After "The End"

There is still so much more to be read, simmering and sparking in memory and remembering.

That is: if it's a great book, the kind that rides on original language, suspending me in the not-here world of imagination, often more real than the tangible world of here.

Like a leaf, dying but burning still.

Like Colum McCann's TransAtlantic:

"Down below, a sheep with a magpie sitting on its back. The sheep raises its head and begins to run when the plane swoops, and for just a moment the magpie stays in place on the sheep's back: it is something so odd Brown knows he will remember it forever.

"The miracle of the actual."

I have turned the last page.

But this is a book so miraculous that I know I will remember it forever.

"Dazzling Blue"

Thanks to my niece, I now know that blue is in for brides in spring 2014. For me, blue has never been out.

Just this morning, at Lake O'Donnell, the sky and the water dazzled with saturated blue bleeding into white with the sun's rising.

Yesterday, blue dazzled in the thorax and abdomen of a Blue Dasher and in the water deepening with lowering sun.

Blue has held me in thrall for as long as I remember, back to my first floral love -- the full floppy-headed hydrangeas Mother nursed at our back door. She planted nails in the soil where they grew, and they blued -- spectacularly.

She told me once that blue was the rarest color of flower. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that with the turning into fall every year, I think of her when I feast on the blue that dazzles in sky and the water that reflects it.

A Note to Friends

Dear Lynne and Gayle,

Remember how much fun we had at the lake a couple of years ago?

Big fat wolf spiders scaring the you-know-what out of Gayle. Lynne calmly kayaking about. The beautiful emergent Pondhawk in the parrot feather. The water snakes, adult and babies.

When we worked our way round to the beach, I swore I had seen an insect flying saucer. At first I didn't want to tell you two what I had seen, for fear of being thought cuckoo. But finally I did. "Tiny flying nets," I said, "or flying saucer-things!"

But of course no one else glimpsed them.  

Well . . . guess what?

Today, I saw another in the exact same spot and got a photo! Hello, little Phantom Crane Fly! Come to mama Robley!

Just as weird as I said, right?

Keep your eyes peeled!

Best,
Robley

Apprenticeship

When I first started photographing bugs, my friend J would help me on occasion, but she didn't walk with me.

G walked with me, but he didn't know bugs. He did know cameras and photography, so his knowledge came in handy.

Mostly, though I have walked alone, and I have found books on my own, and I  have read them alone, and I have studied my photos alone. As my friend S told me, I have taught myself a lot of biology in the last three years.

But then I found the dragonfly/damselfy groups on Facebook, and now I have companions. What a gold mine!

First, I have felt better about my own knowledge since many others know much much less than I.

Second, I have marveled at the different Odonates folks see in their yards. Those in Florida have enjoyed scads of Halloween Pennants this summer, for example, and I have seen only a few.

Third, a famous person -- Ed Lam -- is a member of the groups, and he is generous with his comments, advice, and support. If someone asks a question, he will answer it. Sometimes he posts his drawings and asks us to ID them. 

Just tonight, I posted that I may have been wrong about photos I put up the other day. Three hours at Lake Dimmick today seriously confused me when I found two totally different looking males of the same species -- the Little Blue Dragonlet. He confirmed that I was right the first time and then gave me specific information I can use in the field.

Both of these dragonflies are Little Blue Dragonlets. They sure look different, don't they?

Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats learning under the tutelage of a master.

What lies beneath

is as beautiful as what floats above. 

Without roots,
nothing grows.

One Walk on the Not-so-wild Side

One Great Blue Heron.

One Swamp Spreadwing.

One friendly young woman on her rescued Walking Horse.

Numerous female Eastern Pondhawks.

A half dozen Banded Pennants.

One Slaty Skimmer.

Two Widow Skimmers.

Three Red-spotted Purples.

One male Eastern Pondhawk.

One raggedy-winged male Eastern Amberwing.

One raggedy-winged female Eastern Amberwing.

One male Little Blue Dragonlet.

One lovely Labor Day stroll.

Odonate Beacon

As I walked a wooded path at the lake, the space before me flickered with five Meadowhawks, all female, floating down from leaves above me, stirring the air with promise of morning. All five alit on bare stems of two shrubs, staying put for long admiration.

But only one wore the mantle of age, firing the darkness of woods. The female grows more beautiful as she ages, reddening, as if painted with pure carmine along the topmost of her abdomen, making everything else disappear into background.

If you do not see the slideshow, click here.