Nature Calling

Thinking back on the weekend and my evening walk to the beach with Patrick, I can't believe that we stopped to slip our noses into any variety of rosebuds along the way and came away with disappointing results nearly every time...but never thought to stop for a sniff at the pink roses in the front yard here at the Nest, which are quite fragrant.

Java and Birdie have both posted about insects recently, and they reminded me that I've had a few encounters of the bug and insect variety in the past week or so, which I've been remiss about sharing with you. I've uploaded each one of the following to BugGuide.net in hopes of learning more about each of these...and as always, I'll try to update as information warrants.

As we began the painting project in the dining room on Saturday, we discovered two of three of this kind of spider. This one, I'd say was maybe almost the size of a quarter...but it's possible it's grown larger in my memory, too.

Each one I managed to coax into a plastic cup for transport outside, where they were tossed gently off the deck, once I'd checked to be sure no Miss Muffet sat below.




This nasty lookin' little buggy is, of course, an earwig. They always give me the creeps, though they are, apparently, mostly harmless.



This jumpy little spider dude lives in my car, or at least that's where we recently encountered one another. He seems to enjoy running around on the ceiling in my Saturn.

I'm wondering how jumpy I should feel about him being in there, since he seems to be good at hopping and jumping, himself, darting back and forth overhead.


I'm not sure what this gangly thing is. Of course, I see them every year, are they some kind of mayfly or midge or something. It was a couple inches in length, at least, and we crossed paths a while back, the night I painted the bedroom Cape Cod Gray.

I was a little concerned for its welfare, as I hadn't discovered it until after I'd begun painting, but it managed to stay clear of the wet paint, but was never far away from wherever I was working as I made my way around the room.

Of course, these encounters with Mother Nature are all pretty harmless. My friend Heidi writes me this evening from Texas:

"you know we had a little dust up here right? Ike? Or did the news not cover it so much because Bush is from here and it wasn’t Katrina? Or was it? Have a look. We are about 80 miles away from Galveston and we still have neighbors waiting for power. Some did get flooding and some more got trees though their houses...the mosquitoes down there are the size of your hand and outnumber the people about a thousand to one!"

And it occurred to me that I really haven't been hearing very much about the wrath of Hurricane Ike. I mean, I watched the CNN coverage when the storm hit, but I haven't been in the loop about much of the aftermath...and I'm not sure if that's just me being off the grid as far as TV what with the unsettled nature of Life just lately...or if it really isn't getting much coverage because of the idiocy of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate or the bail-out of the collapsing Wall Street...which I certainly HAVE been hearing enough about.

And so in case I'm not the only person out of the loop on this one, here's the link Heidi sent along to some of the absolutely amazing and awesome photos coming from Galveston and Houston in the wake of this powerful storm.

Kinda makes an itsy-bitsy spider not seem like such a big deal, you know?

For The Love of Our Home

There'll be more garden photos and stuff to share with you later, but first, a moment about our planet. I think it's becoming more clear every day that Global Warming is not the fiction our government leaders have suggested. They can afford to keep their heads in the sand, protected by their bank accounts and bunkers, but the rest of us need the world to bring us life, joy and the loving embrace of Nature.

For each blogger who posts the badge for the 350 Challenge on their blog, Brighter Planet will off 350 pounds of carbon. Nothing to turn your nose up at, this is equivalent to turning off 100 light bulbs or leaving your car parked for two weeks. Already, they've offset 122,500 pounds of carbon. Can you really afford not to add the badge?

Thanks to Curt at While Walking Duncan (if you haven't discovered this delightful blog about a boy and his dog, take a moment--you won't be disappointed)for bringing this campaign to my attention.

Heavenly Acts

There are some times when you just really don't know what to say. As many of us have, I've watched at a distance as Nature recently made itself known in less pleasant ways then I usually prefer to chronicle in the garden (for the moment setting talk of localized flooding aside).

First there was the tropical cyclone in Myanmar, roaring into the country and catching its people unaware, claiming tens of thousands of lives. Lives persued on the very shores of the land, where nature's protections had been stripped away. Then the horrors of a government unwilling to allow others to help its citizens, seemingly uninterested in offering help themselves.

And then, almost before we had time to process all that, a massive earthquake rocked and shattered the heart of China, drawing attention to shoddy construction as hundreds of buildings, many of them schools, collapsed on thousands more people.

But I haven't written about any of this. I often champion the planet and her floral and fauna more than the human race who seems to take such advantage of the natural world, although we are a part of it. In situations like this, a part of me thinks about how natural disasters such as these are probably Nature's failsafe against over-population. Of course, I have the luxury of not having known anyone in the effected areas.

Of course telling you that makes me sound a little cold and unfeeling, which I'm anything but: coming home from work one night last week I had to pull off the road for a few moments, as I listened to the heartrending radio coverage of the search for a young boy and his grandparents buried in the rubble of their home. That search, you might guess, bore no happy fruit. And even knowing none of them, I cried.

But I didn't have the words. I'm sure I'm not alone. When faced with tragedies like these, what can you possibly say that makes a difference? The folks over at NPR (all of them wiser than me) know who to ask at these times when words fail the rest of us: in this case, a pair of Chinese poets.

As is the poet's special gift, they found the words. And so I'll defer to them here. They are too beautiful not to share.

Thousands upon thousands of anguished cries
Returning to silence and tranquillity
Heavenly acts cannot be predicted
The moon over Wenchuan
Still, a question mark
Aftershocks extend to Chengdu
Sorrow engulfs half the world
Tears turn to ice
Let candlelight melt them away
Children, climb on a dandelion
and line up for heaven.

Elegy, by He Xiaozhu, Chengdu, China.

Chengdu is nothing but earthquake
My brothers are in the earthquake
My friends are in the earthquake
My dog is in the earthquake, too
Liu Hui says, oh Brother
Life in the earthquake is terrible
But I am a thousand miles away
Where people are perfectly normal
Besides being worried
We feel a bit empty.

My Brothers Are in the Quake by Wu Qing, a Chengdu poet visiting Shanghai last week.

You can listen to both these poets read their work here. If you can bear to read, there's more coverage to be had there, as well.

A Prayer for the South

My thoughts and prayers to the many people along the Gulf Coast whose lives have been simply decimated this week by the power of Mother Nature, and the unprecedented human crisis which has ensued. Great anger and sadness there...and here.

More words than that fail me. Please click the link above (under today's headline) to the Red Cross and give if you are able.