~a buckeye, most likely Junonia coenia~
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This little guy was elusive in the garden today - sitting down barely long enough to catch his breath (as one might imagine they need to do) - then flying off to the chives or the wild morning glory or the mexican sunflowers or the dried elephant garlic flower heads. Definitely a beautiful little thing.
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I believe this moth might be Catocala amatrix (look here). An underwing. But I'm not sure.
This morning, while outside with the dogs, I spotted it (upside down) on a live oak tree. It was quite large (~two inches across). When I went up to it to take a photograph, it flew over to a bald cypress tree, where I took this image. It was quite skittish.
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The moth is easier to describe than my day. And tonight I'm tired.
~Canna americanallis var. variegata 'Pretoria'~
~a view of a tiger lily, in grayscale~
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One of my very favorite sites to visit when I need to feel energized is David Perry's A Photographers Garden Blog. It's a beautiful place to visit - creative, quiet, kind - the type of place that we often wish our everyday world was like. But often it just isn't, and during these times one just needs to move forward, in the best way that one can. I've had a tough week or so, work stuff, and if I told you about it, unfortunately I'd have to kill ya - so I'll refrain (for your safety and my own). So tonight I needed to visit such a place.
Over a week ago, David had a post titled Stand in on place and keep looking. What I especially like about his site is that he encourages his visitors with respect to their own photography, and he shares with us things that he has learned along the way. (Visitors, such as myself, are often individuals who just like to capture the world around them - amateurs or I suppose?) In this recent post, David wrote:
In letting ours minds and lives grow ever more busy they have also grown ever more restless, maybe even lazy. And so we have learned to skim rather than really look. It seems we are nearly always in a hurry to get somewhere else. To be where we are not instead of where we are. To hurry off toward where we think we should be. Or to where someone else told us we really must visit.
I agree with David - in the sense that there is so much to see right in front of us. In one leaf, one crack in the sidewalk, in one face. So often we forget to look, to slow down - I am guilty of this all of the time, although paying attention is something that I try hard to do. One of my all-time favorite books is Aldous Huxley's Island - and in this book I'm particularly fond of the mynah bird that is flying around, shouting 'Here and now!' and 'Attention!'. I think that we all need such a bird, following us around during our often tedious day.
So, yesterday I decided to stand in one place (more-or-less, I did moved maybe a foot in every direction) and take photographs of a tiger lily. This lily was in my Mother's Virginia garden, and last spring I moved a clump into my own garden. This is the first tiger lily bloom to open for me. The images were changed to grayscale in photoshop - but the original images weren't cropped.
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This isn't a very good photo - but I liked it becaused of the moth's coiled tongue, or proboscis. It made me laugh. This little guy was taking a break from pigging out on mexican sunflowers.
Okay, this is pretty freakish.
(At least it freaked me out.)
So I come home tonight, pull into the driveway, and get out to go and close the wooden gate. I close the gate, and stop for a minute - something has caught my eye.
A little ball of light brown fur on the gate, at about eye level.
At first I didn't know it was alive. Gratefully (I find out later), I touched it with a brown live oak leaf and it moved - in a caterpillar-esque fashion - and I think: 'Hmmm...I'll go snag the dogs and my camera and take a photo of this thing. I'll call it an 'unidentified living furry object'.
And then I did just that.
And then I came inside, fed the dogs, ate some dinner - and then sat down at my computer and googled 'light brown furry caterpillar'...and after a little searching, I came across this over at Bugs in the News (the emphasis in red was mine):
Because these caterpillars appear as innocuous pieces of fluff, children and adults may pick them up and play with them. Spines, hidden among the soft hairs, pierce the skin and release a toxin.
The toxin usually , but not always, produces an immediate onset of excruciating, unrelenting pain, radiating to the lymph nodes in the armpit or groin, and then to the chest. Though rarely a true medical emergency, these symptoms have the feel of a serious, life-threatening event. It is common for victims to visit emergency rooms for appropriate medical interventions.
Ouch.
I have never heard of these before, and here one is - on my front drive gate. I like learning new things, but learning things associated with excruciating, unrelenting pain? In my front yard?
Now, I read a bit further, all sorts of stories, and something about how they commonly fall out of trees (and onto people, and in one article it mentioned how if they fall into a woman's blouse, well, it 'ends badly'), trees like oak and birch and apple and persimmon. Oh, and they like roses. Now, a big chunk of my garden lies beneath a live oak canopy -- and while telling this story to a friend on the phone tonight, he felt that cutting down all of the trees and then torching the place might be a good idea (and then he said something about how he used to only have to think about all of the snakes - now he has to think about snakes AND these little furry caterpillars - and come on, he was KIDDING - he didn't really think the trees should be cut down...I don't think...) - but, there is quite a bit of discussion about how one should exterminate these guys. Use tongs or wear thick plastic gloves and place them in a jar filled with soapy water...and as for that, I'm guessing I'm in for an exciting weekend of stinging caterpillar hunting. Anyone want to join me?
