Originally published August 27, 2015
There are bugs everywhere here. Ok, I feel like there are bugs everywhere. Why more so than in Greenville? I suppose its the surrounding woods that I see everywhere I go. I mean, Greenville was green, but this place is a rural forest, and we're in the middle of it. We have several resident spiders that I leave alone. They weave these big, beautiful, intricate webs that seems to stay in place for days. They don't seem to catch much, though. I wonder if they're hungry? They have their usual hangouts, and I know how to duck and swerve to avoid them. One on the front porch, one on the corner, a couple on the back deck, and occasionally one at the top of the steps. He's the tricky one.
Left, He's a very good constructor. If the contractor doesn't come to work on our bathroom, maybe I'll hire him.
This morning, he was poised at the top of the steps, pretty as you please. Isabel went to put her hand down on the banister to duck under it, and ran into a stick bug! Those guys are so cool!!
What do stick bugs even do?
And that's when she lost her 15-year-old mind. She could not duck, swerve and step over the drainpipe and down the stairs with a bookbag, a gymbag and, of course, her phone, always in hand. She was convinced that stickbug and that spider really cared about her, and wanted to jump on her and attack her. Have you seen Isabel Spinelli?
Neither would stand a chance.
With mom's help (I had to carry a bookbag so she could balance exactly between the two predators), she navigated the scary world of the path to the car. Whew!
During the day, I sit at my desk, surround on two sides by windows, looking out to the front yard and the switchback road in front of our house, and the side of our house, just down from where our spider resides. Today I noticed a chipmunk (not singular to these parts, I know, but cute). I think he lives in the rocks on our hill of Irises, between the outdoor stairs.
Right, I took this through the screen, so he's a little fuzzy. I could hear him eating that nut.
All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.
(Anglican Hymn)
It's easier to remember that God made all these things when I look out the front window and see butterflies floating in the air.
We see black ones, too, with bright blue edges, and brown, smaller butterflies. We see pale yellow ones and little ones that are almost white. We have a flowering bush in the front yard they like, and there's a stand of something flowering across the street, too, that they enjoy. So I see them up there too. I've never seen so many butterflies on a regular basis. And the cicadas!! The noise as I write is deafening. They're such a mystery. They are so loud, yet I never see them, only occasionally dead on the porch. Those suckers are big!
I got this picture, right, from the internet. But I feel like it's life sized.
It's one of my favorite noises of summer, and of the south. It sounds like childhood, when we ran around in the yard with the Moore boys (our neighbors), catching lightening bugs and cranking the ice cream churn.
All is well with the world.
Amen.
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