tacü ni ñea? what's this?
Apr. 22nd, 2024 01:55 pmMy tutor Francy was out of touch for a while because she and her parents were visiting her husband's family upriver in Peru. She got back yesterday and sent me so many lovely photos and videos, including these. What are the blotches of color in the photo? They look like a weird sun artifact, or something added in in post production, but they're not: they're butterflies, green, yellow, and blue.
Here's a six-second video she took.
Magic.
Here's a six-second video she took.
Magic.
happy news
Sep. 26th, 2023 10:37 amThe other day when I was harvesting some milkweed, I found a monarch chrysalis on a leaf. From what I've read, the caterpillars prefer to make their chrysalises elsewhere (for example, there was one on the siding of my house--sadly, that one never hatched).
So I put the stalk in a sheltered place and waited with trepidation to see if it would hatch. We had three days of rain. Today, it's gloomy, but not raining. And I went outside, and instead of a chrysalis, there was a monarch female, resting from her emergence. And her wings look just fine ^_^
chrysalis on a leaf
newly emerged female monarch butterfly (you can see the discarded chrysalis lower down)
So I put the stalk in a sheltered place and waited with trepidation to see if it would hatch. We had three days of rain. Today, it's gloomy, but not raining. And I went outside, and instead of a chrysalis, there was a monarch female, resting from her emergence. And her wings look just fine ^_^
chrysalis on a leaf
newly emerged female monarch butterfly (you can see the discarded chrysalis lower down)
the story continues
Sep. 20th, 2023 12:13 pmWhen Crinklewing (as my husband dubbed him) was blown away, I thought that was the end of the story, and so I made the entry with that endpoint.
But stories keep flowing! So much of storytelling is about deciding where to begin and end your tale ...
Later that day, I found Crinklewing again in my yard. All through the day, I took breaks from work to continue what I described in the last post, taking him to different flowers, tempting him with sugar-water. As evening came round, he climbed up on my sweatshirt, right up to my neck! And then he fluttered off, back into the milkweed patch by my door.
Or so I thought: later I found him on my kitchen floor.
All right, friend, spend the night here in my house, where it's warm, I thought. I put him on a brightly colored piece of cloth on my ironing board and wet it with sugar-water.
proboscis out!
Today is another sunny day. I don't want Crinklewing to end his days cooped up in a dim indoors, so I decided to take him to a pollinator garden by an elementary school. It's a beautiful place, and he looked at home stretched out on a ... not sure what it is. [ETA: Likely Tithonia, also known as Mexican sunflower--ID courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pameladean--thank you!] A bright flower.
But I heard a group of kids and a teacher coming along, and I realized in this spot, he would be vulnerable to lots of people noticing him and possibly poking at him. So I took him down the hill to a wild spot with lots of goldenrod (which has delicious nectar beloved of bees and butterflies) and set him there. Lots of food, and warm sun.
As I came up the hill, one of the little kids greeted me. "Hi! How are you? What are you doing?" And I realized the group was a special ed class (not from the greeting, from other things). There was one child in a wheelchair with a screen for touching for communication.
I told the kid about Crinklewing.
"Can we go see?" the kid asked.
"Let's just look from here," the teacher said. "It's better for the butterfly."
That seemed to satisfy the kid. He and the others got busy exclaiming over the flowers, squatting down to look at things, asking questions--clearly learning and enjoying themselves.
All crinklewings of one sort or another. It feels too on the nose, but it's really what happened.
But stories keep flowing! So much of storytelling is about deciding where to begin and end your tale ...
Later that day, I found Crinklewing again in my yard. All through the day, I took breaks from work to continue what I described in the last post, taking him to different flowers, tempting him with sugar-water. As evening came round, he climbed up on my sweatshirt, right up to my neck! And then he fluttered off, back into the milkweed patch by my door.
Or so I thought: later I found him on my kitchen floor.
All right, friend, spend the night here in my house, where it's warm, I thought. I put him on a brightly colored piece of cloth on my ironing board and wet it with sugar-water.
proboscis out!
Today is another sunny day. I don't want Crinklewing to end his days cooped up in a dim indoors, so I decided to take him to a pollinator garden by an elementary school. It's a beautiful place, and he looked at home stretched out on a ... not sure what it is. [ETA: Likely Tithonia, also known as Mexican sunflower--ID courtesy of
pameladean--thank you!] A bright flower.But I heard a group of kids and a teacher coming along, and I realized in this spot, he would be vulnerable to lots of people noticing him and possibly poking at him. So I took him down the hill to a wild spot with lots of goldenrod (which has delicious nectar beloved of bees and butterflies) and set him there. Lots of food, and warm sun.
