More Things in Heaven and Earth

Another rainy day means the camera stays inside, providing an opportunity to revisit seven days of memorable vignettes not yet celebrated.

1. Tuesday, June 11.
A nightmare does not have to be large. Small, when it comes in the form of a robber fly, will do. Good thing I didn't know about these when I read Dracula. At 13, I knew vampires were a fiction, but . . . robber flies aren't. I have seen one in action. Three years ago, I watched a larger one snatch the Snowberry Clearwing Moth I had been admiring and photographing, then fly to a leaf just below my camera, and kill and feed on the beautiful moth.

2. Wednesday, June 12.

While strolling across the open sandy area at Lake Dimmick, I was torpedoed by a beetle missile. When this fellow hit me smack in the chest, I reacted impulsively, brushing it away. Poor thing: it startled me and I startled it. At least it paused long enough for me to get a good long look. Scarabs have nothing on this sparkly Goth bug whose proper name may be Western  Sculpture Pine Borer.

3. Thursday, June 13.

My Odonate mania began with one of these: a male Eastern Pondhawk.

Lime green. Turquoise. Any questions?

4. Friday, June 14.

I am never alone at the lake, and I am not the only animal who appreciates the view. Witness:

5. Saturday, June 15.

A day that begins with beautiful flowers is a day with sunshine, even in cloud-cover. At Saturday's Gardeners' Market, I arrived third among the vendors, much earlier than Carlene and her greenhouse blooms, which I always love shooting. I found these, however, at the edge of the gravel lot. Magenta, orange, greenish yellow, fringe, hairy stems -- what's not to like? The star of my day: a weed.

6. Sunday, June 16.

Amphibian-ness: floating among lilies, eyes glazed, head and back sunning, legs stretched. I love floating too: staring up at sky, feeling the water hold me, tension releasing like air from a balloon, but slowly, slowly, slowly. I'd like to be down there, with him, among blooms and bugs, half in shadow, half in light, suspended in loving the where I am.

7. Monday, June 17.

What must it be like to host parasitic water mites like tiny red pearls, clinging to every body crevice, even in this Swift Setwing's subgenital plate? How will she mate? How will her eggs be fertilized? The intruders, which cause no harm, are just looking for a ride. They're freeloaders, but don't they weigh her down?

8. Tuesday, June 18.

There are more things in heaven and earth, dear Reader,
Than are dream't of in your philosophy.

What This Blog Can't Have

If this blog could have sound, it would have the dry flick-clicking of wing against wing; the tip-tapping of water spiders skating across the lake's surface; the whispered rustle of drying buds as the Swift Setwing shifts the prongs of its legs, the slow drip of the one raindrop still clinging to its claspers; the lake runoff crashing down the hillside below the dam; the hawk's scream, twice, and the crow's insistent caws from the woods beyond; the clap and slop of runner's feet; the one small plash of a Common Baskettail dropping all of her eggs in one white string into the water just beyond my right hand and my exclaimed Holy cow!

But a blog can't have sound.


(suggested by the foreword to Gary Paulsen's The Winter Room)

A Little Box of My Own

I confess: I really want a "little box" all my own. Not one made of "ticky tacky . . . all the same" as others, but a tiny house like this one, or this one, or even this one.

I want to shed the stuff I have carted from state to state, town to town, apartment to house: books, bookbinding materials, paintings and pictures, even the few family heirlooms. I want to give to my niece and nephew what they want or to others who can use any of the remainder.

I'll keep my cat, my computers and photo equipment, my clothes, and just enough practical furniture to fill my tiny house and make my tiny heart expand.

Give me wood floors that don't collect fur or dust bunnies, a space I can clean in a couple of hours, a studio for writing and thinking and teaching and blogging, and a view. Put that tiny house in woods or near a pond or creek. And please let it be near a branch of my family.

I dream at night of my tiny house fit for a queen, and I wake in an albatross of a cottage. Then I look at tiny houses here and here and here, and I feel the big envy building for one of my own.

Snug as a bug bluebird in a comfy box, that's what I long to be!

On Memory Lane

1.
The owners of the Crestline Piggly Wiggly and the property owner have hit an impasse in negotiating a new long-term lease. Neither side has discussed details of their talks, though the lease owner appears to have offered an option for a national drug company's lease. It would make the fourth drug store in a four-block village. 

