Fun With Frogs: a Froggy Sampler

 Updated September 1, 2021

Dear Readers,

We really hoped we wouldn’t ever need to do another announcement like this, but the same issues that plagued us before the Spring Equinox have revisited us just before the Autumn Equinox: climate and weather events, ongoing drought in our area, ongoing economic fallout from the pandemic, unforeseen breakages and repair issues, and health problems that result from our advancing ages — all even more complicated by continued restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic, thanks to the rise of the Delta variant mutation.

So far, we are all more or less okay – any episode of the national news will show you a lot of people with far bigger problems than ours – but it takes an awful lot of time, effort, money, and contingency planning to stay that way. As a result, our publication schedule has once again taken a hit; and it may again, before everyone adjusts to the “new normal.”

So, once again we plan to start back up with a little celebration of the Equinox, and of Autumn celebrations, sometime in the next week or so. Enjoy, and stay tuned.

J.D., Annake’s Garden Gnome

 

"Once Upon a Time......  (Isn't that the way all good stories begin?) a large fish with wide, bony fins was washed up on a narrow beach.  Or perhaps it climbed out of the water to escape a larger fish that was trying to eat it.  It could haul itself out of the water because its large fins had numerous hard,  stiff bones.  It had a lung, so it could breathe the thin air.  (Fish much like it still live in our oceans as coelacanths and lungfish.) Perhaps it pulled itself further up the beach and looked around.  There wasn't much to see — some shallow pools with blue-green algae in them.  Perhaps some lichens on a rock.  After a time it felt safe and returned to the water.

Australian Lungfish

But during the next fifty million years or so fish of its kind, called lobed-finned fishes, hauled themselves out of the water and visited the beaches.  Fins became feet, lungs expanded, eyesight improved, skin toughened.  Some of the fish came to the beaches and never returned to the sea.  They weren't fish any more.   They were something new — amphibians. They conquered the world of the Devonian Period from about 419 to 357 million years ago.

Fossil of an early amphibian

They introduced a new body form with front and hind legs, toes (some of which became fingers), bigger brains, better eyes — the list goes on and on.  After new modifications, like eggs with shells, there were reptiles.  With warm blood and arms which became wings, there were birds.  Still more modifications produced mammals.  So, if you meet a frog or toad, you might thank it for all the things amphibians did that shaped the world.  But don't shake its hand. That might poison you.

Is this a frog or a toad?

What is the difference between frogs and toads?  The biggest difference is that they belong to two totally different families.  Actually, their similarities outnumber their differences, but true frogs have the letters RANA at the beginning of their scientific names and toads have the letters BUFO before theirs.  Both have many species which are found on all the continents except Antarctica.  From a distance they look much the same.  All have wide heads, long legs which straighten behind them when they leap, and two "arms" at the front of their bodies.  Both lay their eggs in or close to water.  Both eat insects, worms, spiders, slugs and small fish, which they catch with their long, sticky tongues.  Both are pretty much solitary except in mating season.  Most are colored and patterned with some kind of camouflage, but bright colors like red or yellow or black advertise that they are poisonous — even lethally so.

...And this is the other one!

So how do they differ?  True frogs have moist or smooth skin, while true toads have dry, rough skins and warts all over their bodies.  Frogs have teeth in their upper jaws, but toads don't have teeth.  Frogs have longer hind legs than toads do.  Frogs' eyes stick out further.  Frogs lay eggs in clusters, while toads lay eggs in long strings.  Most frogs live in streams or ponds, although a few live in grassy areas.  Toads live on land and like gardens and shady patches.   Toads sleep during the day, but frogs may be active both day and night. One of the tiniest of toads, the male fire-belly toad will lie perfectly still on its back, showing its colorful underside, with its front feet over its eyes suppressing its breathing so that it appears dead. It also secretes a poisonous fluid which causes burns and an offensive smell. Although most toads are solitary like frogs, some kinds gather together in groups to hibernate together.  By far the most interesting thing about toads to me is the fact that some female toads give birth to live toadlets!

