I was reminded of this poem tonight, by a cricket who hopped on my knee. It’s a poem that takes a while the first time you see it … a nonsensical staircase of letters by e.e. cummings:. r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r ~ by e.e. cummings It’s nonsensical until you learn, as OxfordWords blog explains, that e.e. cummings is presenting a “grasshopper…
Meadowhawk Cleared for Landing
I’m taking a summer break from my writing here at the blog, to finish some creative projects. I’ll be back in the fall — maybe a bit sooner. Until then … I’ll be posting some of my favorite photos and photo-tunes in this spot. (Ziggy Marley, today). Thanks, my friends, for sticking around and for…
The Magical Mystery Tour of Tent Caterpillars
When I saw the first signs of tent caterpillars outside our flat, I kept the sighting to myself. We have a neighbor, a home owner just up the hill who screams at crows — and who dead-heads her plants to the point of denuding them. I knew if she saw this tiny tent on the…
Return to the Mother Ship
This was a serendipitous capture … getting the two honey bees in a straight line, and in the same plane of focus. I was photographing a single, pollen-soaked bee when the other entered the frame and queued up behind. Whenever I see bees on a slow approach to sunflowers, I can’t help but think of…
The Tenacity of Spiders
This is a re-post from September 2010. We’re coming upon spider and web season in Seattle, and I haven’t captured another video of web building since I shot this one. At the time, we were staying with friends who have a lush, Northwest garden — ample habitat for garden spiders, Northern Flickers, chipmunks and the…
Staging “Nature” Shots
A friend of mine recommended 500px as an alternative to Flickr. Between Flickr, Facebook, Linked In and my inactive Twitter account, I’m maxed out on social networking, something I’ve never been all that hot on, anyway. But, I meandered over to 500px because the interface is supposedly beautiful, and the community gets rave reviews. The…
Yellow Woolly Bear
My caterpillar ID is rusty, to say the least, so a Flickr user helped me identify this caterpillar as a Yellow woolly bear or Spilosoma virginica — destined to become a tiger moth. I posted about a different variety of woolly bear after a trip to Bodega Head last year where we got some close…
Spring Spiderlings
I saw what looked like a clump of mud sticking to the wall outside my kitchen window. It looked, at first, like the remnant of a Cliff Swallow nest . . . the muddy scars I saw frequently in the Bay Area — the artifacts of their once viable mud mortar homes. But some part…
House Fly Cafe
Could be a diner shuttered by the Health Department, or . . . A house fly doing what house flies do: bringing up saliva to liquefy food. Flies tend to stand still through their moments of digestion, making macros of this phenomenon possible. Shot on a friend’s porch, after a rain deluge, with my Panasonic…
Must … Re … Build
When you consider that a wave of a hand, a cloud burst, a wing swooping through the maze of silk can destroy hours of labor, it’s inspirational watching pure pragmatism rule the day …
