Field Notes, Part 2

For starters, I should mention that the bigger butterfly in the previous post is a spicebush swallowtail. Which I keep wanting to call a spicebrush swallowtail. I have no idea what kind of butterfly the smaller one is.

I should also point out that while it appears that the insects (butterflies are insects ... aren’t they? I mean, they’re so beautiful, they could be birds!) are standing perfectly still, enjoying the sun and the lovely wildflowers (not sure what kind those are, either [I know, I know: For field notes, these are remarkably uninformative!]), in actuality, by the time I got around to taking this picture, the breeze had picked up considerably, and these flowers were blowing up and down, side to side, and the flutterbies were holding on tight.

It reminded me of surfing.

Butterflies surfing on flowers.

Yeah.

: )

As for the conditions of the day, here is what I wrote in my actual notes: North Sandusky. Mostly cloudy but sunny. Lake slightly rough.

I drove through my favorite picnic area and something caught my attention. Looked like dried tobacco hanging on one of the trees or bushes or something. Should I stop? I wondered ... so, of course, I did.

Turns out they were pokeberries. Or so I just learned.

Next, I headed over toward the mine. As I turned onto the highway, I noticed a huge field of sunflowers, most of which had bloomed and withered, and I felt a real pang of disappointment; why could I not have noticed it before? Also, I wanted to shoot the white flowers I kept seeing alongside the road, and the yeller ones, but I couldn’t ever find a safe place to pull off until I actually got to the mine.

These are field thistles.

I found some fleabane blooms.

And a honeybee gathering nectar on a sunflower.

And a partridge pea.

(These flowers remind me of poppies, somehow. And oh, how I love poppies!)

About that time, a helicopter flew overhead. And for some unrelated reason, I started thinking, again, about disappointment, and the sunflower field, and also how I had wanted to take some pictures of the white flowers by the roadside, and how I had not found anywhere to stop but then had managed to find some other very cool stuff.

Which led to thoughts about expectations, and how sometimes I go looking for one thing but end up shooting something completely different.

And I suddenly felt sorry for anyone who didn’t happen to notice (like I did) the little whitish whiskery-sorta things on the bottom of the pokeberries ... or for anyone who would have been so disappointed that what they found did not meet their expectations that they might have considered the entire trip a failure ... or something.

(This all tied in to the pool party on Sunday, which I had not been looking forward to, at all, but ended up having a wonderful time at. One more reason to dread large or even medium-sized events: You might up having the time of your life!)

: )

Of course, then I spied, with my little eyes, a couple of sunflowers in front of the abandoned mine. And suddenly, all and any expectations were exceeded, by about a hundredfold.

: )

However, in the midst of all this shooting, I looked down and saw, right there, on the front of my orange T-shirt:

TICK!!

God, I hate those little buggers! And though I didn’t find any more, I was scratching all over and checking myself for ticks the rest of the day/night.

(I like to think I’m an outdoorsgirl, but in reality: I am SUCH a wuss.)

: )