Frogs have played a part in art and writing for centuries.  Think of fairy tales like The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm.  In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, they signaled fertility, because millions of them were born after the yearly flooding of the Nile river when crops could be planted and harvested.  Heqet was the goddess of that fertility and was depicted with a frog's head.  In Lower Egypt the god Hapi was dressed in papyrus plants and attended by frogs.  Aesop wrote a fable about a frog that tried to blow itself up to the size of an ox.  Aristophanes wrote a comic play called The Frogs.  One of our most popular American stories is The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain.

Statue of Heqet

The oldest known statue carved of a frog is dated at about 3,000 B.C. (BCE). Japanese painter Getsuju is known for a painting of a regal-looking, long-suffering frog putting up with the mischief of a mouse.  The people of ancient Peru often showed frogs in their art.  Josiah Wedgwood made a large set of china for Catherine the Great of Russia that featured a royal crest with a frog.  Frogs appear on ads for various companies and products, both in print and on the air.  And who doesn't love Kermit?

Marketing on a biscuit (cookie) tin

Here are some fun things to do to celebrate frogs:

1) Play a word game — Give all the players paper and pencils. Have a dictionary handy to settle arguments.  Have a time limit, but be generous: this game can go on for quite a while.  Make a definite rule whether proper names may be used or not. The ideas is to write down as many words of four or more letters that contains the letters FROG in any order.  Here are some samples: forge, forage, forget, forgery, refrigerator.  Once the game has ended and any squabbles have been settled by the dictionary, give out simple prizes for longest list, longest word, most interesting list, most scholarly list, etc. Give duplicate prizes for ties.  (As you may have noticed, the same game can be played with TOAD.)

2) Make frog hand puppets or stuffed bean bags.

Frog puppet by Annake

3) "Feed the Frog a Fly" —  This is a take-off on "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and requires some preparation. You will need a bulletin board or the side of a large, sturdy cardboard box.  Color and cut out a large frog to put on the bulletin board or draw it directly on the box.  It can be realistic or cartoonish, but should be LARGE. If you are artistic (or have a large format printer), try something like the design below.  Make a set of paper or poster board "flies" — one for each player. Number them or make each one a different color.  Push a thumbtack through the center of each "fly".  Blindfold each player and have them try to pin their "fly" to the frog's body. Duplicate prizes for all who succeed.  Perhaps a special one for whoever gets closest to the frog"s "stomach"?

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

4) For the older set — devise some version of "Frog Golf", "Frog Basketball", "Frog Bowling", or "Frog Pool Polo". Let the kids work on the rules with you, but be safety conscious and have at least one "referee" with a loud whistle!

I became fascinated with some frogs of a very different kind when we lived in Panama. These are the poison arrow frogs, so-called because native peoples used their venom to fashion poisoned darts for hunting.  They are small frogs that live in the tops of rainforest trees.  Many have vivid colors which warn predators that they are not to be eaten.  What fascinated me was the extreme lengths they go to to provide for and protect their youngsters.  You can see several species of these frogs embroidered on my shirt.

In some species the eggs are laid in a damp spot on the ground.  When the tadpoles hatch out, they wiggle onto their waiting father's back. The father caries them high into the trees, often making a climb that is more than 500 times the height of his body length.  He often passes pools of rainwater that are close for more distant ones.  Some fathers search to find areas under bromeliads, which release water that flows down the tree trunks into the pools. The tadpoles are left in pools far apart. This may keep them from later mating with their own brothers and sisters, or it may make sure they don't have to compete with each other for resources. In some cases the fathers take insects to their offspring and feed them.

In other poison species the mother lays only a few widely-spaced eggs at a time in pools formed by the leaves of native plants When the tadpoles hatch, she returns to each pool every few days and lays an unfertilized egg to feed the baby.  She continues to do this for months until the little frogs are ready to leave their pools and start life on their own. In the meantime, Mom has slipped tiny doses of the poison used by their species into the eggs.  By the time the young frogs leave their pools, they are fully protected.

Some species of true frogs grow to considerable size and are called bullfrogs. In areas of the country where there are no bullfrogs, their place is taken by another large species of frog. The hind limbs of many of these species are considered a delicacy and are eaten in France and other European countries. They are also eaten in the USA, especially in southern states.  But, considering the disappearance of so many frog species, many environmentalists are working to curb this practice to conserve species.  Because of their dependence on water for survival, frogs are among the first kinds of animals to disappear from climate changes.  They are an Early Warning System to warn us of serious environmental problems.

