Surprise Redux Redux

Nuts!

Surprise Redux

Inside the package, I found two old hand-painted panels and this note from a first-cousin:

"Your mother painted these wooden panels a way long time ago as part of a pretty little settee Grandmother had. When it was time to dismantle Grandmother's house, Mother found the settee to be falling apart (it had pretty little green vines w/ red flowers climbing all over it), but she salvaged the back panels. I enjoyed using them for a long time! But they should be yours if you can use them, and I hope you will. I love your Mama's neat work, and it reminds me of those Delft tiles she painted for Memory Lane. I love to do things like that myself, although I don't suppose I'll ever be as good as she was, and I regret that I never got the chance to learn from her -- that would have been a happy privilege."

This is a surprise of a whole other universe.

Twists of Fate

I
At the shoreline, I startled a newly emerged Autumn Meadowhawk, who flew into the crew-cut grass below the dam. As I turned to look at it, thinking I might take its picture, I heard a killer buzz and watched a robber fly snatch the dragonfly and fly up onto the top of the dam. I couldn't help myself. I screamed, "Stop it!" and scrambled up the hill. The robber sped its prey into the sky and away.

What does one call insectslaughter? I didn't do it myself, but my actions surely led to dragonfly demise.

II
This time of year, it's impossible to walk Cheston's path without hearing frenzied bees, gathering as they do every year, greedily collecting pollen and pocketing it. Big bees, little bees, bumblebees, honeybees, flower flies -- they're all there. I was photographing them, wearing their pollen baskets like little Dutch girls, when I saw the huge (and I mean huge) killer wasp snag a honeybee and take off into a high limb. The wasp consumed the bee, tearing it apart willy-nilly and dropping bits on the ground at my feet.

III
I am thankful for the complicated twisting of smooth alder, breaking open into candy-colored twists like Dale Chihuly's glass, providing some relief from morning horror.

Surprise!

I've never much liked surprises, perhaps because I seem to collect the kind no one wants.

Like hearing the total paid for a root canal by the woman in front of me: $25. Not the co-pay, mind you: her entire cost. Or, to be even more precise, $1,480 less than I paid. For the same procedure. Surprise!

Like learning that a major surgery I had almost twenty-five years might now be failing, filling my cheeks and gums and teeth with infection that might only be cured by another invasive surgery to insert new hardware. Surprise!

But today, I happened upon one surprise on which I'd rather think -- the Surprise Lilies (or the Naked Ladies of Sewanee) blooming in Abbo's Alley.

A tiny nymph with a heart-shaped head adornment,

a speeding flower fly,

and a crab spider all paid their respects

with me, shadowed by woods and worry.

No wood drake, no still water, but still "I feel above me the day-blind stars / waiting with their light. For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free" (Wendell Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things").

Hidden Treasure

Who knew?

Not I, for sure.

The Silver-spotted Skipper, summer's common brownish bouncer, hides a carmine treasure.

A ruby, ruby-colored, making me reconsider what I thought I had previously seen.

One chance for a photograph. One dot of red.

One beautiful color.

There's red

and then there's Red.

Summer Evenings

Hermetically sealed inside my house, cooling and dehydrating, I easily forget the sheer pleasure of this: the symphony of summer evenings.

I took it for granted all those years growing up without air conditioning, and I want to take full advantage of it now that cooler temperatures visit. What fine bedtime music.