Tag Archives: nature

Keep Spring Forever in Your Mind

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With the ninety degree April 6’th heat, we may say that spring has arrived – at least in spirit. I think we all needed spring to come early this year, to offset the really bad winter that was forgettable and regrettable for ‘oh so much more than just the gray days and drab landscapes of forgone winters.

I’d been noticing the buds on the trees during my AM walks, and managed to take a few pics of them. I think the buds I’ve photographed are of the Crepe Myrtle tree variety, but never was a horticulturalist. I just thought they were pretty, and a nice introduction to spring in 2021. Hooray I say, spring is here, I say.

Over the winter the body did its usual disintegration routine, so with the arrival of spring my walks will be more frequent, and maybe I’ll get back to a normal walking rhythm by June or July. I’ll just double up on my hummus. It’s the food of spring, sort of. It has some of the ingredients for a body’s spring renewal (now, I’m not a trained doctor any more than a horticulturist, so this is uneducated opinion).

Apparently, hummus is one of the only foods that you can eat (outside of snail innards IIRC) – that contains all three of the precursor organics needed by your DNA to renew those cells of your new spring body. Well, people have said so much as that in the past, and the FDA made them stop. The proponents of the hyperbole called hummus’s most important ingredient: (tahini) – by the name of vitamin T, and gave to it great powers. Apparently the FDA disagreed that it should be called a vitamin. Great powers or not, I’m counting on that hummus and some more spring fresh air to start the 2021 out-of-doors season that I hope will truly be a renewal.

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Water Swept Grasses

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Figure 1: Water swept grasses.  Click to enlarge.

The Pentax has seen better days.  The mirrorbox has been torqued such that focus is difficult, but once in a while I still manage to get a shot with it.  The focus issue is more difficult at infinity focus rather than closer … and the shot in figure 1 was the latter.  It’s an area where (not very long ago) – a swift current rushed through the grasses, leaving an almost surreal sculpting of the top of the grass.  It looks like a scene out of one of my old 3D viewer slide machine slides – with leprechauns  just off to the side of the photo no doubt!  Click it to enlarge it – it’s an interesting natural bit of mother-earth art IMO.

For those wanting a direct link to my smugmug nature collection, here it is (just click picture):

More Deer Pics

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deer1012AFigure 1: Procession of Deer

It’s always so hard to catch a deer in a photo.   They move around so much, that every other picture is a blur.   I guess it’s the same as with my dogs.  Anyway, here’s a shot, taken out of the back-yard window, showing the start of a procession (four deer altogether) – parading through my little nature preserve.

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Name that butterfly

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Posted 08-03/2013:

Today, taking my usual walk (my forspent feet took me a mere three miles), I came across a butterfly (deceased) – lying on the pathway.  I’m not the neighborhood Lepidopterist (expert on all things butterfly), but I have a suspicion that the specimen I found could be classified as a common variety.  It’s unusual to see them (butterflies) in Cary, so I scooped the little winged creature into my empty coffee box, and slid it into my carry pack.

Any Lepidopterist care to comment about the identity?

Dog Days (of Summer)

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Posted July 22’nd 2013:

As we teeter on the edge of the dog days of summer, I bathe in the appreciation that once again I will have survived to see the start of the Days of Sirius.  It’s a time that, for me, is a favorite season and time of year.  Some like it hot.  I do.  Simmer my bones at eighty nine or ninety Fahrenheit, and count me happy.

Wikipedia’s expert on such things, writes that the dog days of summer historically marked an evil time, brought on by Sirius, the god of hot.  The ancient Romans sacrificed dogs to Sirius, to appease him in order to ward off the blazing heat.

The dog days officially start on July 24’th, and end on August 24’th.  These dates mark the old calendar for such things, but recent almanacs place the start date in early July, and the end date in early August.  The old Roman “dog days” schedule is more appropriate for the southern United States, as those weeks hold the hottest days of the year for the southlands.

The Wiki description points to Clavis Calendaria, from 1813, and takes a dog days quote from it.  I liked it well enough to repeat it here, plus or minus my paraphrase:

"The sea boiled, Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad,
and all creatures became languid
... 
causing to man - burning fevers and hysteria..."

Update August 12th, 2013

As the end of the dog days is less than two weeks away, we might compare this year to last year.  I’d reckon that Sirius has given us a break this time around.  I’ve yet to consult the local meteorologist for the numbers, but I’m thinking that my walking ritual could tabulate the averages almost as well.

It’s not to say that we haven’t had our share of broiler days hot enough to poach a Londoner. But, this year he’d have been only soft poached. Yesterday,  I took my usual walk, cut to four miles in light of the 96 degree heat. Before stepping outside, I availed myself of the umbrella, as per my normal practice.  Many days, it has served to deflect the steamy hot breath of Sirius, and on more than a few dog days it has managed to keep my head dry too!

There is a thing I thoroughly enjoy about walking in the midday heat – and yesterday it was my happy fortuity to enjoy this treat, once again.  I dropped into a low spot on my path, partially shielded from the breeze.  Here the lazy air slowed even more, and I was at once enveloped by the strong scent of flowers and other things, floating along in the hazy slow swirl of the sultry air, and topped off with lingering notes of hot, sublimating pine sap.

The summer’s simmering aromatic delights, the best of nature’s potpourri, had been presented to me … for being the one willing to brave the dog days of summer, and a walk in the midday sun …