Three days ago the yard was leafing out in anticipation of spring.
That was before winter tightened its icy grip.
I don’t expect the honeysuckle will sustain any permanent damage.
The hydrangea should also survive.
Because winter can’t hold on forever. The ice and snow will melt.
Soon I’ll be able to pry open the frozen gate and let spring edge a few steps further into the yard.
Today’s gray gloom can’t be conquered by normal means.
Blankets and hot chocolate are no match for the wind’s creak and scrape.
Even the cats have given up. They’ve abandoned their interest in my newly reorganized guest room/office and curled up in their favorite beds.
I would join their willful hibernation if I could, but my to-do list is on the verge of collapsing under its own weight and becoming a singularity from which I can never escape.
So, when sleep is not an option, the only remaining cure for a day like today is dragonflies.
Lots and lots of dragonflies.
I feel better already.
Last fall we stopped buying bird seed when we took down the bird houses, and for the same reason. Just as the houses were no longer housing birds, the seed was no longer feeding birds.
I haven’t seen rats in the yard this winter, but I also haven’t seen many birds. Hopefully our winter flocks are finding plenty of alternate food sources.
Yesterday I watched through the kitchen window for nearly an hour and saw a total of four birds. The little yellow-rumped warbler in the above photo was foraging for insects along the fence, while a robin and a mockingbird basked in the pear tree, sleepily soaking up sunshine.
The most interesting activity took place in the wax myrtles, where a young yellow-bellied sapsucker was tending its sap wells.
(I decided this was a juvenile sapsucker after consulting Cornell’s All About Birds website. Please comment if you can confirm or correct my identification!)
I couldn’t help wondering about the origin of the sapsucker’s behavior, which strikes me as fairly advanced problem solving. This young bird likely learned to make sap wells by observing its parents, but how did its earliest ancestors learn their craft? Did the behavior surface gradually, a slow convergence of experience and appetite? Or was the shift a more sudden spark? Is there a sap well gene?
Some part of me wants to argue against a purely genetic origin for the sapsucker’s wells. My objections are all based on wistful incredulity, on a deep-seated longing for connection beyond mere knowledge. My objections are, in other words, illogical. But they are also persistent. No matter how many books I read, no matter how much science I embrace, some part of me still wants life to mean more.
After my last post, life became a bit hectic (as it tends to do from time to time.) I wasn’t the only one affected by November and December’s frantic rush. My writing friends’ schedules suffered similar disruptions, and January found many of us returning to projects in various stages of completion. So our annual writers’ weekend at the beach felt particularly well-timed this year, and the icy sunrise I photographed on our last day has been tugging at me, demanding to be my first blog images of 2015.
Two weeks have passed, but the warm infusion of inspiration hasn’t waned. Now it’s time to gather my notes and begin a manuscript revision that is long overdue…
Butterfly metamorphosis is one of nature’s most spectacular spectacles. I’ve always wanted to see the whole cycle, and this fall the yard cooperated. It started with nine caterpillars feasting on the milkweed.
Five survived to maturity. One by one they stopped eating, anchored their last pair of legs with silk, and slipped into the characteristic upside-down pose that precedes a monarch caterpillar’s final molt.
Then they began their transformation.
One died before completing its molt…
…but the other four safely hardened into chrysalises, where they remained for the next two weeks.
Then:
One by one they emerged, the first during the morning of October 10th and the last close to noon on October 11th.
I was too excited to remember my camera, most of the time, so I only have a few photos for three of the four.
But I managed to capture a full sequence for one of the monarchs. The following slideshow covers a period from September 25th to October 11th.
All four butterflies struggled in their first moments of flight, crashing a few times as they tested their wings.
But after a few hours of short flights with long rests between, all four took to the air and fluttered off in search of nectar.
I wished, in the moments after watching them leave the yard, that they might stay a while longer. Then I took a deep breath and wished them warm winds to ease their southward journey.
Whatever fate finds my four butterflies, their brief weeks in the yard contributed something permanent and lovely to my world. I hope they thrive during their long migration, and I hope they stop as often as possible, each time bringing something lovely into someone else’s world.
Rae Spencer 