agility and speed

when i was an aerospace engineer, one of the things i learned was that you could design an aircraft for agility, or you could design for speed. but it was impossible to get both the “fastest” and the “most agile” in the same vehicle. at some point, you would have to pick which of the two you were optimizing for. somehow, dragonflies seem to be the exception. my son informed me recently that dragonflies have a 95% success rate when it comes to hunting prey. they are the single most successful hunters of the animal kingdom. the next closest comes in at a 60-something success rate. and why are they so successful? they are both incredibly fast, and incredibly agile. 1 + 1 = 3.

dragonfly

out of character

of all the terms to describe a tulip, “skeletal,” and “vaguely sinister,” are among the last that might have occurred to me before today. on the other hand, i do love bones, and i love the looks of natural things after their prime, and so i also love these ghostly spring beauties.

dried tulips

benign air force overhead

right now, as we sit on our deck in the evening, low flying squadrons of murderous aircraft patrol over our heads, visible against the sky between the trees. fortunately, they are not government helicopters, but dragonflies, and their victims are mosquitoes and gnats, and we welcome their surveillance.

dragonfly wings

summer lilac

this native flower is blooming all over our roadsides at the moment. it’s called dame’s rocket, but i prefer the lesser known name of summer lilac. if you’ve ever picked a head of lilac flowers clean, and sucked the tiny bit of nectar from the stem of each flower, you will recognize the resemblance.

dame’s rocket purple florets (Hesperis matronalis)

ABC

i woke up, took a walk, and discovered a local wild grape vine along my path. i thought to myself, hey, i love the idea of seasons between seasons. here are tiny grapes that are, in one way, grapes, and in another way, not yet grapes. what if i made an alphabet out of them. wait, even better, what if i photographed each letter as a separate image and then collected them all into one single alphabet. and then what if i started this project in the afternoon, so that the last letters were shot in semi-darkness, and what if i then spent the rest of the evening making them into a coherent whole. no problem. it’s as simple as . . . well you know . . . abc.

grape vine alphabet