Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Meanwhile, back at the marsh


There's been a pause here after unforeseen technical difficulty unwired me --- clever virus that slipped into the laptop while thumbing its nose at my new ISP's security system that turned out not to be secure at all. The laptop has been cleansed and purified, thanks to the good folks at Willis PC Support, and the security system, fired.

While arranging to have the laptop purified, I somehow ended up buying a new PC to replace the big Gateway, now at the end of its natural life, so I have that to fuss with, too --- transferring data from old to new and loading programs.

Amazing how that old hard drive resembles my brain --- cluttered with a gazillion gigabytes of useless stuff that make finding the good stuff a challenge. We do not edit our hard drives --- or our lives --- rigorously enough. The new hard drive at least I can do something about.

As you can tell from the photo of the little shelter house near the entrance to Pin Oak Marsh, nature served up a monsoon Monday. Now it's far too nice to stay inside and I'm not going to for long.

I've sometimes wondered what would happen if you visited the same scrap of the more or less natural world on a daily basis just to watch what happens and have been developing a modified form of that relationship with convenient Pin Oak.

This morning I stopped to admire a patch of blue flags (Iris versicolor) that I'd first noticed Sunday.


Sat down on the paved trail for a while to consider this painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), probably a female headed into the grass to nest.


And wondered where the rest of the monarchs were since this guy seemed to be brunching alone.


Not a bad way to start the morning.

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