Love is in the air (or on the leaf)

I was photographing oxeye daisies in bloom (because I'm visiting California, where the plants laugh at winter!) when I came across this couple enjoying Valentine's Day.

May I wish that all of you, in your own ways, also enjoy the day.

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Time flies

I must admit that, since I got my macro lens almost a year ago(!), I've become a real fan of flies. Not only are they beautifully iridescent but they (who would have thought it?) STAY STILL--at least, more so than bees or butterflies or ants.

And yet their stillness is so clearly temporary that each second in which they stand, frozen, seems like a lovely gift I'd be a fool not to take advantage of.

There's a lesson in that somewhere...

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Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Fly

There are a lot of front gardens near Dupont Circle in DC, and a number of them sport lustrous, enormous rosemary plants that I can only gaze at with envy (I used to have a flourishing potted rosemary that died inexplicably after a simple intra-city move, and now I’ve given up on them).

On Monday, an overcast and occasionally drizzly day, innumerable flies were perching on trees, bushes, and flowers. I found this one perched—like patience on a monument, smiling at herbs—atop a rosemary sprig.

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Splendor in the Grass

Last week, displaying the kind of frugality that I am known for, I bought a macro lens (hey, there was a sale).

Now, although I have longed for a macro lens for a long time, I didn’t think I needed one in order to recognize and value the world around me. After all, didn’t I have a Ph.D. in biology? Wasn’t my dissertation research focused on intertidal marine invertebrates? Hadn’t I attended an extremely small liberal-arts college? Surely I was already well-primed to appreciate microcosms.

But the macro lens has not only brought into gorgeously clear focus the majesty of creatures I might usually dismiss as pests—it has made me realize that I too can look more closely at and see more of the beasts who go about their business all around me.

For example, during my lunch break on Friday, I happened to pass by some of the many ornamental grasses that homeowners in DC seem obsessed with planting. Because I had my new lens with me, I decided to give the grasses a second look, even though I was pretty sure there couldn’t be anything much in them

Imagine my surprise, then, to find a grasshopper—one of many—peering out at me as it clung to a blade of grass.

And that’s not all. In the few days since I’ve gotten the lens, I’ve seen more spiders, caterpillars, and bizarre shield-shaped beetle-y things than I’ve ever seen before.

[this tiny caterpillar is eating a rose petal]

And here I was, someone who was so smugly certain that I noticed what others didn’t—the hawk stooping for a kill, the snail poised on a stem.

It’s always nice to be reminded of the power that a new perspective—whether it’s brought about through a telescope, a magnifying lens, or a state of mind—has to make visible the humbling complexities of a universe in which other worlds exist below, above, within, around, and in the interstices of our own.

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Can’t You See I’m Trying to Write??

Knowing as I do that invertebrates represent the vast majority (over 97%) of animal life, and knowing too that invertebrates are everywhere, I cannot in good conscience say that there are “more” invertebrates in North Carolina than there are here. I can, however, say that from my visit I’m convinced that there are many more visible invertebrates in North Carolina, and that their abundance and diversity surpasses anything I’ve seen in DC.

For example, I’ve never seen so many kinds of spiders before. I don’t have a lot of photograph evidence of this, though—since, not being skilled at instant arachnid identification, I hesitated to bring my lens too close to them for fear one would bite me in an excessively venomous manner. –But trust me, there were a lot of spiders.

There were also slugs, bees (carpenter, honey, and bumble), flies, and a variety of other multipodal creatures, like this huge and amazing millipede:

And these (perhaps-tent) caterpillars:

I was very excited about these caterpillars when I saw them along the small portion of the Appalachian Trail on which I wandered one afternoon; I also spotted lots of other cool insects, like this…um…katydid, perhaps…?

And this enormous (and slightly camera-shy) beetle:

After a while, though, I decided that I wanted to sit, eat an apple while admiring the river, and write. Unfortunately, the invertebrates had not been informed of my new agenda.

There I was, sitting on a rock near the water, trying to concentrate, and all these creatures were getting in my way.

The caterpillars landing on my jacket weren’t so bad, but the spiders that decided to colonize my rock were a little more alarming. And the tiny biting flies that landed all over and—well, bit me—were just too much.

[they even landed on my pen; how shameless can you get?]

I was in a state of incredible indignation for quite a while. Then, slowly—ever so slowly—my incredible temerity dawned on me. Here I was in the great outdoors, scandalized that these organisms were present in their own habitat. –How dare they treat me like the interloper that I was? Couldn’t they understand that I wanted to commune with nature? –And here was all this wildlife getting in the way!

Once I realized what I’d been doing, I was able to be a little less critical and a little more appreciative of this opportunity to be surrounded—albeit very closely—by nature.

It didn’t reconcile me to the biting flies, though.

[big scary hairy spider on my raincoat]

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