Spring Party Weekend

Concert at Lake Cheston tonight till 1 AM.Oh joy.

May the emerging nymphs succeed anyway.

The real party took place during the day.

Witness:

this

and this

and this.

Panasonic Lumix GH3: Day 7

or, Why I Am Still Undecided though Leaning More Toward Than Away

Pros/Joys in
1/ discovery
2/ the Borrowers' perspective
3/ the challenge
4/ technology
5/ potential for growth in my work

Cons/Irritations due to
1/ awful EVF
2/ squirrely LCD, though I think I may have solved it today by learning a trick

Gratitude to
1/ Nick Coury of Dury's Camera in Nashville who showed me the GH4 and who encouraged me to rent before buying. I cannot thank him enough for his kindness, professionalism, careful listening, and investment in my needs and desires. As a friend wrote me last night, "Hoping your photosalesman can stay available as a trusted advisor. Being emotionally invested in your work is definitely not out of the question for people you ask to help you." Yes, me too.

Panasonic GH3: Day 2

Pros
1/ up close and personal portraits of dragonflies
2/ the pleasure of learning something new
3/ the pleasure of meeting another person who uses the camera
4/ manageability in heat and trekking

Cons
1/ missing the sandpipers right in front of me because of the macro
2/ golden hue (must color-correct)
3/ viewfinder (the smearing is the result of the coating having worn out, and as it turns out this is a frequent complaint among those who have purchased the camera)

This last con may well be the deal breaker.

April Is Poetry Month

In Perpetual Spring

by Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and the lamb cuddling up.

The snake and the snail, kissing.

Even the prick of the thistle,   

queen of the weeds, revives   

your secret belief

in perpetual spring,

your faith that for every hurt

there is a leaf to cure it.

or a bluebird or lady's slipper

To Everything There Is a Season

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die . . . (Ecclesiastes 3)

In spring it's easy to see the signs of borning everywhere -- birds building nests, frogs and toads extruding and fertilizing eggs, dragonflies and damselflies being "born" into their final mature stages, lady's slippers shooting up their first furred leaves.

Even the lake, seen from afar, seems re-born in the soft hues of early spring.

But looks can be deceiving.

There, on the pinestraw-strewn hill in the distance, flies and maggots work away at the still bloody mess of what's left of a crow's head (beak, forehead, little else) dropped by some larger opportunistic predator, needing to feed himself or herself and perhaps the young coming or the biological processes of building up protein for the producing of another generation.

On University Avenue a little later, approaching the parish church, I saw a squirrel flop and flip, flop and flip, in its death throes. Just hit apparently by a car on my side of the road, the squirrel jolted, not consciously, I think, but mechanically, involuntarily, nerve-ously. I slowed and stopped, wondering if I could pass while the squirrel lay on the pavement, dying. How does one just drive by? The jerking soon stopped, and I passed and wondered, Did the driver cringe with the thunk and then just drive on?

The thing about walking and snapping and blogging is this: I see death and dying now almost every day, and every time, I am stilled. I may have bad dreams tonight.

I will try to think on the "time to be born."

A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma

The first time a couple of years ago that I saw a White Slant-line Moth tucked into a Lady's Slipper, I thought it was my great good luck.

Now I know better. (Google Lady's Slipper and White Slant-lined Moth. I got 148,000 hits!)

This is the third I've seen since the slippers bloomed.  And so far there's no answer as to what she's (or he's) doing there.

Stay tuned!

Lake Cheston ABCedarian Day 11: L

In spring, Lake Cheston is LUSCIOUS.

Blue Bowl

Once, on a rain-spitting afternoon in January, I sat in St. John-at-Hampstead, England, and felt as if I were inside a Wedgwood bowl or vase. Crisp white moldings -- ribbed and carved -- delineated soft walls of peachy ecru and blue, lines and curves, roundels and arches, all combined into the softness of a spring day with leaves newly green. Outside, I found the graveyard somber, sodden, but inside the building sang.

Every so often, for reasons I don't fully understand, I remember that church where I sat just once, and I return in my mind's eye to that space of calm and beauty. 

Today, that happened when I saw this Lady's Slipper, barely blushing pink, in the woods at Lake Cheston.

And I thought of that St. John again later when I looked up through the last of the pink dogwood blooms into the blue bowl of sky.

At times like these, I am happy.