Fleeting Pleasures

You know, when I write about the various foibles and curiosities of adapting to our current life in North Carolina, I often have several days strung together in which my ideas for blogs are born and shaped. Themes emerge and ideas take shape with a life of their own. But lost in all this is the daily humdrum as well as the pleasures too small to coalesce into a coherent theme. So I wanted to give space to those incoherent fleeting pleasures that still surprise and delight, and defy digital photography:
- Cardinals. There are other birds, rarer ones, bluebirds even, but the sight of a bright red flash dashing ahead of you is still amazing.
- Fireflies. Our house has expansive windows into the forest canopy, and flashes of green light quieetly move past during the evening hours.
- Scarab beetles. The insect life here is richer than in California and on par with the Tropic of Cancer under which I grew up, and we have a diversity of beetles here, including these bright green little jewels.
- Frogs. As Pica noted, the frogs here chirp up a storm on some nights so that you know there are around in throngs, but spotting them isn't always easy. I keep trying to capture some for you to see.
- Lightning. When the heat rises and the crickets get loud, it's time for a storm to rush in.
- Bringing the wash in just before a storm. The other night Mike and I got home just when the first rumble of a thunderstorm could be heard. I ran out to get the wash off the line, and not 30 seconds after coming back in, a torrent of water poured down. Ahhh.
- Birdsong. I have no idea what birds they are (Numenius, Pica, come back!) but they are music.
- The stork. There is a stork five feet tall that visits the front yard and takes flight the moment we realize it's there. It's grey and stately and heartstopping.