Celebrating the Small Things. June 17, 2016 - Fireflies

Welcome to the Celebrations Blog Hop.

It is a good way to pause, take stock, and see that your world is actually a fairly nice place to live.  A time to focus on the small things that you tend to overlook.  

Today I am celebrating fireflies.

I just stepped outside holding a leash which had, on its other end, a three-month old puppy named Chester.  Night had fallen, but a glow remained to the west.  The moon rode high in the sky, still bright from the vanished sun.  A breeze, still carrying a touch of early spring coolness, stirred my hair.  Chester was snuffling in the grass and deciding whether he wished to ‘do his business’ or just sniff the wind.

Chester’s preoccupation with sniffing the wind was a good thing, I thought, savoring the scent of still-tender grass and flowers.  It was a perfect evening, the stars beginning to glitter in the sky’s zenith, mirroring the fireflies that sparkled below them.

I had forgotten fireflies.  I forget them every year only to remember them in the spring with a sense of finding an old friend that I had once thought lost.

I remember driving through a summer night heading toward my grandparents’ house in rural Vermont, seeing the woods so alive with the pale light of fireflies, they seemed to be full of tiny fireworks.  The woods were a sea of flickering light, and if I looked up into the sky I could see them trailing upward.

My father liked to watch the fireflies with us…  Like any child, I tried putting them in jars as night lights.  I stopped after perhaps the third time.  They always died, and they were so beautiful and so harmless, how could I put them somewhere that they could die?  Later, I learned more about them:

For example, male fireflies flash in flight, seeking females while females return the males’ flashes from the ground on the on vegetation.  Well, that may be the case.  Propagation of the species is always important, but as the years pass I become more convinced that things are often done because they are enjoyable.  The glitter of fireflies is a joyous sight for me, and I would not be surprised to learn sometime,, somehow, that fireflies enjoy flying and flickering.

If you are in Florida during firefly season, you can visit a park that features them:

http://www.floridarambler.com/central-florida-getaways/firefly-season-blue-spring-florida/

,,,and do visit Lexa Cain and her two delightful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits,

Good morning (North American time) and welcome to the Celebrations Blog Hop.

Do visit Lexa Cain and her two delightful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits,

It is a good way to pause, take stock, and see that your world is actually a fairly nice place to live.  A time to focus on the small things that you tend to overlook.  

So…  What am I celebrating?

Well, my mother has moved to her new home.  She is no longer isolated, but is in a sort of condominium housing arrangement.  She has a lovely apartment, lots of air and light, things to look at and very kind neighbors who greet her every day.  Some of them have been good friends in the past.  She had been somewhat careless over meals.  Now she gets twenty meals a month in her choice of dining rooms.  She said some of the cooking is not to her taste – the way they handle vegetables, for example – but overall, she says, it has been very nice.  She is glad she moved. 

(The downside is that she downsized and I am currently housing some ‘treasures’ I hadn’t really wanted, though they are lovely:  Royal Crown Derby handpainted service for twelve, and various other items of bric-a-brac that I don’t have room for.)  But she is happy that that the things are safe, and that is all that matters.

Can you feel the wind???

 

The weather has taken a cool turn here in the northern hemisphere, in the northeastern United States.  I have been enjoying the wind tossing the trees chasing the clouds across the skies. 

Two nights ago, letting my new puppy out to powder his nose, I happened to look up at the sky in time to see the tall maples swaying before the wind, and Orion’s constellation, striding across the sky, covered by rags of swift-moving clouds.  It was well before midnight, and the sky still held a touch of dark, dark blue with the clouds glinting against it.  I do love spring.

Show Off!

Oh – and tomorrow I pack up my cat and attend a show.  He enjoys it, and I like rosettes.  How can I lose?

So what is everyone else celebrating?  Do tell!