Yorktown (4/23/2014)

We had dinner at the Water Street Grill in Yorktown last night (see my Yelp review here).  It was my wife’s birthday and we had a nice dinner with her father.  My review of the restaurant would be the same, except that the service was a little slow; the place appears to be understaffed; I expect that the owners are trying to save money on wages, and hire the bare minimum, not to get bad reviews.  The food was good, and the beer selection is great, but having to wait 20 minutes for a beer was a bit much.  If the owners don't watch it, it might become a victim of its own success.

We went for a brief walk along the Yorktown waterfront after dinner.  It was breezy, and the river was angry.  Being around sundown, I decided to test my cell phone camera and took these two photos in the night detection mode, and I was somewhat impressed.  It gives you a great rendition of what it looked like out there.  A group of young adults were playing some medieval game with swords, shields and jousting spears (or whatever you call these things) in the field where we usually have a farmers market.   Interesting to see and just a wonderful evening to be out and about.

Yorktown (4/19/2014)



This is what I jokingly called leopard water.  Early spring we have a lot of pollen, and in particular the loblolly pines are going crazy.  Everything out-doors (and in-doors) is covered with a yellow dust.  In the morning you have to run your windshield wipers to be able to see.  Rainwater runoff becomes a stream of yellow water.  This is the only place where I have lived that I have seen it; but then I only lived in North Carolina in the fall.  I have many pictures of the ponds out back with a yellow film on them or even rings of yellow pollen on the trees in the pond that are left there once water retreats.

It was raining outback the day I took this picture and the solid sheen of yellow pollen was broken up in this leopard type color.  Really neat.  You can see the water drops.

 

 

Richmond (4/17/2014)

Had a great walk during my lunch half hour today.  I walked down to the James over 7^th street; and once at the river I went right instead of my usual left.  Near the Belvidere Bridge I walked up the hill to the Virginia War Memorial  and then over 2^nd to Main and then back to the office.  A nice invigorating 35 minute walk.  My FitBit told me that I climbed as much as 20 flights of stairs, just what the doctor ordered I guess.  Took some nice pictures of the river etc, but this one stood out to me.  I just like the colors, the composition and just the feel of it.  It was taken near 2^nd and Main.  They are paving all over town for the collegiate world bicycling championships in early May.

Library of Virginia in Richmond (4/16/2014)

An article in the newspaper got me steaming today.  It was about how conservative USA (read Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers) are trying to stop the use of alternative energy and selling back of home generated energy back to the power companies.  Honestly, I think the newspaper was trying to fill some space, since this appears to be old news.  A simple search for Koch and renewable energy or solar energy shows their opposition to it for at least the past two or three years.  Guess they don’t like the government subsidies and the fact that there are laws requiring energy companies to buy back the excess energy that is generated at home.  I’m really nor that sure why they are against renewable energy.  Is it affecting their income as share holders in energy firms?  Or is it a principle, in that, energy conservation has been championed by more liberal thinkers and democrats, so it must automatically be bad and opposed?  I am still confused why those people who want to protect our children from a future deficit, have no problem in saddling those same kids up with a warmer planet, more polluted air, energy shortages, rising energy costs and a higher cost of living. 

So I was still steaming during my lunchtime walk in the sun (it was a great day to harvest solar energy).  It was abnormally chilly today, but it actually felt invigorating.  Walking up the hill at the capitol I noticed a saying on the Library of Virginia: “Reason and free inquiry are the only free agents against errors, …”  This saying is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, and it rang so true this afternoon.  We hopefully will use reason and inquiry before accepting everything that we are told, be it from conservative or liberal pundits. 

In full disclosure; I am the proud owner of two solar arrays that I will be installing on my sailboat, partially as an experiment, but also to be more self sufficient and less dependent on an outlet to charge the batteries on my boat.

Richmond (4/14/2014)

It was nice and warm in Richmond.  After helping a friend load her car with her personal items after she quit our place of work and after hearing of the death of one of my wife's close relatives in Norway, I decided to go for a walk to clear my head.  As I often do, I end up at #Starbucks, and outside was this couple with a huge Great Dane.  The animal was so friendly and wanted to great everybody that walked by, naturally all the business men in suites and business women in fancy dresses.  Funny to sit there and watch.  This is one of my favorite Starbucks because there is such a great opportunity to people watch; moreover it is only a ten minute walk from my office and a great place for a break.

