August 15th, 2015

There was a visitor at one of our sunflowers this morning.

He's a little hard to see, but there's a goldfinch in the middle of the picture, picking seeds out of the flower. He sat there for quite some time, enjoying his breakfast.

Later, we had some excitement - we went to the beach today!

I only found out we were going late last night, so it was a bit of a surprise, but the weather was perfect. The drive up took about an hour, after which we stopped for a quick lunch break before heading to the beach itself.

A lot of the lake shore had eroded since last year, which was unexpected, but it did give us a rather different view of the rocks than we were used to. I spent several hours hunting along the beach for neat finds.

These were a couple of the specimens I found. I didn't keep them all, but they made for a good photo. I found beach glass, some kind of purplish Quartz or Chalcedony, Unakite, a rock with a honeycomb of crystals, white Quartz, some glittery pink stone, fossils, and a rock with a green mineral inside it. 

I also found this - the wing of a Luna Moth! I'm sad that the moth was injured, but it was still really interesting to see, especially on a beach.

Later, I stumbled across some really high quality fossils. I'm not totally sure what this one is - some kind of marine creature, I believe, and probably a sponge or a coral.

We went for ice cream afterward, and now I'm sitting at home, enjoying some YouTube videos on altar design and similar. Hope everyone else is enjoying these last days of summer vacation!

April 20th, 2015

I thought you all might like to see this beautiful Polyphemus moth my friends discovered outside during our rehearsal yesterday:

Moths and butterflies are associated with the element air, and with the fairy folk. This guy was so soft and fluffy that I was joking around saying he was a sky cat (by way of interest, you can tell this one is a boy by how fluffy his antenna are). 

In attempting to identify his species, I learned something rather interesting - the name, Polyphemus, actually derives from Greek mythology. Polyphemus, as you may or may not recall, was the cyclops with whom Odysseus had a run-in, leading to the infamous "Nobody" conversation. The moth's eye-spots inspired the name.

According to Wikipedia, this is also the species of moth through which Gandalf communicates with the eagles in The Lord of the Rings. The more you know. 

As such, someone who enjoys lepidoptery might call upon the Polyphemus moth to navigate tricky situations, to improve one's sight, or to assist communication.