Sunset

I race, every day, home from work, to walk outdoors and catch a glimpse of daylight before the sun sets, again.
As the glow drops to the horizon, I frantically tie sneakers, grab the camera, and set out, for some exercise and sizzling shots--pressing to a clearing where the view is free of roofs and treetops.

Or, at least roofs--because trees add fingers of contrast.
And give the sun a place to play hide-and-seek.
Before it slips away.

On a day when I can only catch a moment of fresh air,
a glorious sunset fills me.


Thanks to Wigger's World for hosting Skywatch Friday each week at his site!

When worlds collide

I did a double-take as I drove past, my eyes scanning the lot for a parking space. A quick errand before work and I'd be on my way--my camera safe at home on the table, charging.
What makes our brains work like this-- catch a misplaced shape in the midst of chaos?
For there, in the Macadam Sea, on a small island finished with mulch, just starting to sprout lilies and a tuft of ornamental grass--a long black neck was watching.


A Canada Goose, quietly sitting on her nest. The small tuft of green, barely large enough for her body. Parked cars inches away.
Why do they choose to sit here, when an entire bank of green bounds the Sea? Is there something imprinted upon their brain that prefers an island to an edge? Will her children's first step be onto blacktop?
She watched me, as I fumbled with my cell phone, scrolling through media options until the shutter finally clicked. Never flinching.
Never hinting that what her world has become was anything less than perfect.

Oriental Poppies

Our old house looks out over the country road from atop a hill, as it is with many older homes.
The front lawn is a combination of mosses and weeds that competes with the struggling grass beneath the shade of several large maples and a sprawling sycamore--and usually wins.
But at the roadside, the bank is exposed to a strong southern light that bakes the southern Ohio clay--and the abuse of passersby, who see it as little more than a ditch to collect their cast off bottles or an area to pull off onto and let an oncoming car pass.
Finding something to grow here, is a challenge.

Daylilies have consumed a fair portion.
But, above them, I've cast seeds. Of all that have ever sprouted, the only surviving as plants continue to be the poppies--their loooong tap root extending deep into the bank.
Deep enough to withstand the hot sun that fries everything else.

Anticipation.

I cannot say
if I like flowers better, or the buds.
For their message is clear--a promise will be kept.



Thanks to Mrs. Nesbit for hosting ABC Wednesday!

"Please pass the bug spray."

Some things are learned by reading about them.
Others, by doing.
Of the lessons I’ve learned, the greatest, by far, have come from a combination of the two.

The tank on the table is my latest learning adventure.
Ten gallons of the finest vernal pool habitat—amber water-- a “tea” of sorts--and all that lives within, carefully carried in buckets from the shaded, oak-rimmed Wood Pool out back to its prominent location… a place at the kitchen table.

From my seat, as light streams in from the surrounding windows, every meal is an opportunity to watch what happens here.
Illuminating the watery depths--to discover, what lies beyond any book.

Daily water changes to prevent wastes from accumulating and a bubbler in one corner to add oxygen have given the hatchlings of the first spring migrants, Wood frogs and Jefferson salamanders, a protected space in which to grow. Dozens of tadpoles fouled the water quickly—their lives as eating machines, much like the frass-producing caterpillars of late summer. After 3 weeks, their plump copper-flecked bodies consuming green growth faster than I could carry it, they’ve been reunited with the thousands of other grazing sisters and brothers—in the Wood Pool.

Smiling faces of the Jeffersons remain. Their leonine forms lurk in the shadows, hungrily ambushing anything smaller than themselves, with a sudden gulp of a wide, toothless grin. Carnivores.
And, like baby birds, they eat and grow, and eat some more.

In a stroke of brilliance, the fine, salamander-tending hostess that I have become, scooped from the pool, a basin of delectable treats before retiring for the night. And gently tipped them into the tank for their midnight snack.

The water teems with the smallest life. And many of them I easily recognize or have learned to identify from pictures in my ever-growing collection of field guides.
I can spot a mosquito wiggler at a glance.
What I hadn’t yet figured out, was what the active, black, somersaulting characters were--and I’d eagerly captured many.

I now know that mosquitoes’ pupae are the “tumblers” I placed in the tank.
I also know that they hatch from these pupae relatively quickly.
As in…overnight.

For, by the next morning, they had disappeared from the tank.

The salamanders looked hungry.
So did the mosquitoes waiting for breakfast.

Jefferson Salamander larvae
20 days old

The circle of life

The parade continues.
To the waters, another wave of life.

Tonight-- the tree frogs. And, as several peepers still cry out, though their numbers are far fewer now, five Cope's Gray Tree frogs gather, plump pads on long toes wrapping small stems just above the water's surface, and voice short raspy calls into a warm spring evening.



This pool, in the weeks I have been watching, has shown me, each day, change.



Its creatures, developing in the transparency of water.
Their lives transforming behind nothing more than gelatin--a womb with a view.
Peering into their world--until, the spark of life within, looks back at you.

Where, 52 days earlier, their parents returned to this ancestral pool,
the next generation of Spotteds enters the world.

Spotted Salamander eggs, 4-14-08
21 days

Spotted Salamander eggs, 4-21-08
28 days

Spotted Salamander eggs, 4-24-08
31 days
hatching

Can you find the Jefferson Salamander larva
swimming at the surface in the small image of Wood Pool?
(Look for green-tipped gills!)

The color of rain

What color is the rain,
that softly falls on a quiet morning
from a colorless sky?


And bursts from fountains, tumbling.


Till all that remains
is a gossamer veil,
dancing in the gentle wind of spring.

I think it must be green.

First photo: Female Box Elder, pistillate flowers
Second photo: Male Box Elder, staminate flowers
Third photo: Flowering Box Elders reflected in pond
Fourth photo: Female Box Elder, leafing out

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
"Acer negundo is a species of maple native to North America.
Box Elder, Boxelder Maple, and Maple Ash are its most common names in the United States. Other variant names include Ash Maple, Ash-leaf Maple, Black Ash, Cut-leaved Maple, Negundo Maple, Red River Maple, Stinking Ash, Sugar Ash, and Three-leaved Maple.
Unlike most other maples (which usually have palmate leaves), it has pinnate leaves that have three to seven leaflets (usually three).

...And, unlike most other maples, A. negundo is fully dioecious and both a "male" and "female" tree are needed for either to reproduce".

Have you seen...

The field has covered itself in little wild onions.
From edge to edge, the dirt exposed after last fall's soybean harvest barely peeks through, now--the fresh bluish-green haze, like a five-o'clock shadow, announcing spring--stretching across these 40 acres.
Green on green, the curly-tops catch the afternoon sun on their winding, playful stems.
Waiting to release that unmistakable aroma,
when the plow returns to recapture the land.

Until then, they run free.



"Have you seen...." is an effort to discover the unusual beauty in things not usually appreciated for their beauty.

Thanks to Wigger's World for hosting Skywatch Friday each week at his site!
And to Anna Carson for hosting Project Green.