Nature | August

 It's time to round up this month's nature pictures.

My favorite is the close-up hibiscus flower. The petals look so velvety! 

Do you have a favorite from this gallery? Have you seen inspiring sights in nature this month?

My children ran to get me when they saw this freshly emerged cicada. They didn't want me to miss out on seeing it.

This sphinx month was very well camouflaged on our neighbor's mailbox post 

Knobby knees of the cypress. I loved getting to see these! There is a poem in this scene somewhere. Let me have a crack at it:

Knobby Knees of the Cypress 

A stoic people,

A stable people,

Watching the waves

Ever changing.

They stand,

Unmoved,

Never changing.

To shift?

Or to stay?

To shift 

For the wave is best.

To stay

For the knee knob is best.

A foggy morning.

I saw a beautiful morning. Drips of rain clung on all the leaves and branches. It could have been a heavy dew. It was hard to tell. The droplets were prisms everywhere! I was able to catch the effect in this picture.

First omen of fall.

This woolly caterpillar was so funny to me. Look at how his little grippers meet each other as they grasp all the way around the singular vein of leaf that is left. I imagine him worrying about where to find more food having eaten almost everything on this leaf. "What am I gonna do? I have nothing left. I'm starving!"

I am going to add a video of a monarch caterpillar changing into its chrysalis. It took f-o-r-e-v-e-r . I had my phone propped up on my knife organizer block all day because it offered a decent angle to capture this monarch caterpillar turning into its chrysalis. After 8 hours I have up and turned my phone off. I happened to be in the room when it finally split it's skin. I turned my camera on quickly to catch the rest of the "action". Doing science takes a long time! It's a slow burn. Don't feel bad if you getting tired of this video and don't finish watching. I can admit that it makes pretty boring cinema. Don't get me wrong, it is an amazing process and seeing it happening before my eyes was a real treat!