But the story continues (for just a bit longer): it seems that these caterpillars, often referred to as the puss caterpillars (because their fur is like that of a persian cat) or if you're from Texas, the asp - aka Megalopyge opercularis - have a predictably distinctive moth. And it seems that this distinctive moth was my featured Front Door Light Moth Series, Part XIV on 23 July 2008. Suggesting to me, as a trained observer (of Front Door Light Moths), that these guys are around.
Great. Just great.
(Additional information on stinging hair caterpillars can be found here).
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On a lighter (lighter?) note....
On September 17, 1787, forty-two of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention held their final meeting - and the only item of business on the agenda that day was to sign the Constitution of the United States of America.
Now that's what I call a meeting.
Over at Daily Kos today I read a post that linked to a wonderful reading of the Constitution by David P. Currie, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School - the reading is available for anyone to download. I think perhaps everyone should turn the dang television off and listen to it, you know? It's relevant. It might come in handy one day. It hopefully comes in handy every day.
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So, besides caterpillars with venomous spines and an eloquent constitution, what was the day all about? The lab's weekly meeting. A student trying to incorporate the word 'multifarious' into the title of an abstract. A discussion of when living 'large' became so popular, and how what the economy is 'experiencing' right now could have something to do with a much needed 'course correction'. How it's stressful nonetheless. How the times feel uncertain. How it is hard to believe that there are only 48 or 49 days left until the election. How Biden and Palin debate a week from Friday. How we hope that illustrates some of the huge differences between the candidates. How we feel that perhaps the press has been gentler on Palin because of getting critized about their treatment of Hillary Clinton. How Palin and Clinton are such different animals that it's hard to even compare them. We talked about last night's NOVA special on Einstein and the relationship between energy and mass and light and about Lise Meitner and nuclear fission and how she was ignored/over-looked for the Nobel Prize. And there were more meetings.
And Katherine read a poem to us - one that appeared in Ploughshares.
Patron Saint of Astronomy by Sara E. Lamers
When she was pregnant, his mother had a vision that her unborn child 'was a dog who would set the world on fire with a torch it carried in its mouth; a dog with a torch in its mouth became a symbol for the order which he founded, the Dominicans.
- Patron Saint Index
The complexity of earth and space
got him tongue-tied, befuddled at best,
the universe's expanse, its excess, human mass
and weight so meager amid the spinning cosmos,
and oh to spin past galaxies, past vapors, ozone,
ordinary weather and gravity - beyond all of it and still
the black continues, extends. They say
some stars we see are dead and yet
there they are, churning out a light that must be
what song would look like could sound
take on shape. And what of that torch he carries?
Where did he find it? Who lit it? How to fit
that bulk in his mouth, the sparks coursing
against the dirt of the earth while
he drags it, fire stick, weapon of heat, along miles.
Think of a burning like the burning
of gases inside of planets, raw heat, the vapors
yellow and red and green. Away from the earth
all must grow stone cool within an instant,
the galaxy like shattered glass against the skin.
Heaven knows what waits out there,
those feeble stars, this desperate sky.
I'm sure that you've been on the edge of your seats, wondering...what's the next front door light moth gonna look like?
Well, now you know. It was discovered this morning, clinging to the edge of the storm door.
We're all clinging to something, I suppose.
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I don't know the name of this little fuzzy thing, but I can say that it has a very dainty little black front...paw? (I know, I've got a computer, I could look this sort of thing up, but I've got a list of things to-do so long that I just can't imagine adding another thing to it.)
But...tonight I did come across this South Carolina Moths Searchable Checklist. Perfect! Well, sort of. And maybe one day, one of my Front Door Light moths will make their list of South Carolina moths. Now how cool would that be? That could be a new life goal. Heck, it could become my ONE and ONLY life goal - now, there's a thought. (And there is also the possibility that it is my only thought - which is scary indeed).
Boy, this little guy is pretty intriguing, isn't he?
He's either had a tough night, or he's really good at making himself unnoticeable. He's definitely not a glamour moth like this one.
(or she).
I just realized that I am numbering these wrong. Dammit.
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Al Gore. The WE Campaign. You can read the text of Gore's speech from last Thursday here - or listen to it in the video below. And take a look at No Impact Man - for some additional thoughts (and an interesting, fun blog). And then - Al Gore's surprise visit to the Networks Nation conference.
You know, I've been reading alot of negative responses and thoughts about the whole going 'green' thing - either folks want all or nothing - or they want it at a lower cost than current energy costs - or, they're just uncomfortable about what 'change' will mean to their comfortable lives. Frankly, I want to see if T. Boone Pickens can make some headway - hell, I don't mind if a Texas oil guy makes money in the wind business instead. I think it's alot of baby steps - little changes that globally result in big changes - and old technologies coming back (rain barrels!) and new technologies coming forward.
I love this stuff because it makes sense. We need to get the price of icynene down to where we all can afford it. We need to quit taking our leaves to the landfill - and leaving them on our land. Grow your own lettuce in the winter. I'm tring to build a LEED certified home, and I'm saying 'no' to a paved driveway because...is it really necessary? I could go on, but I need to go back out into my garden and weed before it gets crazy-hot. But I guess how I feel is that we can all do something here - and the things we need to do aren't necessarily big or expensive. Just do something. It becomes contagious.
We need to begin to live a little differently - and the change could be good.
(And yeah, I like Al Gore.)
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