Any ideas what these bugs are? I found them on Saturday at a local park and also on the goldenrod at home. I can’t put a name to them and it’s making me a little (more) batty (than usual). I spent a wonderful few hours looking through the images on Bug Guide, but found nothing to match. I don’t have a good insect guide, so I usually turn to online sources when I’m stumped. Bug Guide is useful for someone like me who doesn’t know bugs – a neat feature is that you can search by the flower or plant that an insect is found on. A search for goldenrod brings up a hungry community of insects. None who look like these, unfortunately. I tried browsing through the images using those scary scientific terms that I never learned properly in school, but didn’t get very far that way, either. I just don’t know enough. So before I write them and request an ID on what is probably a common insect, I thought I’d throw the question out to you guys. Anyone know what these are? They’re very pretty and have wings. 😉
All posts by laurahinnj
Postcards from the neighborhood
Susan Gets Native asked for pictures from the street I live on, but I felt a little funny taking pictures of my neighbor’s houses, so I decided to extend my search for snapshots to the whole neighborhood. The purple mums are decorating my front stoop (yes, my parents were from Jersey City, NJ – does anyone else call it a *stoop*? 😉
This is a view from the street beside our pond. Fairly boring, but we have lots of old trees and lots of kids in the neighborhood now. The older people are downsizing and moving closer to their adult kids and young families are moving in.
Our newest neighbor on the street is our family doctor. He bought this house for 1.9 million dollars. Can you imagine? A few houses on the street have been rebuilt lately – this house used to be a ranch, like the one you can see the corner of to the left, but the prior family bought the house for $600,000 and tore it all down, except for the garage. They rebuilt it to this and less than five years later sold it for more than 3 times that amount.
This is our church, technically in the next town, set on a hill. I love the steeple, and on quiet days I can hear the bells ringing.
I think this is considered a creek, but it seems too wide to be called that. It borders our town and the next and often hosts ducks, herons, egrets, and terns. It’s a popular crabbing spot, but isn’t our usual place. Just to the left of the pic is the local army base and all its communication equipment, which I was afraid to photograph.
Around the corner from our house is this little farm field, usually planted with raspberries and blackberries. The deer fencing is new. Buddy and I often walk the edge of this field to look for the red-tail hawks that like to hang out in those trees in the distance. There is a little creek and farm pond down there and it’s a nice spot for warblers and frogs and mosquitos. And an occasional fox.
My favorite place to shop, just down the street. It used to be just a little farm stand surrounded by fields and orchards, but now it’s a gourmet market that sells beautiful plants and fresh, mostly local produce, plus anything else imaginable related to flowers or food. There’s soccer and baseball fields and a playground, and a wonderful old farmhouse that has been preserved by the town.
Susan also suggested that I take pics of the house I grew up in and the schools I went to, which I think would be kind of fun. I may take a drive to the old neighborhood this weekend to share some memories of growing up.
Borland on October
“October is the year at rich maturity, a happy woman arrayed in festival dress and ready for a dance with a giant come down from the hills attired in a red, red shirt, buckskin pants and moccasins beaded with frost. October is a brisk wind in the treetops, a whisper among crisp leaves, a breath of apple cider, a gleam from a jack-o’-lantern, and the echo of laughter under a full moon.
October is bright as a bittersweet berry. October has the high excitement of a hunting dog’s voice on the trail, the day-tang of walnut hulls and sumac berries, the night call of the owl and the bark of a restless fox. Geese honk high, in October, and ducks take off from the river in a shower of diamond drops, southward bound. The lawn mower’s put away for the season, the garden’s sere with frost, and firelight leaps on the hearth at evening. Cider begins to potentiate and the grape begins to find a heady reason for ripening.
The pumpkin’s in the pie, in October. The corn’s in the crib or the freezer. Pickling’s done and thoughts turn to mincemeat. October is plenty and savor and the hearty meal and time to relax. October is the year come to harvest, in the barn, in the mow, in the root cellar, the jam closet, the cold pantry.
October is the long evening and the book beside the fire. It is the blanket-covered night. It is the woodchuck fattening for a long nap, the fat partridge in the hemlock thicket, the deer eating windfalls in the orchard.
October is the power and the glory, to touch, to taste, to hear and to see. October is the splendor and the magnificence.”
–Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964.
**Snow geese photo courtesy of USFWS. Mule deer photo courtesy of Webshots.com**
Postcards from the beach
Today was my volunteer day at the Sandy Hook Bird Observatory. This is the view to the right of our center. Are you wondering why I’m posting this bad photo of Canada Geese? Well… I had a surprise visit today from Patrick, another SHBO volunteer and the face behind The Hawk Owl’s Nest and his buddy Mike from 10,000 Birds. Patrick was giving Mike a tour of the Hook. Mike made a comment that he’s not sure I bird anymore because I never blog about birds. So I felt obligated to post this pic of some birds. Oh, and about 10 minutes after you guys left, Tom B. called to report a possible MacGillivray’s Warbler – not sure if that panned out, but you know Tom’s penchant for finding the rarest of birds! 
