BethKatzPA

Orange-brown toad perched on rocks in front of a wooden board.

A toad. Its fluttering throat attracted my attention during a ceremony at camp.

Light pink blossom with deeper pink unbloomed spikes above it. Green flat leaves around the bottom.

May 31 - Rhododendron starting to bloom in my yard.

Fat black bee with white face. Bee is sitting on light green spiky grass. Bee is looking at camera.

May 29 - I didn’t know male Eastern Carpenter Bees have white faces.

Smucker (my congressman) wants to be able to revisit the issue. So he voted against it.

Large airy tree with farmland behind it. Adult bald eagle perched in tree with wings slumped drying.

May 16 - Bald Eagle drying off after the brief, but heavy, downpour. This is close to the nest on Letort Road about a half-mile from my house.

Flower with textured maroon petals and a small golden center

Pawpaw flower

May 4 - Turtle porn in Lancaster County Central Park.

A dandelion seedhead is backlit by the sun. The sunlight is diffracted into a multitude of colors that seem arranged in a spiral.

April 28 - Dandelion seas head diffracts sunlight. Seems to be a spiral.

Box turtle stretches its orange neck high. It appears to be an old turtle with its brown shell having many rings. It stands on brown leaves and dirt with scattered flat rocks. Its eye isn’t visible; is it missing?

April 20 - Box Turtle in Clark Nature Preserve, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Unusual green plant with purple stripes on stem. The pulpit part is green and curls up and over the vertical flower part. The pulpit part is called a spathe. The flower part is a spadix. It supposedly looks sort of like a preacher giving a sermon. Cool spring flower.

April 17 - Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

Red Columbine flower. It has red outer petals with tails out the back. There are yellow parts sticking out the front of the tubular flower.

April 16 - Red Columbine at Shenk’s Ferry.

I am advocating for due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia as well as everyone else our government is trying to hold indefinitely and illegally.

Light blue five-petaled flower with raindrops on the petals. Greenery in background.

April 11 - Wet day. This phlox is wet. We need the rain, but it’s not helping our moods. … Writing alt-text is a skill I’m enjoying practicing. Maybe one day I’ll be good at it.

Yellow dandelion flower with very wide stem and multiple flower heads.

April 10 - Fasciated Dandelion in my yard. It is “damaged” creating a wide stem with multiple flower heads.

Light frost outlines leaves and flowers. Closed dandelion at the bottom. Purple violets at the top. Heart-shaped violet leaves have delicate white spikes around their edges. Near the top, some underlying notched dandelion leaves have longer spikes of hoar frost. The image is mostly green with one yellow flower at the bottom and scattered purple flowers. One purple violet flower at the top is like a bell or perhaps an elf cap.

April 9 - Very scattered frost in my yard this morning.

The rich and powerful pit us against each other hoping to hoard even more wealth and power. They never have enough.

Two native brown Mason bees mating (small male on top of larger female) on a plant with frilly green leaves and many tube-like yellow flowers - yellow corydalis.

Mating native Mason bees.

Partial rainbow arch over field with house in distance. Scattered cumulus clouds in blue sky.

29 March 2025 - Surprise rainbow this morning. Was driving with sun behind me. Didn’t know we would hit 30 seconds of light rain in a few minutes. Crested a hill and saw the rainbow. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA.

States should charge Musk with animal cruelty.

But they forget the “love one another” and peacemaking.

Collage of 5 photos: Moon at midnight pre-eclipse through the skylight. Bright light reflection is round. Moon is still bright at 2am and has moved relative to the skylight. Note that the light source reflection is now crescent shaped. 2:11am. This zoomed in view of the Moon shows only some of it is still lit. But it isn’t an accurate view of what I was seeing with binoculars. 2:18am with phone channeling its inner Van Gogh. The lit portion was less than this, but you get the impression of what we were seeing with red and bright. 2:31am during totality. David and I checked on it through about 3am and it got dimmer but always seemed to have some part that was slightly “lit”.

Collage of my photos from 3/14/2025 lunar eclipse.
Skylight in my bedroom, so I could be in my pajamas. I’m reminded that the bright light reflection in the camera is light source shaped. Alt text describes photos.

Full double rainbow over a parking lot with sun reflected off a building’s windows.

March 5 - Beautiful rainbow observed by so many people.

Planets and moon in dark sky. Text labels beside them.

March 3 - Fit Jupiter, Moon, Venus, and Mercury into one frame by tilting the phone. Added labels.

Tall view of golden waning sunset with clouds. Crescent Moon high in the sky with bright Venus below it.

March 2 - Moon and Venus over Smoketown Airport. Mercury was behind the clouds every time I checked.

Mourning Cloak butterfly on dry grass.

Venus, Moon, and Mercury in sunset sky with labels.

March 1 - First butterfly is a Mourning Cloak. Lineup of planets and moon just after sunset.

Vertical sun pillar over recently set sun. Lots of orange light. Green field in foreground.

February 27 - Sun pillar at sunset. It was better than this, but I had to take picture through car window.

Bald eagle flying against blue sky above icy wide river.

Bald Eagle flying in front of island in icy wide river.

February 24 - Two separate eagles flew past us at the Turkey Hill overlook. I couldn’t choose which picture I liked most. Beautiful day to be outside.

Dark ominous clouds with dramatic rays of sunlight extending below them. Some of the rays are very bright. Mountains in the distance.

Even with dark clouds, there are rays of sunlight.
Be the sunlight. Help others be the sunlight.
Shine through and despite the clouds.

A puffy white cumulus clouds with many colors (pink, yellow, green, …) along its top edges. The small disc of the sun can be seen through the cloud. The top edge of the cloud has dark spikes of shadows on the sky above it.

February 21 - I like to look up. This cloud had Iridescent edges as well as dramatic shadows. You can see the sun’s disc through the cloud.