Our weekly nature walk / Poem: Dragonfly

It was down to the Pennypack we went for air and sunshine and all the beauty our hearts desired.

I longed to go back to the meadow with its assortment of native grasses and wildflowers. We saw dragonflies and damselflies hovering over the grasses waiting for tasty insects. Monarch butterflies flitted around but seemed not to be able to find anything to eat. Could this be 'a sign' for them that it's time to migrate south?

PBS has a monarch migration show that is astonishing in the intelligence of these creatures. You can watch it online.

Beehive at start of the Raytharn Trail. What the picture doesn't show are seemingly hundreds of bees flying pell-mell to and from the hive. From where we were standing we could hear the buzz in the hive.

Support your local beekeepers by buying local honey. The taste is rich and deep.

Scott had never been to this woodsy part of Pennypack. A sign said this was an old forest, in decline. It's good to go w/someone cuz we each see different things. Scott saw a hawk high in the air. The hawk was emitting some sort of cry. We'd never heard hawks talk so this was a thrill. We thought perhaps he was calling his mate. Hawks will migrate in late September. Long ago I wrote an article about the Hawk Watch at Fort Washington State Park, which still goes on. They count the different raptors they see. Can't believe my mind actually upchucked that word. Ain't the mind always amazing?

Look how the timothy grass emerges from its sheath.

At the end of our walk, Pennypack has a wild garden where I used to volunteer in years gone by. Hovering on a 'money plant' was a hummingbird moth. By the time I pushed the button on my camera to get the lens out, the moth was gone.



Keep your birdbath filled. This one was half-full.


I always like to visit the Springhouse which stays at a constant 55 degrees and is a short walk from the main house, so the original family could store milk and butter and cheese and keep them cool.

A SHORT LIFE

I came out of the water one day and became a dragonfly. I didn’t know what to do. Under water they called me a nymph. Like the fish that surrounded me, I flashed my gills and thought that’s how it would be. Then the silent hand of God pulled me upwards, out of the water and into the summer, all of one sky. My shell dropped off and I hovered with terror over the only home I’d ever known.

Oh, what was I to do in these long afternoons with my slim quiver of a body that bent in every direction, with these long sticky wings that stuttered me onward across the pond. And the swollen globes of eyes, so big, so round,so full of corners I could glimpse my body whole.

Over the fluttering color of days I learned what a dragonfly is. I hung with the others and flicked, as they did, the insects from the air, and dropped my eggs, one by one, on the silent skin of pond. Through the muck and breeze, the days marched by. I warmed myself in the sun. Winter was what we looked to. Time would push, would lift, would lilt our aching wings back to the waters of our beginning.