Dragonfly Symbiosis

Dragonfly Symbiosis

A Story for Gretchen

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to go out in the woods and meditate. One of her favorite places to sit in ZaZen was Lycopodium Knoll, a small rise in the sandy woods above Blue Heron Lagoon. The knoll was covered with lycopodia, and the girl would sit with her back to a red maple and her middle finger touching her thumb and resting on her knees. And sit.

One day, however, her serenity was disturbed by deerfly. The deerflies buzzed nosily around and kept landing on the girl’s arms and shoulders. They were trying to bite her.

Suddenly, there was a much larger, louder buzzing and a huge insect landed on her knee. In its mandibles was a deer fly. The dragonfly noisily chomped down the deerfly and a moment later, zipped out and snagged another. When it had eaten that one, it snagged a third, and continued until it had eaten the entire platoon

Then the dragonfly sat calmly on the girl’s knee waiting. Each time another deerfly or mosquito homed in on the girl, the dragonfly captured it and ate it. The girl acted as a food magnet for the dragonfly and the dragonfly protected the girl from insect bites. And this is a true story. Mary Stebbins Taitt The art is a collaboration with Gretchen Owen.

Lynda's Garden

Lynda's Poem

You embellished my life
with the last five years of yours
Adorned it with stories
from your animal rescue adventures
while I cried on your shoulder
after losing mine
Bejeweled it with bead work
made from our treasure hunt bounty
while helping me blow dust off mine
Illuminated it with photographic treks
no one else had the patience to join
Enriched it with gardens
that renewed environmental wonder
and recycled life

Hours spent in unspoken mirth
or in epic laughter
We shared the same muse
Your diagnosis was terminal
yet you filled life
with life and gave it back
Until the last harvest moon

It’s been a year since then
My camera and beads have
once again gathered dust
But, an overgrown flower bed
outside my door whispered
It’s creator died years ago
A thorny rose stem among weeds
Tiny begonias hidden in the grass
told the story of her love
I thought of you and recycled it

In memory of you
I took a new photo
A huge white bloom
that only opens at night
While inside my house
a bird screeched
A rescue you’d fall in love with
Thank you



Lynda passed away in October of '09. I wrote this poem for her last October. I thought it would be a fitting conclusion for the series I started here. In honor of Lynda, I've started a new garden I named "Ilma's Garden". Ilma was my boyfriend's first wife, who passed away in '99, and who originally started the garden that lays outside my front door.

Waterbirds in flight

My hiking group went to the Humboldt Wildlife Refuge Friday. There were a lot of birds in the marsh pools. This is the best I could do zooming and cropping some Tundra Swans that landed. Egrets are often seen there (as well as many other places in this area). It doesn't seem to matter how mediocre the photographer or her camera -- if you capture them at all, they are beautiful in flight.  

Fall Color in Tennessee

These are from my trip to Tennessee last year.







This one is actually at Hot Springs North Carolina when were hiking the Appalachian Trail along the French Broad River.

Sunbeam walk

A walk in the Arcata, CA, Community Forest Nov. 8 was a sunbeam walk! Bundles of beams broke through the canopy, often illuminating showers of droplets from the wet branches. It had rained the night before (as it does almost every night right now).

 

 

 

The Snowy Plover in Galveston

When I was at the beach the other day, I found myself thinking about Leaf Lady Gail's post on the Snowy Plover. So, I came home and did some research.



Here's a website for The International Snowy Plover Survey. Apparently, this endangered bird's statistics are well documented along the Pacific coast where Gail lives, and now scientists are using those methods to study the Gulf Coast and Mexico where their numbers are thought to be declining also.



I see Snowy Plovers all the time, and never realized they were endangered. The book Bird Life of Houston, Galveston, and the Upper Texas Coast says that the only nesting evidence of these birds here are the fledglings sighted with their parents. No one has actually seen a nest. A 2004 Census counted 491 pairs along the Texas Coast. Counting these little guys seems to be difficult because of the constant changing of their habitat.



They like to nest in dry dunes near the tidal flats where they feed. This picture was taken at the east end of the island along the Houston ship channel, which is considered a bird sanctuary because of all the tidal sand flats and pools.



Hurricanes wipe out huge sections of these flats, washing the sand into the Houston ship channel.



Then we dredge up the sand from the bottom of the ship channel to rebuild the beaches. This is a section of East Beach that is just before the tidal flats. There was a sign saying that they're rebuilding it for sea turtles and endangered birds.



Here's a view of the reconstruction of East Beach from the tidal flats. The ship channel is to the left. The Gulf is straight ahead on the other side of the dunes.



It will probably take a while for the tidal flats to reform. Each time I go, they seem to be growing. I wasn't able to find a more current census to see if the population is declining. The 2004 Census was supposed to be a baseline for future reference.

Dry Lagoon

I went to Dry Lagoon today for the first time in more than a year!

Blog Action Day! WATER!

Water is everywhere. It sustains life. It makes our planet livable.



We drink it, we cook with it, we swim in it.



We sail on it.



But water is endangered! We threaten our own lives, our children and grandchildren, by polluting our water.

Yet there is HOPE!



Five facts about water:

1. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it's no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.
2. More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.
3. Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.
4. It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that's just one meal! It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States.
5. The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Silk Creek Review Values clean water!

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Camoflage

These pictures, taken on a northern California beach, may show Snowy Plovers. (I think that's what they are; you may know better.) Their only protection is their camoflage. I will admit I was a bit skeptical when I heard that is the only way they protect themselves from predators (see my other entry). But notice how hard it is to find them among the bits of wood and brush on the sand! Perhaps Nature did know what it was doing.

Snowy Plover?

These pictures may show Snowy Plovers, a small shorebird that's endangered because it makes its nest right out in the open. It just wiggles in the sand enough to create a shallow basin and deposits its eggs right there ... where predators can easily get at them, and people can accidentally or intentionally destroy them too.