We hope you have had a "hopping" good time with our froggy friends.  Here are some links to recent articles about other fascinating frogs, including:
    • The world’s largest frog (and again here);
    • A see-through frog;
    • A “zombie” frog;
    • A frog that lives in desert sand dunes.

Enjoy!

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Arbor Day 2020

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See more info at end of this post.

Aspens  (photo by J.D.)

National Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday in April in the United States, where the idea was first proposed by Julius Sterling Morton in the 1870's. Morton was a Nebraska newspaper editor, a very successful farmer, and a statesman. He was very respected as an agriculturist. Morton loved trees, but Nebraska was not really rich in native trees, so he planted many trees on his estate. He came up with the idea for an Arbor Celebration and got the backing of other influential people. The first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska on April 10, 1872. Morton's followers planted an estimated one million trees in Nebraska.

"Other holidays repose upon the past; Arbor Day proposes for the future."

J. Sterling Morton

The day became a Nebraska state holiday in 1885, the date changed to April 22 to honor Morton’s birthday. By the 1920's, each state had also passed a law establishing a state Arbor Day. These are celebrated on different days in each state. Trees are planted for these celebrations, so the dates depend on the climate in each state. In 1970, President Richard Nixon proclaimed a national Arbor Day on the last Friday of April each year. This year National Arbor Day falls on April 24th. Morton's former estate and lodge are now Arbor Lodge State Historical Park. Nebraska's state tree is the Cottonwood.

Blue spruce

All of the states in the United States have a State Tree (some have more than one).  In addition to State Trees, the U.S. National Tree is the mighty Oak and the District of Columbia claims the Scarlet Oak. Our Colorado's State Tree is the Colorado Blue Spruce.

What Is Deforestation?

Deforestation is the cutting down of forests to make way for farmland, pastureland, building cities, logging for lumber, and mining. It also happens when fires in the forest get out of control, or when there is an infestation of insects or diseases from some other part of the world for which the forest has no immunity.

Here are some disturbing facts about deforestation:

• Forests currently cover about 30% of the land, but scientists fear that 100 years from now there will be none left!
• One and a half acres of forest worldwide is cut down every second!
• That means 90 acres are cut down every minute. That's 20 football fields! Multiply that 90 acres by 60 and you get 5,400 acres per hour. Multiply that number by 24 to see how much forest is lost every day
  
• Deforestation contributes heavily to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is because trees absorb carbon dioxide to make their food and to grow. In return, they produce oxygen and release it into the air. Carbon dioxide is a dangerous "greenhouse gas" and adding it to the atmosphere raises temperatures worldwide. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air today is higher than it has been in 3 million years.
  
• Trees help to clear the air of pollution. People in large cities were wearing masks outdoors to protect themselves from pollution for years before the coronavirus epidemics began.
• Deforestation also contributes to soil erosion because tree roots keep soil from eroding. Loss of trees has made floods more devastating because so much topsoil is washed away. That also means that substances like fertilizer are washed into coastal waters, poisoning ocean plants and animals.

  

  Endangered lowland gorilla, photo by J.J.

• The majority of Earth's endangered animals live wholly or partially in forests.
• The tropical rain forests were once called "the lungs of the Earth" because of all the carbon dioxide they kept out of the atmosphere and all of the oxygen they produced. But rain forests are disappearing faster than other forests.
• Many life-saving medicines, including cancer-fighting drugs, have come from species found in rain forests. Many more remain to be found — if they don't disappear before they are discovered. As many as 28,000 species will disappear at current rates worldwide by the year 2045.

  

  "And a Corby in a Pine Tree",  by J.J.

• Bird species here in North America are declining in alarming numbers. That means both numbers of birds and numbers of bird species.  Climate change is driving species to find cooler climates in order to survive. That may mean moving further north on the globe or moving to ever higher, cooler elevations. In either case, they may find these new habitats don't have good supplies of their natural foods. They may not find sufficient nesting materials to build nests that protect their eggs and baby birds. They may run into new predators. The fact that they have left their natural habitats may well mean that those habitats will suffer from increases in the populations of harmful insects and their larvae. We need to preserve existing trees and replant ones that have been lost.

 

What are some things that trees do for us besides affect air quality and climate change?

