complaining (too much) but I'm ready to start cleaning up the garden and planting bulbs, and my weather cues tell me it's too soon for those tasks. Maybe the full moon will bring a change.

Labels: astronomy, moon

Friday, October 12, 2007

Great World Wide Star Count

Have you heard about the Great World Wide Star Count? Neither had I until last evening. There are only a few more days left to participate, but if you can find Cygnus then you can help. You don't really have to count stars, just match what you see in the sky to one of the images online.

If you don't think you can find Cygnus, I say you can (unless it's cloudy). For the first 35 or so years of my life, the only constellation I could find was the Big Dipper (and that's really an asterism, not a constellation). Then one morning, standing at the kitchen sink looking out the window, I noticed a bright star in the sky and thought I'd try to look it up. To my surprise, I was able to identify it as Sirius. I downloaded a shareware program to print sky maps, and began to learn the names of even more stars and constellations. And all this from my home in the light-polluted suburbs of northern Virginia. Stargazing is now one of my favorite fall activities; the weather isn't yet frigid, the skies are generally clear, the summer stars are still visible in the evening and the winter stars in the morning.

Anyway, nowadays there are many websites that will generate a sky map for your exact location and time. This is so much easier than trying to orient yourself with star maps in a book. Some suggestions:

Another source of really nice free charts, not as precise as the ones above but in nice printable PDF format, is skymaps.com.

And I just learned this morning of a neat Google maps application which provides geographic coordinates to 14 decimal places.

Now you're all set to get out this evening, or any evening through October 16, and be a citizen scientist.

Oops, forgot that some people reading this may be in the Southern Hemisphere. If you are, you get to look for Sagittarius instead of Cygnus. Sagittarius is even more fun, because it truly does look like a teapot. We can still see it low in the sky in the evenings here in Virginia.

Update, October 13: We had mostly clear skies last night, and I learned that our limiting magnitude here in the country is 5. I'll post the suburban value later.

Update, October 21: Using Your Sky at John Walker's site, I determined that the limiting magnitude at home in the northern Virginia suburbs is between 4 and 5, although closer to 4. For the Great World Wide Star Count, I reported it as 4.

Labels: astronomy

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Fungi, Flowers, Firmament

The tomato tide has turned, and I can get back to exploring the woods and fields.

Starting with the last rain (August 26), mushrooms began popping up everywhere. Ordinary-looking mushrooms, mushrooms that look like molded plastic foam, inverted mushrooms, and these storybook mushrooms. I haven't the faintest idea what any of these might be, and I don't intend to taste any of them, but I noticed that some of them had been gnawed on. And there was a kind of dried-porcini truffle-y odor about, but I don't know where it was coming from.

The woods' edge has surprised me with some very pretty wildflowers lately. This one is a beauty. Truly. It's called Virginia Meadow Beauty, and the entire plant is attractive. The opposite leaves with prominent veins form a very regular pattern; the fruit capsule is an interesting urn shape, and the bright yellow stamens/anthers are very striking against the soft magenta-pink petals. In another spot, grows her cousin - the Maryland Meadow Beauty. Not quite as pretty, perhaps, because the flowers are much lighter in color. Maryland seems more compact and bushier than Virginia, but that may be because my spouse weed-whacked Maryland earlier this year.

Then there's this thing. I know it's an Aureolaria (formerly Gerardia?), but I'm having a hard time getting the species. It's apparently quite tasty, because most of the leaves have been chewed off one of them, and also some of the flower stalks. I haven't gotten a really good picture of it yet, either, but this is an open flower that's fallen to the ground. This genus is said to be parasitic on the roots of white oak trees, but I'm wondering if it's more of a symbiotic relationship than parasitic. Need to do some reading about this.

A couple more woods' edge plants now in bloom are the very tiny Curtis' Milkwort and a Lobelia which may or may not be L. siphilitica. The inflorescence doesn't look as dense to me as the pictures I've seen of L. siphilitica, and some of these are very tall (close to 5 ft. where they're growing up through some small sweet gum trees). So I don't know yet, but I'll spend some time with the field guides and try to get a positive ID.

Up in the field, there are bright yellow billows of a Bidens, either aristosa or coronata, or maybe both. These were aflutter with butterflies yesterday, and they have the same honey fragrance that I've noticed in my 'Fireworks' goldenrod. There are patches of Eupatorium coelestinum or Blue Mist Flower, and nature provided a pretty combination with magenta legume that I've not identified.

Those are the wildflower highlights. Some of the tree leaves are starting to turn, but I don't want to talk about it yet.

We enjoyed our evening beverage last night by starlight. The Summer Triangle and Milky Way were high overhead, and I saw 3 shooting stars in about 20 minutes.

Labels: astronomy, fungi, wildflowers

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Summer Solstice

The morning of the day of the summer solstice began around 5, when the early birds started to chirp. The birds, of course, have no use for silly human numbers, such as 5, attached to astronomical events. The sun rises when it rises - time to start singing - what are the numbers for? For better or worse, those of us humans who have to participate in the global economy today know what the numbers are for. That's why I got such a kick out of this story - modern-day Michigan Druids are having their solstice celebration on Saturday when they have more time. Meanwhile, back at Stonehenge, a few people showed up and had a little party. And our friends in the southern hemisphere are happily looking forward to more daylight.

Me, I'm going to check to see if the wild St. John's Wort is blooming, then contribute to the economy about half a day, and then observe the solstice from a place of quiet contemplation:

Labels: astronomy, seasons

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Tangled Branches: Cultivated

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Lunar Eclipse: Yes!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Lunar Eclipse

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Venus and Jupiter

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Back to Work with Earlier Sunrises

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Earliest Sunset and Cool Software

Friday, November 09, 2007

Miscellany and Oddities

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Autumnal Icon

Friday, October 12, 2007

Great World Wide Star Count

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Fungi, Flowers, Firmament

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Summer Solstice