Yorktown (4/13/2014)

It was absolutely beautiful on Sunday, and we decided to go for a walk with the dogs in Yorktown proper.  We parked up in the higher part and already when we opened the car door we were welcomed by the sound of bells ringing from the Baptist Church.  I assume it’s a large speaker system that puts the sound out over the village, but still it set a good atmosphere for Sunday morning.  When we got to the river (around 9:30), people were already staking their claim on the beach.  Also there were the guys with their metal detectors, looking for the things yesterday’s crowds had lost in the sand.  We had a great walk along the water and back up to the car.  In all we walked more than 7000 steps according to the fitbit that I wear, which is pretty darn good since my goal is 10,000 steps.  As I tell people, I am trying to get my girlish figure back, but it is a struggle, especially after a weekend of gluttony and wine tasting.

Yorktown is full with older buildings some of which are owned by the park service and others by individual.  There are also not so old homes, and even some older apartment buildings.  It is a nice combination, and a pleasure to walk.   The photo here is from the Nelson House, which dates from 1730 (here is another reference for the Nelson House).  It is a nice historic building that gives you a flavor of the importance of Yorktown in its hay days.  It’s amazing how fleeting some of these things such as fame and fortune can be, and only some will be kept in our memories forever.  People build monuments to themselves, such as ex-governor Nelson who seems to have built the largest house on Yorktown, or maybe the largest surviving house in Yorktown.  Guess we still do this in modern time, but I assume that most of the McMansions here in the US that are stick built, will eventually deteriorate, and few will remain as monument to their owners.  This is so very unlike the Europeans who built with brick and stones and where you still see many old buildings.

Now in modern time we have other means of leaving a legacy or our own monuments.  Some do it with the (non-biodegradable) trash they throw out of their car or fill the landfills with (my wife and I generate less than 2 bags of trash each week and compost all our food waste).  Others do it by writing, blogging or maybe even through things like facebook, twitter, or any other electronic way.  It should be interesting to see what will remain 100 or more years from now.  I personally hope that some of my writing (a few book chapters on scientific items), this blog, my photos on flickr or even facebook will give me some form of immortality.

Oh well, enough rambling.  We walked back by the beach an hour later, we were tired; the dogs had been swimming in the river and were wet.  Metal detector guys were gone and there was nothing left for future archeologists.  A lot more people were on the beach, ready to enjoy our first really warm day in the sun.

 

Yorktown (4/10/2014)

A picture from near where I live.  Yorktown is somewhat of a tourist destination.  I always feel that when people are bored with Williamsburg and Jamestown the might as well go and visit Yorktown.  Actually, I think there are probably more "real" historic buildings in Yorktown than those other places.  This picture is of the Grace Episcopal Church.  The church was first built in 1697 and has been a landmark in the area ever since.  It is a wonderful place to walk with a great grave yard (cemetery) and a nice view over the York River.
Yorktown was busy again on the first day that it was warm.  The pub was full and there were lots of walkers and bikers out there.  A nice vibrant place to spend a summer evening.  On weekends it is a zoo down there.  The beach is very popular and it is almost loved to death,  It is crowded, with a lot of swimmers, sunbathers and just walkers.  A fun place to hang out.  Going to work to Richmond every day, I tend to drive by the beach at least one of those times.  I just love the views of the water, the bridge and the boats out on the river.  It's a good place to live and visit.

Home (4/9/2014)

My travel schedule has lightened up somewhat, so I will be posting fewer pictures of the state and more from around what we call the Virginia Lower Peninsula and Richmond.  My travel schedule will pick up in earnest around the middle of June.  But it is so nice to be home and lay my head down on my own pillow for the next month or so, especially now spring is just around the corner and it is time to work on my sailboat and our home, in particular the garden.

It is also good to telework and every time you look up from your computer screen you see the yard, the birds on the feeder (maybe not the cowbird that is feeding right now) and even sometimes a deer under the birdfeeder.  I guess it should not be unusual to see cowbirds and deer at our feeders.  We live on the edge of a large forest, and cowbirds are edge species.  They are nest predators, meaning that they lay their eggs in the nests of unsuspecting birds.  It is kind of sad and funny at the same time to watch a tufted titmouse feed a much larger young baby cowbird, thinking it is their offspring.  Cowbirds do not go too far into the woods and it is the forest fragmentation caused by our increasing urbanization that creates so much forest edge.  As a result the cowbirds are slowly replacing all the songbirds that depend on the interior of the forests such as vireos and warblers, by laying their eggs in the nest of these forest birds; something they could not do (or did not dare) in the past.  It is the same thing with the deer; they are running out of room and food in the woods and are therefore invading the neighborhoods at night, eating plants and spreading ticks (lyme) at night.

