Walking the dog on a trail I had only taken once before on a night walk, I was startled and delighted to see an Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly, I think! I have been following Mr. Powell’s site for quite some time. His photography is amazing.
This photo was taken with my iPhone 8+ and the new dog on a leash in the other hand. I was delighted to capture this. And I immediately thought, “I am playing Mike Powell!”
Then I spotted one I could not photograph as it was too jumpy. It was a delightful almost turquoise. Have no idea what kind of damsel or dragonfly it was. Wished someone else was with me to capture the image.
We left that area and headed back to the car. And voila! There was another sort!
And another shot of same one. I even captured the shadow of it’s wings 🙂
Mike! Come help me in Ohio!!! Absolutely NO idea what this one is. I was walking near the east fork of the Little Miami river. It was a humid morning and the dog kindly cooperated while I took photos. What a champ!!
If you are interested in dragonflies and damselflies I cannot recommend a better site than https://michaelqpowell.com. He is a terrific photographer who also writes well. He is quite fun to follow. At least until he gets to the snakes.
Why are these important to me? First of all, my husband had this stone wall built to make it easier to garden on this portion of our hill. As you can see it is quite steep. Before we had the wall built I had started sweet peas from seed. I was delighted when they sprouted and bloomed for a couple years. When the men came to build the wall I asked if they might be able to save the sweet peas. They said yes. I failed to tell them where I wanted them to transplant the vine. Turns out they placed it smack dab in the center of the garden. As you can see the vines came back just fine! This year I decided instead of trying to train it I would just let it go over the wall.
But why is this flower memorable to me? Well, a dear friend told me about them. When I spotted them growing along a portion of the road we travel to get home I decided to try my hand at growing them.
Becky Sommer was my friend at school from at least 1959 (when we are pictured next to each other in the class photo). She is a highly talented artist whom I have always admired. Her parents were Dwight and Maria.
Dwight and Maria were married for 69 years before she passed at age 93. Her family was Russian and she was one of 8 children. She bore 6 children to Dwight. “Her creativity was expressed in her artwork and poetry, participation in Cincinnati’s Green Thumb Garden Club and All Saints Episcopal Church’s Altar Guild, flower arranging, and bringing style and warmth to her home and family.”
Dwight was music teacher at my cousins’ elementary school! He passed at age 98. “He was a gifted and beloved music educator at Elmwood Place School until his retirement in 1976. Dwight was so well loved and revered that 21 years after his retirement, the music room was dedicated to him. He continued to teach, mentor and follow the musical careers of many of his students until well into his 80’s.”
So besides being Becky’s parents why were these folks so meaningful to me? First off, Dwight drove me to high school along with Becky and maybe one or two others for years. Our high school was on his way to work. By playing our local classical radio station on the way to school he introduced me to a broad array of classical music!
When I joined the Episcopal church in 1965 who did I find there but the Sommer family! I had an immediate feeling of connection.
Maria once told me that when she and Dwight were dating he brought her bouquet of sweet peas. Evidently, he picked them on his way to see her. So growing them seemed like something I wanted to try. I know she had some flowers in her backyard, but don’t remember her growing them. I also remember she had terrible arthritis in her hands in her later years. I remember visiting once and being shocked to see braces on her wrists.
Still, why this strong connection to my friend’s parents? Well, when my family of origin blew up in 1968 I needed a place to live for a few months until my classes began at the University of Cincinnati. The Sommer family took me in. Maria had a huge old gas stove with a side drawer. Times I was upset she would sit me down for tea. Pulling out the crackers she stored in that drawer (being always warm the drawer kept them dry), she would fix me jelly on warm crackers to go with the tea. Then she would let me talk if I wanted to talk or just sit and compose myself. Cannot remember a better example of Christ’s love and compassion in my entire life, except maybe Mary Dirkse. She is another story for a different time.
I think Maria would approve of these vines hanging down from the stone wall, especially when the humidity leaves huge drops of dew on the flowers and leaves. Wish I had a nifty drawer to keep my crackers dry!
I know these folks are worshiping God on high. I pray their children and their children’s children follow Christ as closely as they did while here on earth! May I, too, live out their example while I walk the earth!
Okay, so it turns out they had to pull eleven of her teeth when they brought her to Ohio. She evidently had tried to chew her way out of her “coop” for years. Just now she is able to be given crunchy kibble. We are still wetting it with some water for her and mixing with canned food. Eventually we will serve it dry with a little canned food and then, hopefully, just dry.
So the name debate has been “Sweetie” because everyone says she is a sweetie. But Bob doesn’t want to go to the door and holler, “Sweetie!” Then we moved to Lucky. Thought about Gummy Bear since she gums her food (though she has molars). Seemed a little mean. Bob thought up Chewbacca and called her Chewy. Grandgirl #1 taught us that Chewbacca was a male. So we have been tossing around Lucky and Chewy for a day or so. I think Lucky is the winner.
There is just nothing quite like watching TV with a soft beagle ear on your leg!
Robert has bordered on pet portrait here, don’t you think? She is starting to like him best. If he goes out to empty the compost she cries at the door. If he doesn’t come back soon enough she howls!
When we kenneled her recently to go the store together we could hear her barking in the house. When we returned she about flipped her tail off completely she wagged so hard!
