Birthday sights and thoughts

Isn’t it beautiful? The hummingbird picture (which is impossible for me to photograph without reflections) is a gift from my older daughter, who’s apparently been on the lookout for one after watching me try again and again to capture hummingbirds with my camera. This picture is one of many taken by an upstate New York photographer, and we came across a collection of his work at a local bookshop recently. Gifts like this were part of a very pleasant weekend characterized by family time and thoughtfulness.

On Saturday morning, while my husband and the girls were out running errands, I went for a walk at a local marsh I’ve not explored before. It’s actually located between the two widely-spaced lanes of a four-lane highway, and I had to walk through a tunnel under the highway to get there.

It was appropriate that on my birthday I saw so many of these.

As a child I used to draw architectural diagrams for small burrowing animals. There would be a line across the top of the paper signifying the ground, a hole, and then an extensive and intricate underground complex of specialized rooms, all well furnished of course. Always, though, the front door would be cleverly hidden under a toadstool. All these years later, I still love the idea of a potential wonderland just out of sight, perhaps even under my feet. I liked being reminded by the toadstools.

I don’t usually get excited about bugs, but by far the most exciting sight was this green darner dragonfly. I reached out to move this branch out of the way and was arrested by the sight of this 4-inch creature, exactly matched to the color of the leaves except for its delicate gold filigreed wings.

I also saw a bluet damselfly. I’ve been curious to confirm visually the difference between dragonfly and damselfly wings at rest, and this critter enabled me to do so. It looks like E.T. Completely.

Last but not least (for the purposes of this post, anyway), I saw this butterfly, moving so quickly it’s a wonder I got a photo at all. I got the picture home and determined that it was a female spicebush swallowtail.

The flowers it’s working are not spicebush; they’re touch-me-nots. I was tickled to see the subject of a Wendell Berry poem by that name from the collection Entries:

There is a flower called touch-me-not,
which means, of course, touch me,
for it depends upon touch for propogation,
as humans do. The blossom may be
two tones of orange, the darker exquisitely
freckling the lighter, or a clear lovely
yellow, an elegant aperture, inviting entry
by winged emissaries of imagination
actuated by love…

I’m not whether sure my “winged emissary of the imagination” was actuated by love or hunger, but it was a delight to the eye. Apparently the seed pods of touch-me-not pop at the touch when ripe. Stepping delicately over some of the connotations of Berry’s metaphor, I note that he’s right: people do need touch to survive and thrive. There was a time when my life was quite solitary, but each decade brings more people into my sphere, more lives to bump up against and care for. Each one releases some potentiality that’s been lying in wait, ripening, till the right season. Because of this, though there are things I don’t like about getting older, for the most part I can honestly say that I enjoy it, and that life is getting richer year by year.

Since I’m quoting Berry’s poem, I’m linking up to The Week in Words over at Stray Thoughts. If you’ve made it through all the bug pictures, click on over and see what quotes others have found inspiring or thought-provoking this week.