Sitting here at the dining room table I can see the sassafras and the flowering quince in bloom; redbud is about to start, as is the dogwood.  I think by the weekend they will be at their best.  Soon it will also be snowing pine pollen, which is amazing in our area.  I am wondering if any of our plants did not make it through our unusually harsh winter, only time will tell.  This picture is of the quince in our bag yard, and you can probably see the dogwood starting to bloom.  Thanks goodness the deer don’t like the quince; that is very different from the azaleas which they strip. 

Richmond (4/8/2014)

My lunch time walk in Richmond took me too capitol square.  It was a nice afternoon and the beds were freshly planted with pansies.  The tulips had not yet started blooming.  It was nice to see the crowd on the capitol.  There were people enjoying their lunch time, the regular walkers (including me), and a lot tour groups mostly consisting of school children.  It is one of my favorite lunchtime destinations, with grassy lawns, plants and sculptures.  Even the capitol and the governor’s mansion give of a vibe of history, the capitol having been designed by Thomas Jefferson (1788) and the mansion by Alexander Parris (1813).  I used the HDR setting on my cell phone camera to take this picture.

 

 

George Washington's shovel (4/4/2014)

I live on the edge of the Yorktown Battlefield section of the Colonial National Historic Park, and often when I walk the woods and see a big tree, I wonder if George Washington peed against that specific tree.  I sometimes think the same thing when I take a leak in the woods behind my house (just like every guy does at various occasions).  This is absolutely ridiculous, I know, since none of the trees in these woods date as far back as George, or the battle of Yorktown.  But it is still fun to fantasize about this.  The other day while digging in the vegetable garden I found a really old leather shoe (at least 20 or so years old), and we immediately coined it “George Washington’s shoe.” 

The woods here are full of redoubts, or what I would almost call trenches, and every so now and then I think you can see someone trying to looks for artifacts.  Not long ago there was a gentleman with a copy of an old map looking for an old encampment.  This is highly illegal but it does happen.

During my walk this morning I saw this somewhat familiar piece of a shovel laying near the trail.  We have seen it before, but it was foggy and it just caught my eye.  Again the thought came up that this must have been George Washington’s shovel.

Wormley Creek, Yorktown (4/2/2014)

Having a few moments to spare, I decided to drive through the Colonial National Park today.  This photograph was taken at the dam that goes over Wormley Creek.  Supposedly there was a dam at that location in the 1700s and it featured in the Independence war.  Just an idyllic picture and a nice place to visit by car, bike, or foot.

There was a biked who appeared to be feeding the swans.  As I said idyllic, were it not that swans are in invasive species in our area and push out a lot of the native water birds.  Being a darn biologist, I can not look at these swans just for their beauty, but I always have to bring in mind that they are out of their place.  Kind of a shame that these elegant, stately birds are actually a pest.

Rain (3/29/2014)

It was a wet weekend here in eastern Virginia.  The ponds are full again, and with the rising temperatures, the frogs are out calling for mates.  When I teach my classes I always remind people that nature is about a few things.

First of course is sex, or shall we call it procreation.  That is why all those frogs and salamanders are calling.  It is why the birds sing and the plants flower.  They want to procreate and continue their species as is or maybe as they slowly evolve.

Nature it is also very parsimonious.  This is one of my favorite words, it means stingy/cheap.  Being somewhat older now, I finally understand why my two best classes in college were biology and economics, and I understand why I specialized during my Ph.D. studies in physiological ecology.  It all is a game of supply and demand; putting in as little investment as possible to get the biggest return.  Nature does not waste. 

I think here is where we humans diverge from nature, we waste a lot, and we have sex purely for pleasure (in addition to procreation).  I often wonder if this will be our eventual downfall.  While sex without procreation is fine, there are still groups of people that have more than 2 children (note that you only need two children to replace father and mother on this world when they die).  Having more than two would almost be irresponsible; but of course there are groups that only have one child or none.  Our waste is something else.  We are accumulating it everywhere; we are drowning in our waste (including greenhouse gasses).  I worked with pigs that were kept in a big run, and they did their thing in one corner and kept the rest pretty clean.  I hear that horses do the same thing.  We humans are trashing our planet; which is unsustainable.

Anyway, of my soap box, this picture was taken on a wet Saturday morning.  What struck us was how dark the bark is and how strongly the moss stood out that lives on the bark of the trees.  An amazing contrast, worth taking a picture of.