She was bored the other day and brought me her leash out of the basket by the door. Yes, I took her for a walk. She can be beagle stubborn. If she does not want to go inside I have had to pick her up and carry her a ways. This old lady is getting a work out, not only increasing my daily steps, but lifting 20+ pounds with some regularity. Sometimes I just scoop her up to remind her she is mine and I want a cuddle.
Yep, I am a happy camper with this lovely beagle. Even though it means I swelter outside in nasty humid, hot Ohio summer weather. Oh well, I own plenty of dry clothes!
As my sister-in-law said even after you pick a name there will be pet names that might change day to day. So Lucky is a sweetie who may never know her name exactly, but she is learning some commands. In just one week she has gained our trust and grown our love exponentially. She is a keeper
I was headed downstairs the other day. I saw something on the carpet at the base of the stairs. I figured it was a piece of glitter or a shiny piece off my jeans pocket. When I got to the landing I bent to pick it up. Was very startled to wind up picking up a lightning bug. It was no longer moving, but still glowing. Must have come in on the bottom of a shoe, I mused, and then floods of memories.
I have fond memories from childhood of hunting and catching lightning bugs. First we would pound holes into the lid of a jar. (Lids were metal then before plastics took over manufacturing and metal became rare.) We would capture the bugs in our hand and then put them in a mayonnaise jar. Yep, a glass jar we were allowed to run around with! The more you caught the harder it was to get it in the jar without releasing the others or squashing it in an effort to close the lid quickly. If I was particularly lucky, I was allowed to keep the jar in my bedroom over night. Nothing quite like the magic of falling asleep to blinking fireflies!
Only God could think up something this amazing!
This year in mid-spring when I saw one in the daytime on the window screen I couldn’t wait to tell Bob. He said he had seen one, too. The first brood was in early May, but they never last long. Now in Mid-June we are in the type that live about 2 months.
Amusing that we see these in the middle of the night. (No, I have not ‘stayed out late’ and tried to catch any in years.) Bob and I both wear Fitbit step counters. They also monitor our sleep. He says that sometimes when I roll over in the night mine lights up. Or if he gets up and returns to bed his lights up. Says it is like having giant fireflies in the bedroom.
As a real child, growing up allowed to explore the natural world as far as our yard and one or two others, some kid (probably one of the boys from down the street that we played “War” with), taught me that if you step on a lightning bug on the sidewalk and smear it, it will glow. Turns out we were triggering the chemical reaction that the bugs produced in life to create their bio-luminescence. If you want more information click on this link: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/group/fireflies/
So thank you little beetle for bringing me such joy for my entire lifetime. I was amazed when nephews and nieces visited from California and they had never seen fireflies.
Bachelor Buttons reseeded themselves again and have been gigantic this year of mild weather. In the yard recently I captured a shot of this guy.
As I type this I can hear his honeybee cousin out the open window on the same group of flowers!
I think the heat and rain have about finished the poppies. And then, they keep blooming! I may try to thin them and move them about when they go dormant. Then again, I hesitate for fear I will damage or kill one!
Planted this cheery yellow perennial a couple years ago. It is flourishing this spring. Would have to go out to the garden and get the tag to know it’s name. I keep forgetting it. I can use it in cut flower arrangements as long as it keeps access to the sun.
Purple Salvia and Lemondrop Oenothera – no wonder I can’t remember it!
PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS: Bob has hidden some sunflower plants just next to the poppies. Perhaps we will have groups of birds at the window in those sunflowers if the deer do not eat off the flower heads before they bloom!
There is a trail we often walk at Harsha Lake, which we have always called East Fork Lake. It is truly our favorite trail though there are few wildflowers there. Recently we noticed a tree had fallen across the stream. We commented how sad it was that this tree would mess up the photos we take trying to capture the changes in the water.
We returned to our trail a few weeks later and wow was I surprised! This pandemic struggle has been very difficult for me emotionally. I guess I am what is referred to as a melancholic depressive. I want to be an optimist, but I am more like Eeyore!
So there is the fallen tree. Sprouting leaves now in the sun and sudden heat of 80 degrees, constantly watered by the stream.
This tree is not upright as we are accustomed to seeing them grow. It must still be rooted though! Obviously, I have no idea how long the tree can survive. But I am going to take this image as a reminder to hope. Hope that a new day will come. Hope that until then, we are sustained by our loving Father.
Happy are those whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. “ Psalm 1: 2-3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us
When was the last time you threw something off? Like the covers in bed, or your coat when you entered a warm room? The author of Hebrews gives us a graphic picture of how we are to respond to hindrances in our walk with God. “Let us throw off everything that hinders!”(NIV) If you haven’t thrown off a sweater or sweatshirt lately, go do it now. Do it again thinking of all the things that keep you from your relationship with God. Throw it off!
“And the sin that so easily entangles.” Have you ever taken a walk through a field that was overgrown with shrubs and vines and plants with thorns? That’s what I think of when I read “the sin which so easily entangles.” You start off thinking “this will lead me to what I want” and soon you are up to your lower leg in tangles and sin is tripping you and tears your pants legs, sending stickers and burrs into your socks. How do you get out of the mess? Throw it off! Get back to the path trod by the great cloud of witnesses. Back to where you can run the race with perseverance. Remove yourself from the sin that so easily entangles. get prayer from your part of the Body of Christ, and refuse to go that way of entanglement again. Millions of people who lived before you chose Christ as their Way, their Truth, their Life. You can do this!
Jesus, lead me in Your paths. Help me run the race with perseverance and joy. Amen.
Treasures in Plain Sight, A Christian Blog 