A RENDA DA RAINHA ANA & QUEEN ANNE'S LACE

Na arquitetura do laço de Ana, Rainha-Mãe

Dona Ana, minha mãe teria comemorado seus 99 anos, ontem. Nos ultimos anos de sua vida por aqui, ela me contava que colecionava borboletas, e que as lagartas se alinhavam na cabeceira da cama dela, em seu quarto de menina.  Assim, mais uma bela sincronia se alinha ao meu derredor.

In the architecture of Queen Ana’s Lace.

Yesterday, Dona Ana, my mother, would have celebrated her 99^th birthday. In her last years, she remembered the butterflies she collected, as a child, with caterpillars lining up around her childhood bed frame, for sleep at night. Blessed be the synchronies aligned around us.

Tiny blues

Eastern tailed blue on golden ragwort, Oxford, MD,  4/14/17

Tiny blues entered my fields of vision, oh, about three years ago.  Since then, I discovered some of their favorite grasses, some of their flowers, and to my joy, one of their secret sleeping places - always sleeping upside down.

Cupido comyntas, Eastern Shore, Maryland 4/14/17

Handed down, generation to generation, and built into their tiny spherical dna's, they come back to roost in the same exact coordinates of a blade of grass. 

Not a particular native host plant roosting spot - it is just a patch of overgrown and not mowed grasses, with some perennial flowering weeds,in between. 

A matter of memory direction to sunlight, a built-in compass,a friendly place, I guess.

Eastern tailed blue on Blue ajuga

Ephemeral and tiny, they live for hours, for a day, or for weeks… They seek tiny flowers, like the early blooming golden ragwort, now renamed packera aurea.

Easten tailed blue on golden ragwort

Like the birds, they cast shadows on me now.  Not from above, but from the tiny below.

A tiny blue on tiny yellow

The planes of visions.

MOUNTAIN MINT

Os polinizadores 

Enquanto o mundo se incendeia

de uma calamidade a outra

meu privilégio de vida polinizante

na hortelã do dia a dia

 

 

The mint

The world burns

calamity by calamity

and I in capture

of daily pollinators of native mint

A planta uma hortelã nativa das montanhas daqui, mas se adapta bem aos solos argilosos e molhados da costa mais baixa (Pycnanthemum)

 

RE-VISITING THE PLANTS

A VISIT TO A PLACE I HAVE NOT SEEN


IN SEVEN YEARS...

Gall in oak, as change in physical structure

Oak in gall



Blue steel heron as protector

Trail companion Jeff Zablow, at Adkins Arboretum

Thanks Jeff,  for your company at the Arboretum trails. Searching for butterflies, finding almost none. Endless explorations in botany and wonders.

Orchids



The decomposers

Rattle snake weed

A "planted" tulip poplar flower

South Tuckahoe Valley Trail

Deep tree knees on rock and sand

A red admiral in the North meadow - the only one

and the many orchids...