Sunday, October 27, 2024

Four Days Until Halloween!

 

Behold, dead Atlantic white cedar trees standing in the shallow water of an abandoned cranberry bog in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This place is sometimes called a "ghost forest." The smoke on the left is coming from a distant forest fire. Click to enlarge. Does it give you a spooky feeling?

You are now ready for Halloween. Go forth and get candy!

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Autumn

 


Song for Autumn, by Mary Oliver 


Don't you imagine the leaves dream now

how comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the 

nothingness of wind? And don't you think 

the trees, especially those with

mossy hollows, are beginning to look for


the birds that will come -- six, a dozen -- to sleep

inside their bodies? And don't you hear 

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first 

tuffets of snow? The pond

stiffens and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its long blue shadows. The wind wags

its many tails. And in the evening

the piled firewood shifts a little, 

longing to be on its way. 



Monday, October 14, 2024

Best Insects in My Mint Garden

I have five kinds of mint in my little backyard garden. Behold, above, a glass of Mediterranean style lemonade with mint, garnished with a dried lemon slice and fresh mint sprigs. As an added benefit, throughout the summer, whenever I went to pick mint for drinks or tea or decoration, there were insects busy at the flowers. I watched, judged, and photographed.

Here at the end of the growing season, I am bestowing the first ever annual Best-Insect-in-the-Mint-Garden award. This little eastern tailed blue butterfly is the winner! The best mint insect of the summer of 2024! It was a delight to see several of them, none much bigger than an inch across with wings wide open, all flitting from flower to flower at once. Click to enlarge.

In the event that the eastern tailed blue butterfly cannot fulfill its duties, the runner-up, shown here, will step in. Let's hear it for the two-spotted scoliid wasp. Yay!

Here's a photo with different lighting on different flowers. See where it gets its common name?

And an honorable mention goes to this European honey bee for maintaining a dramatic pose while I hovered nearby with my camera pointed at her. Well done, bee, and congratulations to all of this year's mint visitors.

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Halloween is Coming!

 

How about a few humerus jokes? What, for instance, is half the diameter of a skeletal circle?

The radius! Click to enlarge.

And these guys. Looks like they know how to eat, drink, and be scary. I'll bet the food at that place is served on bone china. Do you suppose they'll pay the bill with cryptocurrency? Bone appétit!

No bones about it, though, spider skeletons are the scariest. Because spiders don't have bones inside, they are supported by standard invertebrate exoskeletons. It's not only scary, it's a grave mistake...

Do you know what a spider with 20 eyes is called? A spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiider.

And do you know what spiders eat in Paris? French flies!

Finally, and perhaps not soon enough -- do you know what the last skeleton on Earth would be called? The end-o-skeleton. :-)

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Autumn Harvest

 

Our local farm markets are dressed for the season.

Click on the photos to enlarge.





I hear veggies are good for your bones.


And just when I'm getting used to bumpy blue-green ones...

These appeared! 

And these!

But there are still lots of the old-fashioned kind.

Any questions?

Sunday, September 22, 2024

The First of Autumn!

Today is the first day of autumn. This is the best leaf I have found so far.

It is also Hobbit Day for fans of the author J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote this about the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. "He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams."

Me too! I'll be taking a walk in the woods today, to celebrate autumn and Hobbit Day, hoping for an adventure, and with, as Bilbo used to sing: "morning mists and silver sun and wind upon my hair."

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Pine Barrens Gentians

 

If it's September, it's time to visit the New Jersey Pine Barrens to look for the rare and lovely pine barrens gentian flower, Gentiana autumnalis. Behold a beauty from last year.

I went for a long walk in the fine fall like weather this week and I found some. They were just beginning to open.

Not a problem because I am also a big fan of the buds. They remind me of Tiffany vases. Here is a rare pink one. Click to enlarge.


This one is on the verge of opening.

Opening even more.

And here is the most open gentian I found. Very promising, right?

Before long they will be open in all their glory like this one that I photographed in a past year. I hope to get out there again in time to witness it.

Meanwhile, here is a quote that I see myself in from Given Poems, Sabbath II, Wendell Berry. You could too.


"I dream of a quiet man

who explains nothing and defends 

nothing, but only knows 

where the rarest wildflowers 

are blooming, and who goes, 

and finds that he is smiling 

not of his own will."