Category: Nature
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More on Oracles: Quartz Crystals
I’ve chosen the 28 lichen samples for the Graphis oracle, developed a sequence of glyphs, and am now working on the ink drawings. Meanwhile, here is a simple oracle that I developed a couple of years ago using double-terminated reverse-sceptred quartz crystals. I have a large collection of these, and chose my favorites for the oracle. They are similar to the famous Herkimer…
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Halloween
This is the beginning of winter, when the creeks turn black and the ground – not just the air – begins to grow cold. I’ve done elaborate rituals in some years, crossing a creek to journey into the Underworld. Other years I’ve turned my desk into an altar to friends, teachers, and ancestors who have…
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Stonecrop Flower
The header photo for my blog shows the leaf rosette of Graptopetalum bartramii (Bartram’s Stonecrop), a rare succulent from the oak woodlands of southeastern Arizona’s “sky island” mountain ranges. The plants are blooming now, with half-inch flowers scattered along a stalk that grows about a foot tall. More photos of this and related plants can be found on…
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Islands of the Morning
I’ve just returned from vacation, including two weeks on North Carolina’s Outer Banks – swimming in the ocean, birdwatching, walking in the woods, and exploring the mainland swamps. Each morning we walked down to the beach to greet the sun: We walked in the complex old-growth maritime deciduous forest at Nags Head Woods, and wandered in the younger,…
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Ripe Pomegranates
My backyard pomegranates are ripe and many are splitting open. I ate the first one in celebration of the New Moon. This year, the seeds are cranberry pink, not dark red, and are very sweet. Desert pomegranates often ripen while the skins are salmon pink. By the time the skin turns deep, bright red, the fruit…
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Full Moon: Mother of…well, a hundred
Above is an egg tempera sketch of a 3″ offset (or “pup”) from the agave plant in my front yard. I nicknamed her “Mother of Thousands” but she actually has about a hundred offsets – which is still amazing since this small variety of Agave palmeri usually has no more than a dozen. The primary leaf rosette was killed by…
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Walking Close to Home
Here’s a view from my daily morning walk, a 4.5-mile loop along a dirt road and a rocky, sandy wash. This area is especially rich in dense forests of very tall ocotillos, which are the intensely green sticks in the photo. For the last two nights, the moon has been spectacular – a glowing copper…
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Mirror-Windows
Here is Antheraea oculea, the Oculea Moth, that I found while photographing ferns. It is closely related to the Polyphemus Moth of the eastern forest, but lacks the pink shading and the purple band on the hindwing, and has larger forewing eyespots. The eyespots are little windows – they are bare of scales and you…
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