Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden

Yesterday was my last full day in Miami, and I spent a few hours roaming a few acres of edenic ersatz.  If you have a chance to visit these botanical gardens, don't pass on the opportunity.  The vegetation is as lush as the critters are lively.

forest creatures...

While hiking in the woods yesterday morning, we spotted a few whimsical beasts.  A water dragon roared to the surface of the river.

A black bear spied from a safe distance.

And a horned owl glared from the two-dimensional plane.

Mädchen mit Kuh Hut...

Vejigante

Island carnivals with people wearing colorful affectations adorned with horns and dancing around on stilts, the scene recurs annually in Ponce and a few other island towns. Some spectators know of the origins...re-enactments of a medieval battle during the age of the Reconquista. The masks are uncomfortable reminders of an artful demonization of the Other.  Today, these veils are a more common presence in markets and stalls, disembodied and displayed in kiosks...awaiting the eager tourist to claim them as a trophy.

Such guises and their folkloric baggage are mostly distant memories or so I thought, until I looked up one morning and saw it dancing along the leaves of our Black Walnut tree.

syncretisms...

ant•ics

I don't mind them at all, and often stop and stare for a few minutes.

Often, my arguments in favor of just leaving them alone are not well received by the rest of the family. Today, Daniela spotted the first black ant scurrying across our kitchen counter.  "Summer is definitely here!"  Then I heard a large whack.

...just crickets

 

They were inside the door of the outdoor shed at my parents' home, motionless...

...their striations mimicking the grain.

For Morgan and Jo-Jo...

I heard you guys recently learned about Butterflies and their life cycle. Here are some interesting photographs I took of a butterfly drinking nectar from a flower. I hope you enjoy these. You can click on the butterfly to view an up close look at it's tongue.

 

A Praying Mantis Moment...

A few days ago the kids found him in the park and brought him into the house. He flew in clumsy spirals, eventually settling atop a bamboo houseplant near a green lamp shade. It groomed its antennae. Then I came in closer and stared at close range. Twelve centimeters of exo-skeletal bravado stood its ground challenging me with its serrated forelegs, tilting its head side to side. It could have easily flown away, but it glared back at me. I stood there, twelve times its size...puzzled, wondering about its neural network.

I imagined ancient Chinese monks humbled by its bravery and prowess, studying its fighting style to create their own. I was impressed by this "bad boy" from the insect world. The way he tilted his head, he seemed to analyze my size and shape. The way he tilted his head made me tilt my own and wonder how so much gallantry resided in such a trivial torso of light green and yellow.

I could have stared at him for hours. But. I stopped starring at him for fear that we'd trade places. (I blinked, as I remembered Julio Cortazar's short story about the Axolotl.) After a brief set of photographs, I carried him back outside...wondering how much he'd remember about this brief encounter.

hovering near the shore...

The weather is improving, but the currents are too strong.  Signs around the beach set limits, and the lifeguards patrol along with the police to enforce the prohibition.

 

So we watched the seagulls...walking along the waves.

 

Then the kids coaxed them a bit closer...

...with some goldfish crackers.

 

And for a few minutes, we forgot about the beach as we stared at the skies.

sopa de caracol

For some reason, the sepia tones seem to slow down the snails' movements even more.

(sn)ailments...

All of Washington D.C. moves more slowly in August. Traffic is tolerable. Throngs of tourists no longer dominate the open spaces.

,

For now, I enjoy the view from my perch. In a fews weeks it will all transform itself back to the usual unruly urbanities that define this place.

I should begin to pick up my pace...maybe later on....

bee li(n)es...

The thought of observing bees prowling about their pollen fields had never occurred to me, until one day this summer. Yes, I've taken snapshots of bees before, but this was different. This bee and its comrades actually remained calm in my presence. I had time to observe, and pay attention to detail through the lens. This side glance at a long-faced Bavarian drone was one of my first bee pictures that day. And, after taking hundreds of bee pics within a few days, it remains my favorite.

I have no idea "how" a bee sees. I just know it had to have seen me, and decided not to fly away (or at least did not react by fleeing). I was able to encroach within three inches of its stare, yet did not feel like I was trespassing. Perhaps it was satiated, perhaps it was curious. The bee was able to discern, or at least to categorize me and/or my presence as a non-threat. I like to think that it just didn't care.  Photographing, or "making a picture," is after all an act of appropriation. As Susan Sontag once remarked in her work On Photography, "There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera."  I'm delighted that this bee was unaware of Sontag's pronouncement.