Back to the photo tour. Laura from Vitamin Sea and Lene from Counting Petals wanted to see water views. This is the view from the front porch of the bird observatory; technically, you have to walk off the porch and cross the road to see the color in the poison ivy or whatever that is growing at the base of the rocks, but Sandy Hook Bay is gorgeous. Today when I arrived it was cloudy and raining and there were thousands of swallows migrating low over the water and high up in the sky. There were also lots of Monarchs migrating today and nectaring on the goldenrod that blooms along the dunes.
I ventured to the ocean side to get a pic of the water and sand, so that Lene could imagine sinking her toes into it. There were a lot of people out with their dogs once the storm had passed and I enjoyed watching them play in the water. I made the mistake of sitting down in the sand to take pics and the big galoot in this picture came bounding up to me and mugged me with his wet face. 
On the way home I visited the Twin Lights lighthouse in Navesink. I haven’t been there since grade school, even though I drive by at least once a week.
This pic is of the old 9 foot bivalve lens that had been used to guide ships into New York Harbor and was one of the brightest navigational lights used in the US. The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1949 and a smaller, and much less powerful commemorative light replaced it in 1962.
Taken from inside the working *twin* light. Going up the spiral staircase was much easier than coming down! Dizzy city!
View from the top of the lighthouse, Sandy Hook is that long spit of land jutting out into the horizon. I enjoyed taking these snapshots today and will post some others in the coming days. Feel free to add a request!
Festival of the Trees #4
This month’s edition of The Festival of the Trees, celebrating trees and tree-ish things, is up at Hoarded Ordinaries. Stop by, enjoy the collection of links, and consider contributing to next month’s festival.
Postcards from NJ
A fun idea for a photo meme from Vitamin Sea via Pure Florida.
Send along your requests for photos from where I live. I’ll go out with camera in hand and roam the neighborhood. It’s a chance for me to play tour guide and show off my hometown and local area. What snapshot from New Jersey would you like to see?
Include requests in the comment section here and consider playing along on your own blog.
Surprises from the classroom
We’re 4 weeks into the semester now and I’ve almost learned everyone’s name. I only see these *kids* once a week , so it seems to take forever to know who’s who.
They’re a pretty mixed group, with a surprising number of boys. Usually in a class of eighteen students I’ll have only 4 or 5 boys, but this semester it’s the opposite. Boys make me nervous. They tend to cause flashbacks to the year I spent teaching Spanish at an elementary school and had to bear the torment of 6th and 7th graders on a daily basis. I was not a happy camper then and ended most school days very near in tears. I did much better with high school boys who didn’t spend all their time trying to figure out ways to harass me.
The boys at the community college are very much like the high school students I taught. It’s interesting to me to imagine what they must have been like in high school and what group they fit in to. With a new start at college, some of them are trying out new roles, but many times they seem to fall back on their old ways. Oftentimes I have the athletes who spent their high school years charming their way through classes. Confident and very personable, but sort of lazy. They smile at me a lot and crack jokes, call me *Professor* when everyone else calls me by my first name. Very amusing. Very charming.
Then there are the boys who try to blend into the walls and hope I won’t pay any notice of them. Well-behaved and quiet and badly in need of help, but afraid to ask for it. They got through high school by not causing any trouble and they’re hoping that strategy will still work for them. They’re the hardest for me to connect with in the classroom because they won’t respond to either the friendly cajoling I frequently employ, or the stern *teacher talk* that I hate to have to resort to. Stern doesn’t really work for me and they see through this act of mine.
As a teacher, I know that I shouldn’t have any preconceived ideas about my students, but I can’t help it. What I enjoy is watching them trash the ideas I have about them as the semester progresses.
There is the muscular football player who last night volunteered to read poem after poem out loud for the rest of the class as we talked about the connections we make when reading that help us to understand text better.
And his friend who asked if we didn’t have time to write a follow-up to one of the peoms we read that the class had really enjoyed. (I think that was a ploy to avoid doing any *real* work!)
The shy Haitian student who every week arrives early and rearranges the furniture so that I, and the rest of the class, won’t have to do it.
The student who skipped class the first week, arrived late with a smirk for the second class, but then produced a perfect Origami crane while I floundered to make something resembling a box as a demonstration of the value of background knowledge when reading.
I like for them to surprise me. I’m glad to find these good things in unexpected places and talents i
n unexpected people.
Have you ever had a moment where you wondered how on earth you got to that point? I often feel that way in the classroom. I came across this picture, my college graduation pic, this evening while searching for an old friend’s address. I was 22 and engaged to be married and had no clue what I would be doing the following week, let alone near 15 years later. Never would I have imagined myself to be teaching college. I look at it and wonder what my college profs thought of me, the quiet girl who always sat in the front row, but never said a word. I was terribly shy and hated to speak in front of people. How I find the courage to teach puzzles me, still. My knees sometimes shake, but I’ve learned to stand behind the desk at those times!
I like to think of what the students I have known will become and how they will find their place in the world. Most I never hear from again, but a few do keep in touch and will email me once in a while. I like that they do that and wish that more did. I think it’s the nature of the course I teach, and the way I try to do it, that leads some of them to want me to know that they’re doing well and that they’ve beaten the odds. That they’ve surprised themselves, even.