Do you like to put maple syrup on your pancakes and waffles? Maple syrup is made from the sap of sugar maple trees in the Spring during a time when the trees have come out of their winter dormancy and started producing fresh sap to carry nutrients throughout the tree. Read the labels carefully; there are a lot of "maple-flavored' syrups out there which cannot compare with the real thing!

Many of the fruits that we eat grow on trees. That is something you can teach small children when you serve any of these fresh, canned, or frozen: apple, apricot, avocado, cherry, date, fig, kumquat, lemon, lime, mango, olive, orange, papaya, peach, pear, plum, quince, tangelo, tangerine. Many other fruits are available and popular in other parts of the world.

The same thing is true of nuts, which are the seeds of many trees. These include: almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, hickory nuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pinon and other pine nuts, and walnuts (both black and English).  But the list does not contain peanuts, which are not nuts and don't grow on trees. Coconuts and almonds produce a good substitute for milk that lasts much longer in the refrigerator than cow's milk.

As I mentioned before, many medicines have been derived from trees and tree products, particularly those from the rain forests.

A major use of cut trees is for lumber and plywood.  Woods with particularly nice colors and/or patterns are used for furniture and decorative moldings. Most of the latter are hardwoods, rather than the softer evergreens. If you have some of these, take good care of them. They will become increasingly rare and far more expensive.

What can we do about some of these problems?

Forest's Edge, photo by J.J.

The obvious answers are 1) cause fewer trees to be cut down and 2) plant new trees. Let's look at both of those activities. A huge amount of wood is used to make paper. That is something we can do something about. Going paperless as much as possible can help. Recycling paper will definitely help.

Cloth shopping bags

Using cloth shopping bags and not choosing to buy items with a lot of unnecessary packaging are large steps in the right direction.

Try to set up a book and magazine exchange with friends and don't duplicate subscriptions. Let the children draw and color on the backs of paper that is printed on one side only.  Ask companies that send unwanted catalogs to you to remove your name from their mailing lists. Encourage your children to make art and craft projects with paper and cardboard.  Reuse cardboard boxes for mailing or compact storage. Crumpled or shredded paper is better packing material from an environmental standpoint than "packing peanuts" or plastic airbags.  Use greeting cards and pretty wrapping paper again for decoupage and collage projects.

Planting a tree

Now, about planting trees.  The best trees to plant are those which are native to your area or which have been bred to do well in your soil, water, and climate conditions.  Check out your state tree, for example. Our state tree is the Colorado blue spruce and it is available here — baby ones are even free from the Arbor Day Foundation.  But you might want something that is more multi-purpose. Consider fruit trees. They don't take up as much space as shade trees, they grow fast, they provide you with valuable food, and the leftovers will make birds and squirrels happy.  In either case, read planting and care directions carefully and follow them.  You can also volunteer to plant trees in state and national parks or in areas where trees have been destroyed by wildfires or flash floods.  Check with the authorities about opportunities and regulations.

Here are some other things you can do:

1. Learn about prospective legislation that involves forests, parks and other public lands. Make your opinions clear and vote on the side of conservation and reclamation.
2. Vote for candidates for office who share your views. Talk to someone on your town or city council or attend some of their meetings. Ask questions about the possibilities for conservation and reclamation locally and make suggestions for improvements where possible.
3. Learn more about trees — they can be fascinating.
4. Teach your children to love and respect trees.
5. Don't carve your initials or words into tree bark. It can damage the growing layers underneath and let in harmful insects or diseases that will eventually kill the tree.
6. Watch an episode of Pete Nelson's Treehouse Masters on the Animal Channel™. Pete's a man who doesn't hesitate to hug a tree! See how carefully the crew cuts floors and decks so the trees can move naturally in the winds common to their environment. Those trees are meant to live for many decades.
7. If you cannot plant a tree,  give a donation to a group replanting areas ravaged by fires, floods, tornadoes or avalanches. Bring back the trees.

For more about trees, check our Extras page for:
Teachable Moments: Trees for Children
Teachable Moments: Trees for "Tweens" (Ages 9 to 12)

*** Our  "Extras"  page (the last tab on the top menu) has PDF files of extra materials related to the subjects in our blog posts, mostly aimed towards young people, their parents and teachers. Due to the current pandemic resrictions, we intend to expand this section greatly over the next two months. Check back every week for new files.

