Nature | February 2026

 My favorite picture of this month's collection is the first picture of the Yucca seeds pod. 

This time of year is pretty brown outside. I found some oak galls on an oak sapling. My sons had fun opening them and finding a little wasp pupa (I missed my chance to get a picture of the pupa.)

There are a lot of dried Yucca stalks around our lot. I thought the seed pods looked interesting from these angles.

There are a variety of birds that are active now. I hear woodpeckers in the mornings again. One morning I went outside to jump on our trampoline and found it riddled with these seeds and bird droppings. I deduced that the birds must sit in the branches above and snack and poop out these seeds. I admit the seeds were quite annoying underfoot while they looked pretty interesting. After I had some pictures I looked up some references to find out that these are Hackberry tree seeds.

The explanation for what happened with January's nature pictures is that I was able to capture some beautiful pictures of a gorgeous sunrise when we were in Canada. The morning was so memorable that I wanted to commemorate it with a few verses of poetry. I worked for a whole week on the poem to go with the pictures. After dedicating so much time to the poem I wanted a little recognition so I found a few literary magazines to submit my poem. The catch is that they don't want the poem to be published anywhere else before submission. I didn't want to publish the pictures on my blog without the poem and I can't include the poem until I hear back from the magazines. I don't really expect to get published but I can hope. 

Ice and Sky Book Review

 

This is the 2nd book that I've read/listened to this year. (I listened to the audio version of this book.)

Realm of Ice and Sky by Buddy Levy is all about attempts to reach the North Pole by air, both with dirigibles and airplanes. This book covers 4 major air expeditions. Starting with newspaper man, Wellman, in 1907. Wellman had no experience but confidently believed that the most feasible method to reach the North Pole would be by air ship, and he wanted to be on the cutting edge of exploration. Many people at the time (and even today) didn't take him seriously. The "real" explorers saw his efforts as a publicity stunt. Levy on the other hand insists that Wellman's efforts advanced air ship technology and opened the minds of those "real" explorers to the possibilities of the dirigible. Wellman was serious and his name should be remembered among the "real" explorers according to Levy.

  The book starts to get really interesting for me when Roald Amundsen enters the scene. I found Roald Amundsen fascinating! Thankfully, I had had no prior exposure to Amundsen so everything about him read like a fictional tale. It helped that he lived an unbelievably adventurous life with a generous amount of stoicism. He seemed a little extra-human, if you know what I mean. Roald Amundsen made many trips into arctic and antarctic regions. He dreamed of going to the polar regions as a young person after reading grueling accounts from ground breaking explorers that turned out to be his forbearers. Somehow the suffering appealed to him. 

Realm of Ice and Sky covers Roald Amundsen's attempt on the North Pole by plane (1925) and then by a Zeppelin air ship (1926.)

 The last expedition in the book is Umberto Nobile's flight to the pole in a Zeppelin (1928) and (spoiler alert) crash and subsequent rescue. Nobile had been part of Roald Amundsen's expedition when he reached the North Pole by Zeppelin. The two had had a bitter falling out after that trip. Even after all those hard feelings Amundsen set out to rescue Nobile after hearing of the disaster. I was so happy to hear this. But, as the story kept playing and more and more details where related about how things were going for the stranded Nobile and party, and the different rescue envoys, and radio messages between everyone, it became very obvious that updates from Amundsen were not mentioned. I couldn't wait. I opened my Google browser and typed in, "Roald Amundsen."...... (BIG SPOILER) His date of death is listed as June 1928 Bering Sea. No! Right then I wished that Realm of Ice and Sky had been a work of fiction and Roald Amundsen could have stayed alive. But real life doesn't work that way and Levy had to write the facts.

 The conclusion of the book goes over the reemerging use of lighter-than-air crafts. We may see more travel and research done by dirigible in the future.

 Overall, I enjoyed this book even though I am generally not a fan of ice and cold. The story is crafted in a very compelling fashion and kept me interested the whole way through.

Five (Not) In Love Haikus

Number 1.

Floats, folds, tangles up

Clings to itself not to my plate

Convenient? No.

Number 2.

Glad wrap. Saran wrap.

More like sad wrap. Pathetic 

Excuse to ease life.

Number 3.

At my fingertips 

Weather, family, and news

Scrolling, scrolling on

Number 4.

Connected to all

Necessity or demise 

Notifications

Number 5.

Jesus said love them

But she has a wrong yard sign

He mows on my side

Commentary 

Frontier Poetry is hosting a themed Haiku contest. The haiku are supposed to be about something with which you have a love/hate relationship. 

Yesterday I sat down and wrote these haiku,.. haikus,... (I don't know the correct plural form) to go along with Frontier's contest. (Because the contest has a $10 entry fee I am just doing these for fun not for a real entry.)

The first thing that I could think of that I love/hate is cling wrap. That stuff is so annoying! But it can serve a very useful purpose. I wrote two haiku about cling wrap.

The second thing that I could think of that I love/hate is my phone. It's a really useful tool but can also be a huge time suck and productivity drag. Haiku 3+4 are about the smart phone.

The last haiku is the most thoughtful. It is about neighbors. Jesus said to love our neighbors but I don't always want to. I am pointing out a hypocrisy of Christians that we let little things bother us and keep us from treating our neighbors with love.

I wrote 5 haiku(s) because that is how many you can enter in the contest under one entry.

The contest is open through Feb. 15, 2026. You still have time to enter. The cash prizes are pretty good!

Do you love cling wrap or hate it? 

What is the first thing that comes to mind as something you both love and hate?

"Chicken Broth, Stat!"

Here is a quick idea that someone of my readership may also find handy.

I was out of chicken broth and needed some to make tomato soup the other day. I had this idea to use some partially thawed chicken leg quarters to make chicken broth in the soup while I cooked the soup.

I took the skin off a chicken leg quarter and cut it into a few pieces.

After I sweat the onions I added some celery seed to stand in for celery flavor that would have been in chicken broth and a little poultry herb blend.

Then the chicken pieces went in and simmered a couple hours with the soup.

Where the soup called for chicken broth I just added water and it turned into chicken broth while the soup cooked.

The gelatin that comes from the chicken adds a very comforting viscosity and mouth feel that makes for an exceptionally delicious tomato soup.

This turned out to be a great hack and the chicken we removed to eat later had a very good flavor.