I tried to write something, to go with these pictures, but some stories don’t need words…
photos
Blue Jay Fledglings
A pair of sleepy blue jay fledglings visited the yard this morning. When I approached they stirred a bit, mirroring my curiosity.
Then they settled back to their naps as I entertained myself imagining their morning adventures. How exciting it must be, to discover that you have wings! And to explore a world that multiplies and expands with every new tree and every new yard.
Exciting, but also exhausting.
Broad-headed Skink
I first saw this little skink while I was mowing today. I stopped long enough to take a picture, then continued on with the mower. Slowly, because I didn’t want to hit my pretty blue-tailed visitor if it decided to hide in the grass.
Later, I spotted the skink again as it basked on our driveway. I took several more photos, then lost track of my subject when it squeezed itself into a seam under the house’s siding. A few minutes passed before it scrambled across our porch and into the iris bed, carrying something in its mouth. I couldn’t tell what it had caught, but I was able to follow with my lens and snap a few photos as it ate.
After gulping down its meal, the skink paused in a patch of sunlight before moving deeper into the irises.
When I was young, Mother called these lizards “blue-tailed skinks.” I can’t remember exactly when we discovered that our blue-tailed lizards were actually juvenile skinks of three distinct species, and that their bright tails would fade as they matured, but I remember being shocked that Mother had been wrong about something. (Which means it must have been before the worst of my teenage arrogance set in, when I would have been shocked to discover that Mother had ever been right about anything.)
In trying to identify today’s photos, I decided this was a Broad-headed Skink based on the following close-ups, which show five scales on the upper lip between nostril and eye. (Click on the thumbnail at the bottom of this page on the Virginia Herpetological Society website for further explanation, and please comment if you can correct or confirm my identification!)
If there had been four scales on the upper lip margin, the skink could have been either a Common Five-lined Skink or a Southeastern Five-lined Skink…
Mid-May in the Yard
Earlier this week some parts of our area had overnight frost, then temperatures flared into the eighties. Bees and hover flies responded to the summer-like conditions with greatly increased activity, much to the delight of our Fourth of July rose.
Unfortunately, other insect activity also increased. The daisies and petunias were somewhat less delighted.
And this damselfly had to be rescued from an abandoned spider web.
While increasing insect activity gave me the opportunity to experiment with my camera’s macro functions, the yard’s quickening was visible on larger scales, as well. The cardinals’ nestlings fledged last week, which led to a few days of frantic visits to the feeder, followed by conspicuous absence as the little family moved on to explore other yards.
The squirrel kittens never returned, after that one brief visit, but the adult squirrels have been growing more playful and tolerant of each other as they approach the beginning of a new breeding season. Perhaps there will be more kittens, later this summer.
Perhaps there will be more of everything. Especially more long, lazy afternoons with bright pools of sunshine and breezy, open windows.
In a word, more serenity.
(During my spring flower frenzy, I bought the flowers in the above photo because their labels said “Serenity”. They are Serenity series African daisies, and I’ve planted them right beside the front door…)
Treasures from Home, Part Two (The Red Chairs)
These chairs belonged to my grandmother, and they dominate my memories of visiting her house. The red chairs seemed stern, like Grandmother (we weren’t allowed to call her anything less formal than “Grandmother”). Sitting on them reminded me that I was expected to be still and quiet during our visits.
Despite the chairs’ lack of comfort, I admired them. They were, for me, irresistibly exotic. Ornate to the point of absurdity, designed for beauty instead of utility. Only now, when it’s too late for curiosity, does it occur to me that the chairs were different from the rest of Grandmother’s furniture, which was all very sturdy and practical. So why did she keep them? What did she see, when she looked at the chairs?
I never asked Grandmother about the chairs, just as I never asked about the years she spent as a single working mother. I never asked how she managed to raise a daughter, alone, during World War II and the decade that followed. How she managed to raise a daughter, alone, while working full-time.
Time hasn’t softened the chairs, which are so uncomfortable that even the cats refuse to sit on them, but it has softened my memories of Grandmother. She wasn’t a kind, cozy grandmother, but neither was she as stiff and disapproving as I imagined. Her truth, like the chairs’ truth, is an unsolvable mystery.
But now the chairs have come to me and I have the opportunity to create a new truth for them. I keep them in our living room, one on each side of the room. As I sit between them, they remind me to be still and quiet, to listen more carefully, and to understand that some stories are told in silences, rather than words.
Rae Spencer 