Nature

Online Aquarium

/ still a dreamer / 3 Comments

Shark2Everybody knows how relaxing it is to watch fish in an aquarium, so here’s a little something to rest your weary mind. It’s an online aquarium called Shark Break.  The fish closely follow the moves of your mouse/cursor. You can choose different fish from the left and/or different ocean backgrounds at the right.

The providers of the site promote healthy oceans and kindness to sharks and other marine mammals, but I have not further explored their site to verify who they are, what they do, or what they’re about. I offer this link only as a pleasant little diversion to enjoy some well-thought-out ocean creatures swimming about at your command. Enjoy a little Shark Break.

SpiderMail

/ still a dreamer / 5 Comments

SpiderMail-SmallFor the last couple weeks, there has been a small guest in my mailbox. While she hasn’t cheerily announced “You’ve got mail,” her appearance has been as regular as my e-mail. Each morning when I open the door of my mailbox to put in outgoing letters or later, to retrieve the incoming, she is perched on more of less the same spot each time. At night, however, she ventures out and builds a beautiful, circular web on an unusual angle between my neighbor’s and my adjoining mailboxes.

She is an orb-weaving spider, (so named for the typical circular webs they weave), and known as a cross spider or garden spider. (I looked her up on two of my favorite bug sites – What’s That Bug? and BugGuide.) I speak to her softly each time I see her, and she rarely moves away. Sometimes if I pull out a magazine or something large, she’ll back up a wee bit, or if I move to the other side to get a closer look, she may face me a bit defensively. But what is most amazing was realizing that she seems to actually know me.

A neighbor that I see often was walking by with her young son recently and we got to talking. Of course, he’s interested in bugs! I showed them the spider. She was fine with me nearby, but when they came to look – and they were no closer than I’ve ever been – she got up and hid. I checked when they had left, she came back out. I feel honored.

SpiderMail-Big

Now she’s protecting a little cotton-y puff of spiders-to-be on the inside of the mailbox door. I still talk to her, but don’t stay long. She looks a little less filled out than I think is normal, and it doesn’t look like she built her web last night. Perhaps this is what motherhood is like for spiders and she’ll stay with her egg puff until they’re born. She’s really quite pretty with a lovely pattern on her back and shaded legs.

I don’t know how long she will be keeping an eye on my mail, but I do enjoy the opportunity of seeing this little spider each day.

Update: 5/29/09 – Today is the first day I have not seen the little guardian of my mail. Yesterday, she seemed tired, and it almost appeared as if a back leg were missing. I couldn’t tell. I did a visual search all about the mailbox a short while ago, no luck. Perhaps her job is done.

Living By Water

/ still a dreamer

How lucky am I? I live 3 houses away from a river. And walking 4 very short blocks, I can walk onto the bridge that takes me to neighboring PA.

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Yesterday I went out walking for my exercise and decided to take my camera. Something I don’t do often enough. I was immediately drawn to the river on this sunny day – blue sky, no clouds. I headed onto the bridge, not to go to PA, but just to see the river. Even in winter, with not a leaf in sight, it was magnificent.

delaware-winter2

I am happy when living by water. I am always happy to just be near water – the ocean, a lake, a river – there is something calming, inspiring and renewing about it. I wonder if this is universal or something belonging to just some of us. Is it because my family used to go the shore throughout my childhood and my Dad taught me to swim in the ocean? Is it because in my tween and teen years we used to vacation up at Highland Lakes every summer? Or perhaps that we used to go on a Sunday to Cooper’s Pond in the neighboring town and feed the ducks? I took some of my very first photos with my new Brownie camera there. Maybe it’s because I’m a water sign. Maybe I was once a mermaid. Maybe I am just forever enchanted by nature.

Our creativity, in whatever way we express ourselves, is influenced by all of who we are and who we have been. I believe when we reach inside ourselves and touch upon the good things, the meaningful things, in our pasts – or even find them for the first time – we are enriched in every way.  Yet we make so little time for these things … to let ourselves be with our own enchantment … to just let ourselves be. Today, for this, I thank the river.

Winter Whites

/ still a dreamer

winterwhites1Was a time when I was young, I remember there was a fashion rule about not wearing white after Labor Day. Not exactly the consummate fashion person nowadays, I hardly know if that is still true or not. What I do know, is that in nature, the beauty of winter white is always in style.

Looking out my second story window, I noticed the breath of white that lay over everything, and snapped a couple photos. Snow was predicted within a few hours. The sky was losing its blue and had begun to spread the familiar white-grey hue that foreshadows fresh snowfall. The ground was still covered, and wisps clung to some of the bushes and branches. A fog had begun to lay in on the river and to shroud Pennsylvania on its far bank, just a pale shadow behind the trees. Soon it began to snow.

As we move in to February, we are, many of us, tired of the snow and icy weather and wishing for Spring. Much of that has to do with the fact that we all have places to go and the snow creates an interference with our plans. Excluding that, Mother Nature never disappoints in the beauty of freshly fallen snow, or even in its anticipation.

Quote from Emerson

/ still a dreamer

“The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature