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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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The Full Moon Shatters into Rain
This full moon brought rain and green leaves. A glass sphere, its surface frosted and etched by windblown dust, shattered into glistening streaks and bubbles as it poured waterfalls and tendrils of green light. Amid thunderclouds, the rising and setting moon shone with a clear warm glow, like the swirling, molten sphere that forms as silver…
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