Eyes to Eyes

Ebony Jewelwing

We have had many days of intermittent tropical-like rainstorms. The landscape is steamy with humidity and the plants are oversized…giants of themselves….our little world looks like a Rousseau painting.
Today – in between storms – I chased an Ebony Jewelwing from fern to fern, trying to get it in the right pose for my camera. I slogged through the swamp, water filling up my boots in search of my quarry. Finally, I got a couple of passable shots. For a while we started at each other…eyes to eyes.

Mingling with the Swallowtails

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies flit from the garden flowers to the wildflowers. I try to sneak up on them with my camera, but don’t always get there before they take off again, circle up into the trees and then make another pass again. One Swallowtail has a nipped off tail ---an accident or a predator’s bite? It can still fly just as gracefully.

This week we’ve had a lot of rainstorms, intermingled with sunny skies. Most everything is growing well, though the more fragile seeds I planted might have become meals for field mice.

The summer solstice has now passed…the days just ever so slowly at first…will become shorter now. But now…for the moment life is bright at Beatitude Pond.

Dragon Fly Racing

The air around the house is like an active airport. Dragon Flies are zizzing around like jets. They zoom to their targets, catching their prey, dragging it with them as they fly.
There are multitudes of flying things now on our land…everything is abuzz.
The mosquitoes are biting, the flies are biting.
The moths are lurking under the front step...of all shapes and sizes and colors.
Today we broke a record....it topped over 90 degrees..unusual for a June day. Just the other week I was afraid of frost in the morning. Now we are sweltering.