J.D., Annake's Garden Gnome

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What Is Earth Day?

*** NEW MATERIALS ON OUR EXTRAS PAGE  ***

See more info at end of this post.

Earthrise, photo graphed from Apollo 8

ANNAKE: Those of you who read our post on Earth Day 2019 know that I worked on a project which in 1967 made the Earth Sciences (Astronomy, Geology, Meteorology, Oceanography) mandatory parts of the science curriculum for grades 1-12 in all 50 states. We did a tremendous amount of research while we were trying to determine what scientific principles should be taught at each level. Things that we learned in climatology (a branch of meteorology) and oceanography alarmed us, and we were also made aware of the mass extinctions of much of our planet's animal and plant life. Most of us had also read Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, published in 1962.

Not long ago we held a yard sale in which I included a number of outdated science books, including some that had been sent to me by publishers after the new science curriculum was established. One gentleman was very excited by the books and asked me about them. I explained about our efforts in 1967. He thanked me profusely for our efforts. He said he had never known there was such a thing as geology until he read about it in a new textbook. He was "hooked for life". He majored in geology in college and had spent his life as a geologist until the previous year, when he retired.

The Grand Canyom, a geologist's playground

But, while we got the courses into the textbooks, we did not get the emphasis on those disturbing trends highlighted as we thought they should be.  When we received the textbooks from various publishers the following year, very little, if anything, was said about these issues. We felt that no one was listening to us. We wrote letters to teachers in other states, members of state and national government, science magazines, etc. and spoke to our students in detail about environmental issues. Some very important people were listening to us — our students — but they were not really in a position to make much of a difference yet.

One member of Congress shared our concerns — Gaylord Nelson, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. He was alarmed by the air pollution that was prevalent in large cities and disastrous oil spills like the one in the ocean off California in 1969. He set out to promote what he described to the media as a "natural teach-in" about environmental issues. On April 22, 1970, 30 million Americans — many of them college students and other youths —  from coast to coast attended conferences and rallies on environmental issues. That was the first Earth Day. In that same year the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Many environmental projects were supported by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. (Yes, that can happen!)  Important legislation was implemented, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Environmental Protection Act. Earth Day was, and still is, celebrated on April 22nd every year.

Clean air, clean water, clean shores - the American Dream?

For some years, this was an American project, growing in strength and numbers every year. But in 1990 Earth Day went global. It reached 200 million people in 141 countries. President Clinton presented Senator Nelson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest honor a civilian can receive in the U.S.

"It was a gamble, but it worked."  — Senator Gaylord Nelson

The theme for Earth Day 2020, on its 50th  anniversary, is Climate Control, because this is a major issue which affects everyone and must be dealt with now.

J.D.: For about the last 25 years, it has become popular in certain circles to deny that climate change is happening at all; or, if it is happening, that it is just a temporary statistical anomaly or a slow, gradual natural process that we can easily adapt to. For whatever reason — greed, shame, an attempt to avoid blame, belief in massive global conspiracies, ignorance, or just inertia — some cling to this belief despite the overwhelming evidence right before their eyes. Like this:

• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest it has been for 3 million years.
• The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years.
• In the year 2019, almost 400 all-time high temperatures were set in the Northern Hemisphere.
• The continent of Australia suffered extreme drought, enormous wildfires, and the loss huge numbers of endangered species.

Melting glacier

• Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice six times faster than they did just 20 years ago. The amount of ice lost by their ice sheets last year would cover the entire state of Texas with a layer of ice 30 feet deep.
• Permafrost, the layer of soil in the arctic that has been frozen for centuries, is melting. This is releasing methane gas gas which was trapped there. Methane is one of the most serious greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. NASA has equipped planes with highly sensitive methane detectors. They have flown over 11,583 square miles (30,000 square kilometers) of Arctic tundra in North America, Asia, and Northern Europe, so far detecting 2 million of these methane "hotspots".
• But there is something else disturbing about the thawing of permafrost. People have been buried in shallow graves in this layer for a very long time. Scientists have already encountered viable samples of the virus which killed so many people in what was called the "Spanish flu" pandemic in 1918. They are now concerned about finding scarlet fever. And it is possible that smallpox — which was declared eradicated in 1980 — may make a reappearance. People have not been vaccinated for that deadly disease for four decades.

