Holiday Moth

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Just in time for St. Patrick's Day...

This is a Red-fringed Emerald Moth, Nemoria bistriaria, Family Geometridae (Geometrid Moths). Having recently photographed a Southern Emerald Moth, I at first thought I might have spotted another one, but one photo comparison and I instantly saw the difference between the two. I saw this one today at around 1:45 PM on the window of our local supermarket. That honeycombed background is part of a shopping cart. This species comes in both green and brown forms.

Green beer? HAH! We've got green moths! :)

My dial-up has been especially slow lately, with on-again-off-again webmail, so this will be a bit of catch-up....


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Our yard gets blanketed in these around the same time every year. Can compare with this shot, taken a year ago almost to the day.



I couldn't get a sharp focus on this one, so I watercolorized it (my favorite "fudge" technique). A sharper picture, taken of a snapdragon near the post office last year, is here.

I've joined a gym a mile from home and have been keeping pretty well to routine so far (my workouts alternate aerobic-only and aerobic-plus-weights). Its only shortcoming is that it has no showers, but neither does any gym or gym-wannabee in this area, so far as I can tell. Should make things interesting when we're into triple-digit heat indices. But the gym is conveniently located across the street from the post office, with options to pay by the month or by the day, mixing & matching as one goes along. I was looking at the conventions coming up (especially this fall) at which I'll be promoting Covenant, and I decided to increase my stamina for all that traveling, even if it's only within the state at this point.

Monday's exercise was my 2-mile "post office walk," though those are decidedly less aerobic than what I do at the gym. However, the walks do offer sights that I don't get otherwise.


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I don't know what species this is. Before they start looking like dandelion fluff, they look like long wisps of blonde horse's mane or a very glamorous kind of cattail. I saw this one in a wild patch near the post office, catching the late afternoon sun.


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And my bugs are back!

I missed these guys (and gals). We don't get many bugs in the winter, which most people here are probably overjoyed about. But the bugs fascinate me because the ones down here can get downright weird, and my camera's macro lens captures all that bizarre glory.

Outside the supermarket I spotted an "old friend" (meaning something I've photographed before and know the name of, so I can greet it properly):


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Male Polyphemus Moth, Antheraea polyphemus, Family Saturniidae (Giant Silkworm and Royal Moths). This shot and the one below are the first Polyphemus shots where I could tell the gender beyond a doubt, because the guys have honking big antennae. These moths also have a honking big wingspan of around 5 to 6 inches. One woman sitting on a bench told me she'd thought it was a dead bird. I have not yet seen one in person with its wings spread, but I have seen photos, and they are gorgeous.


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Can compare with this shot from March of 2006.

Then, by the bank's drive-thru window, I spotted this beetle. It stumped me completely, but I was drawn to both its size (about an inch long) and its metallic markings.


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It's in the genus Chalcophora, Family Buprestidae (Metallic Wood-boring Beetles). Thanks to Stephen Luk at Bugguide.Net for narrowing it down to "either C. georgiana or C. virginiensis."

Meanwhile, our art center undergoes renovations.



The gutting occurred on March 8. I've been documenting the process, since my camera travels just about everywhere with me. This was our main meeting space. Until the renovations are complete, we've switched most of our operations to the theater. That complicates things no end, because in addition to all our groups and committee meetings, we usually have about three shows in the works simultaneously between auditions, rehearsals, and actual performances. As our vice president put it, we're all going to have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya for a while. I've been able to arrange for my free-writing group to gather at the local library on those days when our meetings conflict with membership meetings and art demos.

More of my photos are up on the center's renovation page, and I've posted additional ones in my renovation photoset on Flickr.

Earlier this week I printed out two sets of submission guidelines. One was the next stop for a story that's been bounced. The other caught my eye during my market-trolling: an anthology with a concept that's a variant on the New Idea that hit me a while back (intimated in this entry). Still quite different from what I have in mind for the NI, and this would be the first time I've worked on a story to fit someone else's universe, but I love the premise. Fairly tight deadline, so I'm tearing myself away from Books #5 and #6 (which I seem to be working on concurrently) to whip something up and see if it flies.

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