Darwin's Grab Bag
Okay, name that movie quote. (I mean the movie from whence this title came.) I was really just going to call this post "Grab Bag" because it's about a random bunch of things. But since it's about things in nature, Darwin's Grab Bag sounded better.
I digress before I even get started. Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. (Name that movie quote too! I'm on a roll. Spoiler alert: movie answers are at the end of this post.)
It all started yesterday when I was eating lunch on the deck, soaking up some sun and making use of Kef's new patio dining set. As I was about to take a bite of my sandwich, something flew past my face and landed on my hand. If it was a bug, I would have flung it off immediately, even if I had to sacrifice my sandwich. But it was just a little piece of white fluff. No big deal. Then, the little piece of white fluff started to walk away. Literally. I thought I was imagining it at first, but I took a closer look and found microscopic legs carrying this little white tuft of fur away from me. When I say little, I mean about the size of a pin head. Tiny. Itty bitty. Minuscule. My mind went, "Hmm," right before it thought, "Asp," and instructed my other hand to flick it off posthaste. Whitey the Fluffball went flying.
Fast-forward to today. I'm sitting outside enjoying the cool afternoon breeze and look down at the arm of my patio chair. There, in all its microscopic grandeur, is fluff ball number two. Now, one tiny white walking piece of fluff may be a fluke. But two? That requires investigation.
Enter Google. I searched for "tiny white fuzzy bugs" and found several pictures that look approximately like my bitsy baby visitors. The general consensus is that these are woolly aphids. That's considerably less cute than I thought it would be. The good news is, they don't seem to be cause for alarm. They certainly don't sting the way asps do. This is the closest picture I could find online (I didn't think to take a picture at the time). I think the critter in this picture is a little bigger, but it's close.
In other nature news, as I mentioned yesterday I went to paint at Ann Lee Pond today. This was my first time to do plein air, or outdoor painting. They say the tricky thing about it is that your subject is constantly changing. The light changes, the clouds move, the geese come and go. The dragonflies dive bomb you. Yes, dive bomb you.
I was happily painting away when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a mob of black dots coming at me from the pond. They didn't actually hit me, but rather veered left (my left, their right) before whizzing past me. I said, "What was that?!" and the girl painting beside me said, "Dragonflies." Well. I guess they wanted to be in my painting. But just for that I didn't include them. (Actually I intended to, but I just forgot.)
There was also a group of Canada Geese that were wandering around our classroom site. It was quite obvious they'd been camped out for a while, judging by the piles of green poo everywhere. Lovely. They, too, wanted to be in the painting. But again I declined. This time it was because I wasn't sure I could actually paint them well enough that they'd look like geese rather than blobs.
That reminds me... our painting instructor told us a funny story about the time she dropped her phone in this pond. She learned the hard way that you shouldn't go in after it. She ended up in goo up to her waist. Yes, grimy, slimy, pond muck. She learned a couple of nice lessons from that experience though. One was: just let the phone go. Two was: underneath the water is all this grimy gross sludge, but on the surface is a beautiful lily-pad and flower that wouldn't be possible without the goo. Lesson: God can make something wonderful out of the icky-ness.
Last thing. For those who didn't catch the title... here's a clip. If you can't tell, this is a line from the great Robin Williams, playing Batty in Fern Gully.
Bonus points if you got clip #2, from The Princess Bride.
I digress before I even get started. Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. (Name that movie quote too! I'm on a roll. Spoiler alert: movie answers are at the end of this post.)
It all started yesterday when I was eating lunch on the deck, soaking up some sun and making use of Kef's new patio dining set. As I was about to take a bite of my sandwich, something flew past my face and landed on my hand. If it was a bug, I would have flung it off immediately, even if I had to sacrifice my sandwich. But it was just a little piece of white fluff. No big deal. Then, the little piece of white fluff started to walk away. Literally. I thought I was imagining it at first, but I took a closer look and found microscopic legs carrying this little white tuft of fur away from me. When I say little, I mean about the size of a pin head. Tiny. Itty bitty. Minuscule. My mind went, "Hmm," right before it thought, "Asp," and instructed my other hand to flick it off posthaste. Whitey the Fluffball went flying.
Fast-forward to today. I'm sitting outside enjoying the cool afternoon breeze and look down at the arm of my patio chair. There, in all its microscopic grandeur, is fluff ball number two. Now, one tiny white walking piece of fluff may be a fluke. But two? That requires investigation.
Enter Google. I searched for "tiny white fuzzy bugs" and found several pictures that look approximately like my bitsy baby visitors. The general consensus is that these are woolly aphids. That's considerably less cute than I thought it would be. The good news is, they don't seem to be cause for alarm. They certainly don't sting the way asps do. This is the closest picture I could find online (I didn't think to take a picture at the time). I think the critter in this picture is a little bigger, but it's close.
 |
| Photo credit: S. Rae | Flickr |
In other nature news, as I mentioned yesterday I went to paint at Ann Lee Pond today. This was my first time to do plein air, or outdoor painting. They say the tricky thing about it is that your subject is constantly changing. The light changes, the clouds move, the geese come and go. The dragonflies dive bomb you. Yes, dive bomb you.
I was happily painting away when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a mob of black dots coming at me from the pond. They didn't actually hit me, but rather veered left (my left, their right) before whizzing past me. I said, "What was that?!" and the girl painting beside me said, "Dragonflies." Well. I guess they wanted to be in my painting. But just for that I didn't include them. (Actually I intended to, but I just forgot.)
There was also a group of Canada Geese that were wandering around our classroom site. It was quite obvious they'd been camped out for a while, judging by the piles of green poo everywhere. Lovely. They, too, wanted to be in the painting. But again I declined. This time it was because I wasn't sure I could actually paint them well enough that they'd look like geese rather than blobs.
 |
| You can barely see the geese in this picture, so I guess it was okay to leave them out. |
That reminds me... our painting instructor told us a funny story about the time she dropped her phone in this pond. She learned the hard way that you shouldn't go in after it. She ended up in goo up to her waist. Yes, grimy, slimy, pond muck. She learned a couple of nice lessons from that experience though. One was: just let the phone go. Two was: underneath the water is all this grimy gross sludge, but on the surface is a beautiful lily-pad and flower that wouldn't be possible without the goo. Lesson: God can make something wonderful out of the icky-ness.
 |
| My final product. |
Last thing. For those who didn't catch the title... here's a clip. If you can't tell, this is a line from the great Robin Williams, playing Batty in Fern Gully.
Bonus points if you got clip #2, from The Princess Bride.
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