• Famine is another danger; in just the past few weeks, countries in Africa and the Near East have lost — and are still losing — huge amounts of their food supplies to hordes of locusts.

Flood

• Hurricane season is expanding at both ends.
• In 2019 Hurricane Dorian tied the 84-year record for having the strongest winds at landfall and became the 5th strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in terms of atmospheric pressure.
• Since 1995 there have been 17 above-normal hurricane seasons.
• Now 800 million people are already vulnerable to climate change impacts such as droughts, floods, heat waves, extreme weather events, sea level rise and health issues.

That number goes up daily.

It’s bad, folks, and getting worse. If anyone wants to argue how we got here or why, or who is to blame, save it for another time and place; right now, we all need to do whatever we can to improve the situation. More importantly, we need to STOP doing anything that might make things even worse: when your house is on fire, you don’t solve the problem by throwing gasoline on it.

A climate agreement was signed by 195 nations in 2016, agreeing to limit global warming, adapt to climate change, and protect Nature. The United States is not currently one of them.

Endangered Lemur (Photo by J.J.)

ANNAKE: You probably know that those of us here at Annake's Garden are crusaders for the protection of endangered species. Recently the Weather Channel ™ did a nice interview with National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. Some years ago, while Sartore was photographing a small, rather insignificant-looking sparrow called the grasshopper sparrow,  in Florida, he became interested in species — like that little bird — that were threatened with extinction. After his photo of the bird appeared on the cover of a national magazine, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service devoted resources to ensure its survival.

Now Sartore is devoting his life to photographing, to the best of his ability, every endangered species while it is still here. He thinks it will take him another fifteen years to complete his project, called The Photo Ark. He films mostly in studios and in protected places like zoos and aquariums.  Most of the animals are photographed against a solid black or white background so that the focus is entirely on the animal.

Sartore says that when people look at one of his animal photographs, they are drawn to its eyes. There they see beauty, curiosity, determination, and other characteristics the we, ourselves, possess. All the photos are the same size, so that a little mouse is just as important in its portrait as an elephant is in its portrait. Each one plays a part in the ecology of the Earth and every one is important to all of us.

Cheetah, print by Annake

I really identify with that idea. When I do an animal "portrait",  I look at dozens — sometimes hundreds — of photographs, paintings, even cartoons.  But I don't want to portray just AN animal; I want to show THE animal. The last part of the picture that I put in is the animal's eyes. It is only then that I know the animal — in a way and at a level that I cannot truly explain.

Sartore says that an iconic photograph, which stands the test of time, can long outlive the photographer.  It tells a story. Photographs and photographic projects like The Photo Ark can illuminate the problem and save many endangered animals, if we care enough to help.

For examples of things that young people (and even those of us not so young) can do to help this coming Earth Day — and every day — check out these documents under our Extras tab:

• Teachable Moments: Preparing Children to Be Good Environmental Citizens 
• Teachable Moments: What "Tweens" Can Do to Help the Environment 
• An Open Letter to Teenagers about Good Environmental Citizenship

*** Our  "Extras"  page (the last tab on the top menu) has PDF files of extra materials related to the subjects in our blog posts, mostly aimed towards young people, their parents and teachers. Due to the current pandemic resrictions, we intend to expand this section greatly over the next two months. Check back every week for new files.

J.D., Annake's Garden Gnome

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Roots, Leaves, & S.T.E.M.: Our Anniversary Issue, 2020

Pencil sketch by Annake

Welcome to our 168th post, and the beginning of this blog’s 8th year. While it does not seem that long since I talked Annake into doing this blog, things have really changed in the world, even our remote little piece of it. And we’ve changed, too, with different wants, needs, and capabilities than we had when we began.

So, we have decided to emphasize three areas in the coming year in this blog: first, art forms and techniques which have fallen out of fashion and could be forgotten; second, using art to support causes that are important to us, like promoting women in art and preserving endangered wildlife; and finally, presenting you — our readers — with more tools and techniques which can be used in a variety of forms and styles, so you can better make the art you want and make it uniquely yours.

Below are some of the things we've been thinking about.

