You tell your story, I'll Tell Mine

Your story:

The Canadian Tiger Swallowtail

http://www.cbif.gc.ca/eng/species-bank/butterflies-of-canada/canadian-tiger-swallowtail/?id=1370403265567

The more northern butterfly has only one generation per year, while glaucus has two. Another distinctive difference is that the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail does not have the black female form that occurs in glaucus. Oddly enough, the only exceptions to this rule are the occasional all-black females that have appeared in Newfoundland, despite the fact that they do not appear in New England (Morris, 1980).

My story:

I watched them long on that yet another, warm, south wind day, performing unaware of the audience  they held captive. Suddenly I ran for my camera. Still engaged on my return, they soared, landed, fluttered chased. I mused, ”Oh Twyla, could you have but choreographed a performance like this". http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tha0bio-1

 I thought too of my dear Kate when a toddler saying “Oh mom look! a flutter bye bye.” 

Sisters

They were side by side today:  late spring and early summer. The south wind pushed summer "spring-side" and their show was on! Silver Maple keys twirled about me  blurring in my lens: defying a clear shot of their dervish to ground. 

Dragon flies rested on rose stalks, wings gilded, bronzed, and silvered. They looked at me and I looked at them. l was awed by their beauty and they, in repose, merely returned my gaze.

The Shag Bark Hickory's tendrils sway in bloom as do the Black Locust ’s flowered ringlets.The Black Cherry is going to seed: a scant few white flowers now. Rhododendrons,  allium,  viburnum, phlox are on stage as are a plethora of other performers whose countenance I shall capture another day... perhaps... but the sister seasons perform together rarely, fleeting in the south wind.

*~

Silver Maple Keys

Silver Maple

Black Cherry going to seed

Dragon Fly

Looking at me

Again?

Wild Phlox

Rhododendron

Allium

Viburnum

Shag Bark Hickory Flowers

Bleeding Heart

Pagoda Dogwood

sunset through Black Locust

The Frog and I Were There

On the heels of May Day there is a little known “Rite of Summer”. It happens on the Rideau Waterway. Few observe this rite: the “Lifting of the Logs” but the frog and I were there.

In the fall, at the locks all along the waterway, sodden stop-logs are dropped into gouged slots in sandstone wing walls. In the dark time, they keep the ice from jamming the lock gates. Having protected the gates through winter they are lifted with little ceremony and floated to the shore once more, converted to rafts.

 In the summer people swim off the rafts little knowing their winter purpose.

It is important to keep these squared timbers water-laden. In the fall when they are returned to guard post, their watered weight  is essential:  logs in place, one on top of the other, they are submerged to form the winter wall. Sometimes they are topped with a concrete slab that lessens movement through the darkened ice-bound time.

 In May a scow may lift them. Sometimes it is a vehicle with a winch. No matter really, for once tied into a raft it is always the scow that floats them to their summer place.

The “Lifting of the Logs” is done now for summer and the frog and I move on to coming summer days.

Apple Trees at the lock on the “Lifting of the Logs"

Newboro Block house “Lifting of the Logs May 11 2015

Getting ready for the lift

testing the gates

Lock Master Bill Bruss

Lockman Eric Jones

lifting the winch

first log is lifting

moving to raft position

Second log lifting

Water in the gap

Water rising to fill the gap between the logs and the gates

almost there

submerged logs “pop “ up as the weight is lifted from them

Making the raft

The frog didn’t move as the logs rose!

log shifting from place and the frog is unperturbed

Bull frogs shall not be bullied

last log lifted

The rite is over. Moving on to summer