...who went into its "J" form on August 7th...
...and shed its skin to reveal its chrysalis on August 8th...
...emerged last Thursday, after 14 days in the chrysalis!
After its wings had filled out and it had fluttered a few inches away from its chrysalis in the huge aquarium, we gave it a couple of hours to get acquainted with its new body, then I came to gather it up and bring it outside with my boy. But sadly, every indication was that it had died: it was sitting still as stone against the side of the tank, most of its feet just hanging in the air. As I picked it up, it simply fell over in my hand. My husband urged us to give it a bit more time, perhaps it was still settling in to its new body.
We set in back in the tank and noticed a bit later that it had moved to a different location - it was alive! We tried to release it again some time later, with nearly the same result as before, but we were determined to let it go this time. My boy carried the languid thing gently outside, preparing to place it on some sheltered leaf somewhere. But the instant the butterfly was outside and felt the sunlight, it righted itself and disappeared from his hand. We looked up just in time to see it fly over the house, straight towards the sun.
It was like it had risen from the dead once it was given what it needed: freedom. We were taken completely by surprise, thrilled that it was healthy, awed by its shift from stupor to pure life. May we all be so blessed to recognize and respond when we are given what we truly need!
This was the boy's project a few days ago: hazelnuts piled into a dear little toy train set a relative made for him. The shelled hazelnuts in the gray train car are dinosaur eggs, and the ones still in shell in the blue car are food for the dinosaurs once they hatch.
Wandered the woods near my father's this weekend. The cold nights have been calling to the leaves:
A spider's gossamer decorations, catching the sunlight:
Sumac out behind our house. I believe the reds and yellows are the work of the stinkbug in the lower right corner.
For a "weed tree," sumac is astonishingly delicate:
During my sit today, I came upon a squirrel bandying about in the canopy of a beech tree, sending a continuous rain of beech nuts and husks down. It kept it up during the twenty minutes I spent under the tree.
It was too active to actually be consuming the nuts, and I wondered whether it was simply harvesting them by letting them fall to the earth, then planning to come collect them later.
The river is very low, with rain finally forecast for tonight and tomorrow. There was a heaviness about the woods today, and I wondered whether it was the plants' response to the dryness.
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