2. 
My grandfather built one of the first houses in the new suburban village some time in the 1920s. My father spent most of his teens and twenties there. After college, my father and his friends, including a friend's girlfriend whom my father later married, made a silent horror movie. The house figured prominently as the home of an evil scientist. Each of the people in the film continued to live in the village, and I knew them all.

3.

My parents' first house on Euclid Avenue was a block-and-a-half walk to the village which contained one gas station, one mom-and-pop grocery owned by the Levios, Ariail's Drug Store, a five-and-ten, a church, a dry cleaner, Davis' delicatessen, Crestline Elementary School, a dancing/piano lessons school, and Hill's Grocery. Crestline proved the rule that it takes a village to raise a child.

4. 
My parents' second house lay between creek and woods two blocks out of the village, three houses from my grandfather's house. After building the house, my mother was asked what the dirt road should be named (or at least I have been told): Memory Lane, she decided. From there I walked to school, sometimes passing old Mr. Hill's farmhouse behind our home, sometimes walking through the neighbor's lush yard. I stopped for penny candy on the way home and "helped" Miss Irene Vereen at the Utopia cleaners. Everyone knew my name, and I knew theirs.

5.
My nephew and his family live just two blocks from the Euclid Avenue house, and his children have the same small-town experiences I enjoyed. For them, the Pig is the anchor -- a place where folks greet them by name, wish them happy birthday, commiserate and share life's experiences. I would be sad if they were to lose their safe and happy place.

6.
I must be old. I know this because I have been spending time looking back, especially since the news broke about the Pig. Like this horse, half in and half out of his small stall (his safe place), looking down the road into woods through which neither of us can see, I am stuck in a kind of time-warp, remembering my own childhood, knowing something of my father's, and hoping that my grand-nieces enjoy the same kind of youth we enjoyed.

7.
Oink if you love The Pig!

Addendum to Wednesday's Post

Some dragonflies not only patrol their territory, but also attack those who trespass. 

I have grown accustomed to the mock sorties some species conduct. Blue Corporals, for instance, have a habit of tussling, with two flying one over the other, in a rough-housing upward sweep. Then one breaks away and they generally return to their own business.

This morning, however, I witnessed a remarkable scene of violence perpetrated by one Common Baskettail against another. I heard the flicking of wing on wing first, turned, and saw one butt against the other hard enough that the loser fell into the shallow muck of the lake. 

It fluttered twice, but could not get out of the water, and as quickly as I saw him struggle, I stepped into the water, extended my walking stick, and scooped him onto a leaf. He was weighted down with mud and struggled to catch hold. I threw my stick behind me and offered a finger. I then lifted him into sunlight. (Fortunately, it was quite warm and there was little breeze.) 

For several minutes, I studied him while he cleaned his eyes and legs, shivering his wings just as tenerals do before first flight. As I wondered what the heck I was going to do with him (thinking he was doomed), he lifted off my finger and flew away.

Dadgum but those bugs are strong!

Why Walk the Lake?

Because so much in the world is broken, and I can't fix it.

But I can do this: remove yesterday's spider webs, release a trapped crane fly or Odonate, learn to see what I look at, and not look away.

And this heals me till the next walk.

A Few Facts about Dragonflies

Last week, one of my grand-nieces asked, "Is it true that dragonflies live only one day like Mom's card says?"

I was taken aback. "No," I said. "They spend most of their lives in the water, much longer than a day. And when they emerge, they can live a couple of weeks or months. It depends on the species, I think. At any rate," I added, "they can have a lifespan from just a few months to a couple of years."

I could tell by her face that she didn't believe me.

It's strange how misinformation spreads even to the young.

Here are a few facts:

Dragonflies warm themselves in the sun.

Dragonflies eat.

Dragonflies swim before they emerge and fly afterwards (so long as their wings open correctly).

Dragonflies perch and some male dragonflies patrol their territory aggressively.

Dragonflies cool off by extending their abdomens upright, rear toward the sun.

Dragonflies mate.

Female dragonflies oviposit their fertilized eggs into water or plants in the water.

Dragonflies die.