The pollen is hanging heavy these days, attracting the gatherers. There's plenty of bees buzzing around, alongside some more unfamiliar sights -- metallic green-gold flies, a black bee with tan breeches, a rain-soaked bee, rain-drop buds, and an admiral in camo and stripped antennas.

When my brother was in town for a visit this summer, he spent some time musing about childhood experiences he'd like to share with his own sons. One memory was of running through grassy fields and hearing many grasshoppers whirring away in all directions.
 
I wish he could have been along last week when I walked up to the prairie plantings on campus and heard the dry patter of grasshoppers launching off, so many that it sounded like a brief hard rain shower.

I also had to think of him another morning when I checked out the cone flowers pictured above. I discovered a grasshopper sluggish enough in the morning coolness that it didn't jump and I was able to get a photo. And then I spotted another, and another, and another, all shades from grass green to traditional grasshopper brown. And they were all in nearly the same position, sunning their backs.

This one is for you, Don. How many grasshoppers can you spot?

This was a good week for a trip down to the calendar garden, where the summer flowers provided bright splashes of color -- and so did the insects. One image that didn't make it into the camera is the many blue dragonflies helicoptering over the pond. And another is the golden eyelid on the frog sunning himself on a lily pad. There was plenty of other color, though, and the intricate lace of a golden dragonfly's wings.

This one is for my friend Josh, who loves studying insects. I haven't a clue what some of these are, though I'm fascinated by the different patterns on the bees. Is this normal variation, or several different varieties? I'll have to check with Josh.

Here's a bouquet of little things I've seen along the millrace bike path in the past few weeks. There have been lots of big, light-filled scenes  -- magnificent clouds, reflections in the water, sun on the trees. But quietly, easily missed, are the tiny blossoms (and bugs!) at the margins. (It's hard to tell scale when I am cropping closely, but all these blossoms are less that a quarter's size.)

Fall is here, hard as it is to believe that today, with the temperature hitting a high of 97. It may feel summer-hot, but we've made the turn into fall. Everything seems to be going to seed, or doing its best to soak up all the sunlight in can. Autumn is in the air -- and so are the geese. And harvestman and daddy longlegs are both delightful names for the same creature, which is not actually a spider, despite appearances.

What we notice and what we don't notice. This hemlock is in our backyard, pretty much straight out from my study window. A couple days ago I was standing in my study, talking on the phone, and idly looking out at the backyard. All at once my attention was caught by something in the tree, near the top on the left. At first I thought a plastic grocery bag had gotten stuck in the branches. But it didn't move with the breeze.

It reminded me of a nature walk I'd been on with a naturalist once. He was showing us the fruits on a large bush, and as we looked, my attention moved from the surface layer to much deeper within the bush, and I suddenly noticed more fully a gray shape that I'd only been vaguely aware of while looking at the fruit. It was a paper wasps' nest, an elegant structure with an entrance at the bottom and eaves at the top. The naturalist enthusiastically explained how the wasps gathered near those top openings in hot weather, fanning their wings to cool off the nest.

And as I looked at this object, I realized that I was looking at another paper wasp nest. It's full of bald-faced hornets, a type of wasp. In the right light, they have blue, iridescent wings. The nest is far enough from the house that we'll probably leave it till winter -- the hornets die off with the first hard frost.

We're wondering how quickly it grew. From our perspective, it appeared overnight. But more likely it has been there for awhile, and we just never noticed. And at this particular moment, the light was at the right angle, making it more visible, rather than it blending into the shadows as I've discovered it does most of the day.

I wonder what else is out in my backyard, that I just haven't noticed yet?

The world is a blooming, buzzing place these days. I haven't managed to capture a photo of the hordes of tiny bees hovering around my ninebark bush, but I was more successful with this visitor to an unknown wildflower along the bike path this morning,

I have no idea what these wildflowers are either or why they produce bubbles. They have a little white flower, but I wouldn't have noticed those mysterious bubbles, or the balloon-like base and the way it caught the morning light, if I hadn't been ready to slow down and see what there was to see with a closer look. It's so easy to go walking past the many tiny marvels that are out there.

And from our neighbor's tree, here's one I do know -- and I can make a pretty good guess why it was named a tulip tree. I'm not sure how many years I lived next door to this tree without noticing its crazy spring blooms, though.

While there were still golden remnants from last fall in the Calendar Garden this week, spring is also tiptoeing in, with yellows and purples -- witch hazel tassels, a few timid windflowers, more crocus, and lots of excited bees. The saying "busy as a bee" must have come from someone watching spring bees at work -- a still photo doesn't begin to capture the energy.

Delight was not the primary emotion I experienced when I encountered these garden spiders in the prairie plantings on campus earlier this month. Especially when I looked up from photographing a clump of seedheads and realized I was nearly surrounded by garden spiders and their webs. Despite fond memories of Charlotte's Web, and appreciation for the way Charlotte uses her writing/weaving skills to come to the aid of Wilbur the pig, my visceral images were more of Bilbo's encounter with giant spiders, and of the giant spiders in the forest at Hogwarts.

Thanks a lot, Tolkien and Rowling. And it is really not fair. Garden spiders are harmless -- to humans anyway. Their webs are works of art I can appreciate, especially when they catch early morning light in a dewy outline. I'm sure there is a plethora of fascinating things to be learned by those willing to look at the spider with a attentive, compassionate spirit.

