Month: May 2021

Dragonfly in the sky

What a magical day. We go to help a friend with the power in her house. As we are leaving I remember to add avocado to our grocery list. Our friend gives us two ripe avocados! So we invite her for dinner.

We realize at dinner time that we don’t have any tortillas. Jason opens the door to go get some at the store and our neighbor is there with tortillas! I had texted her asking.

She comes inside with her daughter to pop corn in our microwave; it is movie night next door. We visit while the popcorn pops. The neighbor’s daughter points in the backyard and announces, “Cats!”

Our friend arrives for dinner. We are all chatting when the sprinklers turn on! The cats go running! I open the door and they run past all of us to hide under the bed.

We have dinner: tacos with smoked ground beef and chuck. The mockingbird hunts in the yard while we eat. After dinner, I let the cats outside again.

All of a sudden Biggie Smalls goes running and jumping across the yard and in the air! Is it a bird? We ask, but soon realize it is a dragonfly! It continues zooming in circles over the lawn. Elvis takes a run at it and it zips over the wall to another yard.

We say goodnight to our guest and I go to sit on the porch and enjoy dusk. The cats are settled in a spot and the dragonfly returns. It spins around the yard again and again as we quietly watch.

Biggie Smalls
Echinachea cat camouflage

Lawn Life

Blue Grama grass, dandelions and a mustard green

We have a happy habitat going in the grass. We are constantly weeding to keep crabgrass at bay while seeding this new lawn. I hunt runners that are reaching; I find the elbow where they drop into the ground and I pop em out. There’s a callous on the inside of my index finger and the outside of my pinky finger from yanking crabgrass.

We look for crabgrass seed heads in the afternoon sun and swift but gingerly collect them for the burn pile.

When I close my eyes at night I see the shape of crabgrass growing behind my eyelids like the flower of life- eternal.

We leave some mustard green for the birds and dandelion too. It’s an aesthetic: rich, luxurious biodiversity.

Piggles (AKA Biggie Smalls the cat) crouches and crawls in the tall tufts at dusk. He pounces on little white butterflies that are flitting all around.

Crabgrass elbow
I’ve had crabgrass up to here!
Biggie Smalls sniffing stuff
Crabgrass creeping
Crabgrass seed heads
Elvis our Zen master
Blue Grama Grass

Towhee Energy

This morning on the porch, the same Aberts towhee, looking plump and healthy, came chirping on the fence once again.

Well hello. I guess you’re my new friend. Might as well embrace the new lead character of our backyard, as we move up the food chain from the precious mantis to the predator who transmuted it into her bird energy.

Towhee IS the mantis! It’s a small change with a huge impact.

She chirped to the ground for a drink from the saucer, chirping as she went. The cats just watched from across the yard. She chirp-hopped back up on the fence and was gone the same way she came.

There were two woodpeckers on the palm tree, two mockingbirds scuffling in the ocotillo, two quail digging in the dirt.

Tertiary mantis theory: it went to the lemon tree for some lacewings and in doing so, perhaps, our original hero made it yonder down the food chain and not hither into the mouth of a bird.

Or both!?

Bye bye Birdie

Welp, the preying mantis has moved on- to where? I do not know.

An Aberts towhee landed on the fence, dropped down onto a nail in the fence, hopped down to the ground right next to the lambs ear and pecked it as he went by.

My heart dropped. In a moment everything changed. I went out there and confirmed that the mantis was nowhere to be found.

I do have an alternate theory. When I was looking for the mantis, I noticed that a sprinkler head nearby had popped off. It is evident that water was spraying the lambs ear. Perhaps it forced the mantis to move. Maybe it is happily meditating on another leaf somewhere nearby.

I thank the little white preying mantis for it’s visit to my corner of the world and the wisdom imparted for my life.

It is a creature with intense presence for it’s tiny size and it will be missed!

Resilience

I go out in the yard mid-morning to check- the birdbath is nearly dry. The lambs ear is wilted in the sun and the praying mantis is hanging upside down and holding it’s gaze in the same direction as always.

Mockingbird is with his girl hopping around up in the palm tree fronds. They’re wind surfing!

I run the sprinkler. The lambs ear perks right up and the mockingbird comes down for a drink.

I remember being so upset a couple months ago when the mockingbird and hummingbird nests were both displaced by palm tree pruning. Now they are back home and really, they never left.

We are here to weather the storm and find new life on the other side. We are resilient. Sometimes we’re hanging upside down to take cover from the hot sun. Sometimes we’re surfing in the breeze.