Hello!
Looking back it’s been since April (gasp) that I’ve visited this site. Yes, before this summer started, I had suffered from delusions of using a few hours a day to finish editing my latest novel and I realized at the time that this feat would require dropping other writing projects if I wanted to get that done. No excuses, but since school’s out, time has been in hyper-speed mode and I’m just trying to hang on. If you’ve got school-aged kids, you probably know what I mean.
Don’t blink: July is almost over.
Summer vacation started out strangely…my kids had a snow day on the day before school let out (instead of using the day before, if my husband were writing this, he’d use the word “penultimate”—he loves that word). The day before! As I drove to the school to pick up my children on their last day of school, the neighborhood’s lawns were covered in snow.
The kids spent their first day of “summer break” building immense snowballs and watching as they rolled down the hill and smashed into smithereens.
Crazy.
Nature keeps a treasure chest whose delights appear in the most unexpected places and times.
I’ve lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota for eleven years now and I would tell you that, nope, we don’t have fireflies here. Maybe if you travel east, yes, but not here.
And then our family goes camping at a lake in Custer State Park.
This particular lake is located about eighteen miles from our house. A couple of years ago at this same campground, I’d thought I’d seen a yellow flash from a lightning bug as I took a stroll in the dark, but discounted it as my overactive imagination, as that particular insect only lit up once. No, on that particular long-ago night, I wasn’t able to satisfy my hunger and catch a second glimpse of the firefly smoldering like the emerging petals of a buttercup. By doing so would bring me back to summer days when we visited my grandparents’ house in Indiana,where we spent hours chasing after these small flying lanterns lighting up the humid dark sky.
And then, just last week, we visited that same campground.
Lo and behold—wouldn’t you know it?— the little buggers flashed us as we sat by the campfire roasting marshmallows. Their erratic, bright yellow beacons added even more cheer to an already glowing campfire and were a cogent reminder of how little I know about life, the universe, and everything (thank you, Douglas Adams). And my little part of the world.
Look at this: these birds aren’t native, but it was still quite astounding to see: I was preparing a cup of tea and noticed a pair of female peacocks as they wandered behind our house then continued up the hill as if they had important business to conduct.
The deer around our place may rival the number of people in China (a slight exaggeration), but, even with my cold, hard, gardener’s heart, seeing a fawn pant after his mother is still worth a few awwws.
I hope you are finding your own taste of nature to be incredible.
Thanks for reading, and have a good one.
(Blink blink!)
Wildly Ever After 