As I came up the hill, one of the little kids greeted me. "Hi! How are you? What are you doing?" And I realized the group was a special ed class (not from the greeting, from other things). There was one child in a wheelchair with a screen for touching for communication.
I told the kid about Crinklewing.
"Can we go see?" the kid asked.
"Let's just look from here," the teacher said. "It's better for the butterfly."
That seemed to satisfy the kid. He and the others got busy exclaiming over the flowers, squatting down to look at things, asking questions--clearly learning and enjoying themselves.
All crinklewings of one sort or another. It feels too on the nose, but it's really what happened.
wrinkled wing
Sep. 19th, 2023 12:52 pmI've spend the last two-and-a-half days thinking about and trying to care for a butterfly who came out of its crysalis with a malformed wing. It's as if something got wrapped around the wing and pinched it. Here's the picture I took on the day I noticed it (two days ago):
That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.
So it was doomed. It was never going to be flying anywhere. Butterfly raising web pages told me I could make a pet out of it, or I could euthanize it (methods described, nothing awful but the concept was very depressing)--or, unstated, but clearly a choice, I could just leave it be, in which case it would die all on its own.
It was such a sunny day. This is life in the world as a butterfly, friend, I wanted to say. You can't fly, so your life is destined to be quite brief, but I hope you really love this sun. It must feel strange not to be a caterpillar anymore.
Then yesterday was rainy and cold. The butterfly hung on to its spot all day. I brought it flowers because one thing the butterfly raising pages said was you could offer a newly hatched butterfly an array of flowers. But it was too cold a day, maybe, for the butterfly to try to test out the flowers. And I don't know how long the nectar stays nectar-y after the flowers are cut.
Today is sunny (ish), and the butterfly was walking about a little. I read on the butterfly pages about making a honey-water or sugar-water mixture. Put it in a saucer and let them taste it with their feet, the page said. When they realize what it is, they will drink some, if they feel like it.
( two more butterfly pictures, with the flowers I tried tempting it with )
So I made some honey-water and held it where the butterfly could taste it, and it did taste it, and then climbed onto my hand--but when I lifted my hand, it fell fluttering off--but then gamely caught hold of a twig and started climbing up again. I tried again to interest it in the honey-water, and again it climbed onto my hand. I thought I'd carry it over to a stand of cosmos--then it could do the butterfly thing of drinking nectar, have another experience of life as a butterfly before it died. So I walked very slowly and carefully, and the butterfly sat on my hand, calm.
And then a big gust of wind came and carried it off, I don't know where. I looked around my yard, but couldn't see it. But I'm thinking, this means it even--sort of--experienced flight, a little.
I'm glad to have known this butterfly.
Meanwhile, I have a chrysalis on the siding of my house that's just about ready to hatch. I hope it will be healthy and able to fly.
That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.
So it was doomed. It was never going to be flying anywhere. Butterfly raising web pages told me I could make a pet out of it, or I could euthanize it (methods described, nothing awful but the concept was very depressing)--or, unstated, but clearly a choice, I could just leave it be, in which case it would die all on its own.
It was such a sunny day. This is life in the world as a butterfly, friend, I wanted to say. You can't fly, so your life is destined to be quite brief, but I hope you really love this sun. It must feel strange not to be a caterpillar anymore.
Then yesterday was rainy and cold. The butterfly hung on to its spot all day. I brought it flowers because one thing the butterfly raising pages said was you could offer a newly hatched butterfly an array of flowers. But it was too cold a day, maybe, for the butterfly to try to test out the flowers. And I don't know how long the nectar stays nectar-y after the flowers are cut.
Today is sunny (ish), and the butterfly was walking about a little. I read on the butterfly pages about making a honey-water or sugar-water mixture. Put it in a saucer and let them taste it with their feet, the page said. When they realize what it is, they will drink some, if they feel like it.
( two more butterfly pictures, with the flowers I tried tempting it with )
So I made some honey-water and held it where the butterfly could taste it, and it did taste it, and then climbed onto my hand--but when I lifted my hand, it fell fluttering off--but then gamely caught hold of a twig and started climbing up again. I tried again to interest it in the honey-water, and again it climbed onto my hand. I thought I'd carry it over to a stand of cosmos--then it could do the butterfly thing of drinking nectar, have another experience of life as a butterfly before it died. So I walked very slowly and carefully, and the butterfly sat on my hand, calm.