9/28/06 Mid-week bunny fix
This is the sight that greeted me on Tuesday when I got in from work. The general mess with hay strewn about is normal, the collapsed hidey-box is not. It’s been threatening to give way for a few weeks now and I’ve been on the lookout for a new box to replace it with. But I hadn’t found one in time. This box was huge and once held 50 pounds of hay shipped across the country from Nebraska for the spoiled rabbits. I haven’t ordered from that company in a while, so don’t have another.
I didn’t expect to find Boomer happily snoozing the afternoon away inside the busted box, but I should have known better. That bunny can nap!
I threw away the box and cleaned up and set out their bed and they snuggled inside it, as they do. But it just wasn’t right… these bunnies need a box to *hide* in. None of the others have ever had a box, but I’ve always given one to the flemmies. They chew the doorways to their liking and shred a back entrance hole. Boomer especially loves the box and I have to rouse him morning and night to eat. He prefers his salads and his hay in bed. Lazy boy!
Before the night was over I had replaced it with the only box I could find that is almost big enough, but not nearly. Boomer seems happy to have a roof over his butt, if not his head.
Weeds or wildflowers?
My garden goes all to hell this time of year. I’m tired of weeding and dragging the hose around. The shorter days don’t leave much time for it, even if I were inclined to be out there doing those things after work. The wild things that have been quietly growing beside their more manicured neighbors take full advantage of my neglect and shout out to the neighbors that a lazy gardener lives here. There is beauty in this chaos, but it’s hard to see that from curbside. My husband, with his inclination towards neatness (only in the yard!), is aching to cut this flower bed down. It has no sense of propriety and is arching over and falling onto *his* precious lawn. So far I’ve kept him at bay by pointing out that this bed of white snakeroot, swamp milkweed, and Joe-Pye has nestled two monarch chrysalises in its shady depths and there could be others who need just a week or two (or three) more to finish their business here.
I never planted the snakeroot, but it found its way here from somewhere and wants to take over. I leave it be because it’s not very noticeable until it blooms and then it’s beautiful. The pokeberry in the picture above is something we fight all spring and summer long, but now in fall we leave it to flower and fruit. The small white aster (maybe aster vimineus?) is a new volunteer brought on the wind. I’m amused to find wildflowers growing here of their own accord, when there are so many flowers that I nurture with little success.
This summer we suddenly have goldenrod growing in the bog garden beside the pond. Where did that come from? I tried to figure out this evening what type of goldenrod it is, but was only able to determine that it is very different from the *cultivated* one I grow across the yard. This is where the writing spider made its pretty web a few weeks ago, and each evening I go out to see what new bugs are feasting on it. There is an assortment of flower flies that I don’t know how to identify, and fuzzy bumblebees, and locust borers that mimic wasps.
One summer a guy that worked for my neighbor mowed my *wildflower patch* down in late summer, just before all the plants were to bloom. He was mowing the lawn and got carried away with himself, I guess. By rights, he was entitled to do so, as part of this garden is technically on my neighbor’s property. I was most fit to be tied though when he told me he did it because “it’s just weeds, man!” If that’s the way you see the world, well, so be it. But, they’re beautiful weeds. My husband takes care of the neighbor’s lawn now. Out of the goodness of his heart. 😉
Have decoy, need jig and frozen lake
Have you ever heard of a fish decoy? I hadn’t until I came across them at the show on Saturday. Sheepishly I asked the gentleman selling them if they were just decorative or if they actually had some use. He explained that yes, some people collect them, but in places where spear fishing is allowed these decoys are used to lure bigger fish to a hole made in the ice of a frozen lake. Lines are attached to the decoy, then to a stick or *jig* and the decoy is made to swim in a way so as to attract other fish that can be speared from above the ice. Like duck decoys, fish decoys are quite popular as folk art, in addition to their more practical use. Who’d have guessed it? Me, I just thought it was pretty. It’s a Lake Trout, carved from white pine and only 8″ long with a beautiful curve to its body. It’s surprisingly heavy for its size, due to the weights placed in its belly to make it *swim* properly. The carver suggested I try it out in the bathtub to see how it works.
I had a hard time choosing which I liked best, but think I chose a good one. The artist, Rich Brooks, has won many awards for his decoys and lures and the one I chose was featured in a display this summer at the Tuckerton Seaport where he was the *artist in residence*. A nice pic of my decoy is available here and more info about fish decoys in general is available at this website.
What I love most about the decoy show is the chance to chat with the people who make such beautiful things. They all seem to love to talk and share their expertise. I’d imagine it’s difficult on the ego to set up a booth filled with things you’ve worked hundreds of hours on and poured your soul into, only to see so many people pass by without much more than a glance. Those of us that do stop to ask questions (and to buy) are richly rewarded with a peek into the heart of an artist. Each decoy I own has been bought this way, after the telling of a story or a conversation about some aspect of their craft. That personal connection is what makes each decoy unique and special to me.