J.D., Annake's Garden Gnome

Bulls: 1) Lascaux cave, 15,000 BCE  2) Egyptian tomb, 1000 BCE  3) Goya lithograph, 1825

Roots

J.D.: Roots are the beginnings of things, the first attempts to satisfy the most basic needs. When a seed germinates, the first thing to emerge is the root, seeking immediate sustenance and a hold on its place in its environment. Humans,  have much the same basic survival needs, like food, protection from the elements, safety from predators. But just beyond these immediate needs, there seems to be a strong need to express one's self. In even the mot primitive societies, people use whatever is at hand to decorate themselves, their possessions, and their immediate surroundings. These decorations are very individualistic — a way to say, "This is me!"

ANNAKE: I'm sometimes asked why I discuss the history of an art form in my articles, or why I trace the changes in it over a long period of years.  I simply believe that knowing something about the origins of a genre will help you understand its processes better.  It certainly does that for me.  I also like to know how it has progressed over time and how it adapted to the tastes. economy and customs of different historic periods. That helps me to design activities that relate to the present, whether it be the raw materials or tools that I use,  new techniques, themes that are currently popular or appropriate, or ways to use the principles of the genre in a totally different art form.

Much of the history of these technologies (and, yes, that is exactly what they are) has been lost in time because the materials used were bio-degradable and were only preserved under unusual circumstances, like the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs.  But enough survived to make inroads in the mystery, and, after trading became widespread, it is possible to trace the development of certain techniques and even styles.

J.D.: Pigments wash off, flake off, fade in the weather. Feathers, hides, wood — even bone — weather and decay over time. Still, the more we find in archaeological digs, the further back in time we push decorative processes. This is certainly true of the fiber arts, which have been the main focus of this blog. Until just over a century ago, textile fibers were one of the most fragile and transient materials in common use. Specimens of clothing, fabric, and needlework from as recently as 1,000 years ago are very rare, and most of what we know about fiber arts before about 2,000 years ago comes from implements and depictions in other media like painting.

ANNAKE: Embroidery, like other techniques, evolves over time.  It evolved from sewing, which has been around for at least 30,000 years. This was the sewing which made survival in the cold possible.  Also sail-making, which made travel along the ancient rivers like the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile possible and led to sailing on seas and oceans. Tent-making, which allowed nomadic tribes to venture into and across unknown territories, also contributed. The tent stitch used in needlepoint is a tent-maker's and sail-maker's stitch.  Basket-making and weaving contributed patterns.

For much of recorded history, art forms, including the fiber arts, were limited to possession by churches and other religious institutions, royalty, and a few people who who had become wealthy through banking and trade. Now they are within the reach of the general public. Partly this is due to the proliferation of modern materials. For example, it it is not only possible to embroider with silk, linen, or wool, but also with rayon, nylon, cotton, acrylics, metallics, even bamboo.

 1) Folk art, traditional materials and methods  2) Traditional needlepoint, high tech design aids  3) Needlepoint, acrylic yarn on plastic canvas (modern materials)

Leaves

J.D.: Leaves are the part of the plant where most of the work takes place. Their most important job is to provide the fuel which lets the plant grow, survive, and reproduce. They take in oxygen to burn for fuel, and get rid of the exhaust fumes. They have different sizes and colors, different shapes, always variations in small details. Leaves are the first place a plant experiments and adjusts itself to get the most out of its environment. Leaves are the first place where changes in the plant's health or challenges from a changing environment appear. They are the first place where extreme or unusual temperature changes, changes in soil chemistry or the amount of light, and attacks by parasites or diseases show up. Plants have evolved methods to counteract environmental crises; these show as changes in the leaves.

ANNAKE: I tend to think of kinds of art as being like the branches and leaves of a tree — some growing out from the same cluster, but differing slightly from each other; others supporting old, traditional pursuits, then suddenly sending out a new and atypical branch or two,

Art has moved further toward abstraction in recent years, going first through a period of minimalism. Today, however, it is trending toward more color, more contrast, the juxtaposition of shapes, and the emphasis on surface textures.  Needle arts and other art forms that we feature lend themselves to these trends. For example, I recently did an article on Assisi work.  In this period of marches and demonstrations, the technique — whether or not it is used in needlework — lends itself greatly to signs and slogans, as well as to more traditional subject matter.

