Times have changed so much since I was a kid.  We ran wild until it was time for supper without a care in the world.  My mother’s only qualification was that when she called me I had better come RIGHT then.  She made dinner from scratch every night and I came back tired and happy from playing tetherball, catching bugs, and climbing trees.  The world is a different place now:  there need to be scheduled “play dates”, there are new strains of awful mosquitos, and sadly kids have to worry about strangers.  I have some really nice clients that fly north for the summer to escape the netherworldly humid Texas heat.  They have an enormous back yard that is well over an acre and completely enclosed.  I told my little one she could just go and play while I worked and she could not believe it.  “Just GO?!” she asked in shock and disbelief.  “Yep” I said nonchalantly.  “But you need to watch me,” she stated with a hint of fear in her voice.  “Nope” I replied.  “You are completely safe here.”  “What about bugs?” she wanted to know.  I whipped out the repellent, covering her from head to toe and told her she was good to go.  Hesitantly at first, she went outside but lingered close while I went about my job checking on the house.  She discovered a putting green where she turned the dignified game of golf into a hybrid of cricket and some sort of carnival game at the fair.  Next she found the swing and a little while later she was running around the giant azalea bushes in circles shrieking with abandon.  She ventured out even more and crossed over their bridge that leads to a gazebo in the very back.  After I’d finished my rounds I came out to play with her.  We raced and laughed and tried to scare each other.  The comforting sounds and smells of late summer brought me back to when I was little and being outside with total abandon.  One of my favorite quotes is from the Lebanese born poet Kahlil Gibran:

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

And that is exactly what my little one and I did … out in the great outdoors.

What little I know about ladybugs is that they are beneficial, eating pests such as aphids off rose leaves.  Many cultures consider ladybugs to be a good sign.  I was fascinated to discover the Christian legend that says they were sent by Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary to protect crops.  Grasshoppers I know leap tremendously far in the air and, according to what I have unearthed, it is the Chinese symbol of abundance.  They only leap forward.  I saw both this lady and this guy pictured here and I have decided I am going to claim a double dose of good luck that will be coming my way.  After all, I think catching this ladybug before she flew away and getting this grasshopper pic before he jumped ahead was a pretty extraordinary occurrence for someone just out in their yard watering the plants.

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.  If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” ~ American biologist E. O. Wilson

I am not superstitious, nor do I play the lottery.  But based upon that quote alone I am feeling lucky.

As I have confessed here many times, much to my lament I do not know plants like my mother did and trees like my father did.  So now I am having to learn them on my own.  These are Morning Glories that are growing wild along our driveway.  They open fully to the Eastern sun and by noon they have closed themselves up waiting for another day.  In that way they remind me of water lilies.  I have heard they are invasive.  Some of my favorite plants and trees seem to be labeled as invasive so I am not sure exactly what to say on that.  I also seem to have an affinity for plants rooted in Asia; to me they have such a delicate, graceful flow of movement.  The American dancer Martha Graham is quoted as once having said:

“‘Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years.  But maturity is the glory of years.”

I love the vine’s heart shaped leaves and delight in waking to its prolific blooms.  They serve as a reminder to me that each day I should stop and savor the morning glory.

I am always fascinated by the etymology of words and phrases.  It is supposed that the word “tad” (meaning a liittle) originated from “tadpole.”  I have written about our toads several times and a reader requested wanting to actually see one in the tadpole stage.  I may have a better picture, but for the time being this is the best one I have managed to fish up.  (No pun intended.)  From what I have been able to observe the female lays a few hundred eggs that look like a bunch of black dots in our pond.  Not very long after I can see they’ve become tadpoles, which swim about freely feeding on microscopic organisms.  At about six weeks they grow hind legs and around three months their tails shrink and they are able to breathe out of water and go on land.  This is based on my amateur observation anyway.  Part of the joy is in learning.  The famed French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau once said:

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.”

There are struggles and triumphs; sorrows and pains.  The comfort is in knowing if you are in a diffucult time the good will come back around.  Water, like life, is rhythmic.  And they all follow the cycles of life.