And then a big gust of wind came and carried it off, I don't know where. I looked around my yard, but couldn't see it. But I'm thinking, this means it even--sort of--experienced flight, a little.
I'm glad to have known this butterfly.
Meanwhile, I have a chrysalis on the siding of my house that's just about ready to hatch. I hope it will be healthy and able to fly.
notes from a land of delight
Aug. 2nd, 2019 02:47 pmI pass this veggie stand on the way to work every day, and I always contemplate stopping, but until last Tuesday, I never did.
A big old tree provides shade, and two elderly white guys sit in outdoor chairs by it, every day. Tuesday was a steamy hot day. I bought some green beans--"first of the season," one of the old guys told me--and a beautiful eggplant. I was able to see their rambling garden back behind the stand. Wonderful.
As a goodbye remark, I told them to stay cool. "I love the heat!" the other guy proclaimed. "I changed my shirt once already today! Love it! Love being out in the garden!"
I love the heat too, but it's rare to find others who do. I left charmed and delighted. I'm going to buy more eggplant there.
(There's a more sturdy farmstand right near my house; I go there too. What a blessing.)
This cabbage white butterfly looks like the protagonist of a fairy tale. Her beauty is matched by her fearlessness and her creative thinking.
This is a public planter. I like it! I particularly like the yellow vine flowers, which I discovered are Thunbergia alata, "black-eyed susan vine." I saw them first--or, well, noticed them first--in Colombia, cascading down walls. They're apparently native to East Africa, but naturalized in places like Brazil and Puerto Rico (and maybe Colombia?) I want to grow some, so I ordered a packet of seeds. It'll be late by the time they get here, but maybe if the plants once start, I can have them indoors. We'll see.
And here is some sidewalk art from Amherst, MA:
The third season of She-ra is out! So we can watch that now. Meanwhile, we've been watching Evangelion (I've seen it once before, but long ago), which means having the theme song ALWAYS IN MY HEAD.
A big old tree provides shade, and two elderly white guys sit in outdoor chairs by it, every day. Tuesday was a steamy hot day. I bought some green beans--"first of the season," one of the old guys told me--and a beautiful eggplant. I was able to see their rambling garden back behind the stand. Wonderful.
As a goodbye remark, I told them to stay cool. "I love the heat!" the other guy proclaimed. "I changed my shirt once already today! Love it! Love being out in the garden!"
I love the heat too, but it's rare to find others who do. I left charmed and delighted. I'm going to buy more eggplant there.
(There's a more sturdy farmstand right near my house; I go there too. What a blessing.)
This cabbage white butterfly looks like the protagonist of a fairy tale. Her beauty is matched by her fearlessness and her creative thinking.
This is a public planter. I like it! I particularly like the yellow vine flowers, which I discovered are Thunbergia alata, "black-eyed susan vine." I saw them first--or, well, noticed them first--in Colombia, cascading down walls. They're apparently native to East Africa, but naturalized in places like Brazil and Puerto Rico (and maybe Colombia?) I want to grow some, so I ordered a packet of seeds. It'll be late by the time they get here, but maybe if the plants once start, I can have them indoors. We'll see.
And here is some sidewalk art from Amherst, MA:
The third season of She-ra is out! So we can watch that now. Meanwhile, we've been watching Evangelion (I've seen it once before, but long ago), which means having the theme song ALWAYS IN MY HEAD.
butterflies, rainbows, time
Jul. 28th, 2019 08:37 pmHere are two monarch butterflies in an intimate embrace. Sexy butterfly times, mmmm.
Today my siblings and I, and selections of our children, gathered at my father's house. On the return journey, there were rainbows everywhere. I mean everywhere, including one that spanned the highway perfectly, ushering us into the promised land of ... maybe West Stockbridge, MA? Somewhere around there, maybe? It was spectacular; it seemed like you could dye clothes in it or eat it or something.
A book I was reading was talking about the possibility of a different relationship to time than the mainstream Western one of schedules and deadlines and efficiency. My father-in-law used to talk about Dorset time, how the Dorset farmers weren't going to be rushed by other people's urgency. And in Timor-Leste, the Australians talked about Timor time in the same way. Notably, it wasn't the Timorese or the Dorset farmers doing the talking--though I think the Dorset farmers would have staunchly agreed with my father-in-law's assessment. As for the Timorese, I can't say, but I wonder if when you're living with a different relationship to time, the urgency and rushing seems spurious. Not everything is about efficiency. It's kind of like how a capitalist approach to life fosters transactional metaphors for EVERYTHING--but not everything needs to be, or should be, turned into a transaction. I feel like if you really are inhabiting time in this different way, then it's not that you're easygoing as opposed to stressed-out and rushed, but rather your whole sense of what you're doing is different.
I need to think about this some more, because I'm not able to fumble my way to a coherent thought just yet.
Today my siblings and I, and selections of our children, gathered at my father's house. On the return journey, there were rainbows everywhere. I mean everywhere, including one that spanned the highway perfectly, ushering us into the promised land of ... maybe West Stockbridge, MA? Somewhere around there, maybe? It was spectacular; it seemed like you could dye clothes in it or eat it or something.
A book I was reading was talking about the possibility of a different relationship to time than the mainstream Western one of schedules and deadlines and efficiency. My father-in-law used to talk about Dorset time, how the Dorset farmers weren't going to be rushed by other people's urgency. And in Timor-Leste, the Australians talked about Timor time in the same way. Notably, it wasn't the Timorese or the Dorset farmers doing the talking--though I think the Dorset farmers would have staunchly agreed with my father-in-law's assessment. As for the Timorese, I can't say, but I wonder if when you're living with a different relationship to time, the urgency and rushing seems spurious. Not everything is about efficiency. It's kind of like how a capitalist approach to life fosters transactional metaphors for EVERYTHING--but not everything needs to be, or should be, turned into a transaction. I feel like if you really are inhabiting time in this different way, then it's not that you're easygoing as opposed to stressed-out and rushed, but rather your whole sense of what you're doing is different.
I need to think about this some more, because I'm not able to fumble my way to a coherent thought just yet.
Birds, butterflies, and a postcard
May. 10th, 2016 05:57 pmI was thinking just yesterday that maybe this year we'd have no orioles, because I hadn't heard any, and then! I heard one. And then! I saw one. So I'm happy. And it wasn't only an oriole I saw today. I also saw this lovely warbler, which I discovered is called a magnolia warbler. (I have no magnolias. He was flitting between lilacs and apple blossoms.)
Photo by Gregory S. Dysart
Meanwhile,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amaebi told me that fritillary butterflies are called that because the Latin word for dice box is "fritillaria," and the butterflies' markings look like the pips on a die. So then it got me thinking that maybe fritillary butterflies are enthusiastic gamblers:
The third thing is a postcard, but I need to explain.sovay recently talked about the film The Moon-Spinners, in which a jewel thief gets away at the end. He apparently promises to send the protagonist "a picture postcard from the Kara Bugaz." This intrigued me. Where was Kara Bugaz? It turns out to be a lake in present-day Turkmenistan that at one point in the recent past dried up entirely, sending salt-storms across the nearby land, poisoning fields. Whoa to the whoath, right? (Now it has water in it again.)
Well, I wanted to create the postcard that jewel thief Tony sends to protagonist Nikky. So here it is! The image comes from the coastal city of Garabogaz. The message is written in a font called "Byron," created based on the handwriting of, yup, Lord Byron.**
**It's hard to read, though. It says, "Dear Nikky, I promised you a picture postcard from Kara Bugaz. Is this woman smelting something? If not the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then maybe its knives and daggers. Alas, she's probably stoking the fires merely to bake bread. Love from your favorite jewel thief, Tony."
Photo by Gregory S. Dysart
Meanwhile,
amaebi told me that fritillary butterflies are called that because the Latin word for dice box is "fritillaria," and the butterflies' markings look like the pips on a die. So then it got me thinking that maybe fritillary butterflies are enthusiastic gamblers:The third thing is a postcard, but I need to explain.
sovay recently talked about the film The Moon-Spinners, in which a jewel thief gets away at the end. He apparently promises to send the protagonist "a picture postcard from the Kara Bugaz." This intrigued me. Where was Kara Bugaz? It turns out to be a lake in present-day Turkmenistan that at one point in the recent past dried up entirely, sending salt-storms across the nearby land, poisoning fields. Whoa to the whoath, right? (Now it has water in it again.)Well, I wanted to create the postcard that jewel thief Tony sends to protagonist Nikky. So here it is! The image comes from the coastal city of Garabogaz. The message is written in a font called "Byron," created based on the handwriting of, yup, Lord Byron.**
**It's hard to read, though. It says, "Dear Nikky, I promised you a picture postcard from Kara Bugaz. Is this woman smelting something? If not the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then maybe its knives and daggers. Alas, she's probably stoking the fires merely to bake bread. Love from your favorite jewel thief, Tony."
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