J.D.: If you think of the forms and styles of needle arts that Annake has explored in this blog as leaves, you can often see results of changes in economic and social environments. The rise of the middle class in Europe resulted in needlepoint as a less expensive substitute for woven tapestry. The Muslim conquest of Spain resulted in geometric patterns that became blackwork, which English royalty enthusiastically embraced. Changes in trade flow with East Asia influenced the availability of silk,  popularity of different styles of garments, and the needlework that decorated them. The development of coal tar dyes in the 19th Century and synthetic fibers in the 20th have revolutionized how we approach fiber arts.

ANNAKE: We have learned that hands-on activities are very important in improving learning abilities. Having spent half a century as an educator,  I learned early to introduce creative activities into my curriculum whether I was dealing with kindergarten children or college students, G.I.'s, Seniors, or people needing physical or occupational therapy.  That is a pretty large portion of society. I believe we should encourage creative practices whenever we can.

1) Color theory  2) Annake at the computer  3) Re-engineered kitchen cart  4) Designing a six-way needlepoint

S.T.E.M.

J.D.: The stem is the part of a plant that provides the structural integrity which holds the leaves up where they can get the sunlight they need to accomplish their tasks, and that maintains the link between the roots and the leaves. Unlike leaves, stems are seldom disposable: as the cells of the stem age, or even die, they remain incorporated in the growing structure which supports all the other above-ground parts and functions of the plant. You can read the entire life history of a tree in the rings of its trunk.

S.T.E.M. is also a very "in vogue" acronym in the U.S., standing for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics"; areas of study Americans feel are essential for young people to be well-versed in to obtain good jobs and to support the massive and complex economy we depend upon for security, comfort, and the continuation of the society we are used to.

"Science" does not require armies of lab-coated nerds in laboratories full of glistening machinery and odd-shaped bottles full of unpronounceable contents. "Science" is what happened when one of our paleolithic ancestors noticed that herds of edible creatures seemed to be at a particular spot when the sun was at a very specific place in the sky, and determined to be hunting with a spear at that spot the next time that happened.

"Technology" is not the latest electronic gadget. It is as simple as learning that, when you strike two particular kinds of rock together in a certain way, one of them will flake off with a very useful, extremely sharp edge.

"Engineering"' does not need to feature pages (or screens) of arcane symbols, numbers, and calculations. It can be as basic as figuring how best to attach that sharp rock you just cut to a stick with some resin so that it will stay attached and you won't cut your fingers with it.

"Mathematics" was what your thousand-times great-grandfather used to figure how many spearheads he needed to flake to replace the ones lost or broken during the last hunt. I' m not going to suggest that what most people think of when they see or hear "S.T.EM." is not important and worthwhile to invest time, effort, and money into its study.  What I do want to say is that S.T.E.M. is a basic set of problem-solving tools, mindsets, disciplines, and points-of-view that people have used to survive and prosper since the beginning of human consciousness.  All those steps in between, from sharpening stones to making smart phones, are a history of how people used these disciplines; and they are still with us, like the  growth rings in the tree trunk.

ANNAKE: And you should be using those disciplines every day, even in something as "old-fashioned" as needlework. You don't need to invent anything. Just learn what's available and choose the best options for what you want to make. Do you need a sharp needle or a blunt one? Long or short? Large eye or small eye? Yarn or floss? Fabric or canvas? Colors? It is as easy as that. The result of your decisions will be something uniquely yours that would have never existed if you hadn't created it. (On the other hand, if you find a way to use existing tools and materials in a novel way..... Congratulations! You have just invented a new technology!)

J.D.: Engineering is often a matter of improvisation, like using a picture frame in place of a large embroidery hoop that you don't have. Or it might be a matter of using a common tool for a purpose it was never intended to fill, but which fits your situation well.  Design a tool that works well for you, but isn't on the market. You're an engineer!

It is almost impossible to avoid math while doing needlework, even if you are only counting threads in fabric or squares in canvas, figuring how much yarn it will take to crochet an afghan, or plotting a graph-paper pattern.

ANNAKE: I would like to challenge all you readers to make something original with your hands. (Hey, J.D., is it okay if I dare them to do it?)

J.D.:
It works for me.

What will you make?

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