Still, my first reaction is an "Ewww," especially with these large garden spiders. And why is that? They are no bigger than a monarch butterfly, and their color scheme -- yellow and black -- is not far from the orange and black of a monarch. Yet I'm drawn to the butterfly and flinch from the spider.

I set my spider photos aside, unable to see a spark of delight in them. And then I read this poem by Mary Oliver, from her book Swan: poems and prose poems. And I take delight in her attentive, compassionate perspective. Ah, yes. Spider, butterfly, human, all doing our best to create our homes and find food, making our way as best we can in this pretty, this perilous world.

    Torn 

I tore the web
  of a black and yellow spider

        in the brash of weeds

and down she came
   on her surplus of legs

     each of which

touched me and really
   the touch wasn't much

              but then the way

if a spider can
    she looked at me

         clearly somewhere between

outraged and heartbroken
    made me say "I'm sorry

        to have wrecked your home

your nest your larder"
    to which she said nothing

            only for an instant

pouched on my wrist
then swung herself off

                 on the thinnest of strings

back into the world.
The pretty, this perilous world.
                                            Mary Oliver

And just in case you need a break from looking at spiders, here's another image from the same day.

We had our first frost the night before last, so yesterday we woke to a frost covered yard. The rest of the day was clear and sunny, so mid-afternoon I wandered over to the prairie plantings on campus to see how things were doing. There is quite a mix of flowers gone to seed and flowers still opening blooms.

I was examining some seed heads when two grade school children from a nearby house waded through the plantings to see what I was doing. They were friendly and curious, so we talked about the prairie plants for awhile before the brother headed back to their swing set.

His sister stayed and watched. I was trying to get a photo of a big brown grasshopper, but it kept leaping away. She tried to catch it for me and told me about finding little green grasshoppers in the field earlier. I told her that this one might be one of those -- that they get bigger and browner as they get older.

She nodded and thought about the way things change color as they get older. "Like grandmas!" she said, looking at my white hair with a big smile. "Like grandmas," I agreed, though I'm not one yet.

Grandmas and grasshoppers and all things grow and change. This past week we slipped from summer into autumn, and the trees are beginning to turn vibrant colors, and the smaller plants are turning brown. Or white, like grandmas. Either way, there is an abundance of seeds, so the cycle of growth and change will continue.

    To everything .....turn, turn, turn......
    There is a season.....turn, turn, turn....
    And a time to every purpose, under heaven.

From the opening lines of Dewdrops on Spiderwebs, by Susan Classen:

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh
with the joy of life.
        God speaks to Hildegard of Bingen, 11th century

The other day my eye was caught by the sunlight streaming through the leaves of one of my geraniums. These shots fit well with one of the meditations in Classen's book that tells of a child just back from a school class field trip in the fall.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "This leaf is orange. This one is orange and green. And look at this one," she added excitedly, "It's all green!" When a green leaf calls forth awe and wonder, then all life is budding with reasons to celebrate!    p. 38

We'll soon be seeing orange and red leaves again, but in the meantime, let's celebrate all things green.

And things blue -- though if your downloaded image of this dragonfly is big enough, you'll see the green as well.

Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic, uses a metaphor of the silkworm for talking about the soul's journey toward union with God:

You must have already heard about His marvels manifested in the way silk originates, for only He could have invented something like that. . . .The worms nourish themselves on mulberry leaves until, having grown to full size, they settle on some twigs. There with their little mouths they themselves go about spinning the silk and making some very thick little cocoons in which they enclose themselves. The silkworm, which is fat and ugly, then dies, and a little white butterfly, which is very pretty, comes forth from the cocoon. Now if this were not seen but recounted to us as having happened in other times, who would believe it? . . .Teresa, The Interior Castle

She goes on to equate the silkworm with the soul coming to life, and the cocoon time with resting in prayer in Christ.

Now, then, let's see what this silkworm does, for that's the reason I've said everything else. When the soul is, in this prayer, truly dead to the world, a little white butterfly comes forth. Oh, greatness of God! How transformed the soul is when it comes out of this prayer after having been placed within the greatness of God and so closely joined with Him for a little while...Teresa, The Interior Castle

This is a season for butterflies and moths of all colors, all of whom have gone through their own time of transformation.

We celebrated Labor Day by cleaning out the garage, resulting in one trip to the recycling center, one pile to be put out with the trash later this week, another pile ready to be hauled to the Depot, and a somewhat tidier garage with room for all the bikes.

We also took an early morning walk along the millrace, soon after sunrise, and enjoyed the light on the plants along the water's edge, and the close encounters with miniscule wildlife. (Even though we didn't find any monarch chrysalis hanging from a milkweed leaf.)

This seems to be the season for spiky purple plants in my garden -- salvia, sage, lavender, hyssop, butterfly bush. The butterflies are loving it. While the overall effect is spires of purple, when you focus in on the shapes of the individual blossoms, what a variety of shapes!

Butterfly bush has a fanfare of trumpets with fire at their hearts -- and the underside of this swallowtail butterfly echoes the fire with its own refrain of orange and blue.

There was just enough breeze the other night to make this web dance slightly in the light, sending out shimmers of light which caught my attention -- and then, fortunately, enough of a lull that the photo came out as something other than a blur.

This metallic green bee appeared to have dipped his pantaloons in bright yellow paint.

Dragonfly at rest -- and then catching the light.