Appreciating nature

I was 'tagged' a couple of days ago by a fellow blogger who lives in rural Colorado, and appreciates nature in the same way that I do.

The tagging involves writing a six word haiku or memoir, and posting it, and sending it to five others. Strange for most of us, since we generally aren't that type. But this is an interesting way to connect across the 'blogosphere' to others that are interested in the natural world, and gardening for nature.

Here's mine: Live, learn, and enjoy nature. Ok, it's only five words, but it about sums it up for me. Emerson wrote something much more profound: 'Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.'

This is one of my favorite images from an extraordinary morning where the spider webs were everywhere.

If I hadn't been out, I wouldn't have seen them.

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Spiders in the mist

Amazingly the rain last night was over three inches, and it wasn't hard to imagine the garden giving a sigh of relief.

But more remarkable was the early morning mist, and as I went out the front door to walk, a huge web was sparkling with dew.

The walk around the botanical garden was amazing. There were spider webs everywhere -- on the grass, in the trees, in shrubs.... I don't think I've ever seen so many.

Coming back home, I was able to get a couple of good shots of the porch web, and then discovered the two above the vegetable garden.


Another remarkable thing is when I went out later, all of the webs were gone. I had never really given any thought to spider webs as being temporary, but many garden orb-weavers build webs in the evening and take them down in the morning (I found out after a bit of web research).

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