a pleasing day

Today was Nelson’s last day here. We managed to get quite a lot in. In the morning we went to my garden and planted my tomatoes (all 18 varieties: from Beam’s Yellow Pear to Aunt Ruby’s German Green to Black Cherry). In the process, we managed to get ourselves rather burned by the sun. After a couple of days of November-like weather, we’re back to blazing sun and heat.

After the garden work, we walked along the Cayuga Trail for a few hundred yards (the Monkey Run natural area is adjacent to the gardens) and had lunch on the edge of a steep sand back a couple of hundred feet above Fall Creek. Lunch was lovely: sandwiches made by the chef, along with mangoes, kiwi, and apricots. From where we were sitting we could look down into a Red-tailed Hawk nest on the other side of the creek. There was also a House Wren nest twenty feet to our left, one of whose residents periodically regaled us with song. Most exciting, though, was the Scarlet Tanager that serenaded us the entire time from a couple of oak trees nearby and offered a few gorgeous glimpses of himself.

Once satiated, we continued hiking along the trail for a good ways. We spotted several green tiger beetles. I love the incandescent green of these beetles. From an insect’s perspective, of course, tiger beetles are rather ferocious, as this wonderful photo shows.

Nelson also spotted a spectacular ichneumon wasp. I think she was a good six inches long, including her ovipositor. She was certainly the largest ichneumon that I have ever seen. (I was also wondering what effect a wasp like this flying around in the living room would have on Erin — unfortunately, she is too far away to be subject to my experiment.)

While following the wasp around, we stumbled across a female Scarlet Tanager finishing up her bath in a little stream, with male consort up in the trees. Three tanagers in a day is not bad at all.

On the hike back, we noticed a big patch of some kind of mycotroph. The flowers certainly looked odd. I haven’t been able to find an image yet that looked exactly like what we saw, so, to my frustration, I’m not sure I have the plant identified. I do know that it’s one of the Ericaceae, though!

After the hike, we watered the garden, got thoroughly hot and sweaty, and went home and gorged on a watermelon. Somewhat refreshed, we spent most of the rest of the day ensuring that we would have a good dinner, i.e., roasting portabellas, making bruschetta, and so forth.

Finally, an hour ago, we walked down the road to some open fields and watched fireflies. I have never seen so many before. The fields were foaming and shimmering with hundreds of them.

A fitting close to a rather pleasing day, I must say.

Sydney