make beautiful things happen

Cam and I are supposed to be in New Jersey this weekend, meeting 3 new baby girl cousins. The travel nonrev standby gods rejected us after spending a full day at the Charlotte airport and we have wound up back home with Cam sick on the couch. Bummed to not be with my family as planned this weekend but funny how things work out sometimes bc being sick while traveling is the actual worst. Unexpected downtime for me has turned into spending considerable energy playing with web design. I have also been indulging in some daydreamy research for things I am looking forward to in the near future - a tub to tiled shower conversion and a trip to explore Acadia National Park. I don't have any inspo from Roxy's Square at the moment but here is a photo of Cam in the airport sporting a reminder to 'make beautiful things happen' - she is the absolute best travel companion! She also is incredibly talented at making beautiful nail sets and asked me to "manage her website" so we might be making a feature page for her here soon to showcase her art <3

I have been indulging in some social media the last few weeks and wanted to highlight a monarch ID visual that I saved during recent scrolling. I have always felt confused about whether to garden for monarchs for reasons that are best described in this UF IFAS link. I have planted native butterfly weed a few times but for some reason it will not survive in my yard. Non-native milkweed is a relatively recent addition that seems to be doing okay and I have already seen a few monarchs! I suppose a pure monarch butterfly conservation approach would require me to trim down the milkweed in the fall to avoid migration confusion. As someone who has visiting the monarch migration spectacle outside of Mexico City pretty high on my adventure list, this seems like an appropriate choice. Red and orange are colors often indicating danger so these butterfly species are all either poisonous to predators or they are being false mimics. Wicked beauties!

---

Sunday morning update to this post: I said I didn't have any inspo from Roxy's Square but that didn't last long - adding some photos and thoughts.

I have been seeing what I think are the same two peregrine falcons that I watched hunting in my neighbors tree, plus maybe a third? I think I saw 3 of them flying together this morning on my walk with Roxy and it pulled me into her square with my camera. I think the falcons must have a nest nearby and I am really hopeful to get a good shot of them soon. I wonder how long they have been here. Was I just not noticing them prior or are they new residences to the hood?! Anywho...I did fall into some bees that were all over spidewort and blue daze. Spiderwort is one of my favorite native plants and blue daze is not native but it is Florida friendly and commercially available most of the year in major gardening centers. It makes a great groundcover and the bees love it. Check out how fashionable they are, carrying around pollen like a jacket puff on their cute little arms :)

As I was trying to photograph these bees, I was thinking about what goes into the pursuit of a good shot. I know several people in the conservation community who enjoy wildlife photography and I have an entirely new respect for their art! These bees moves so fast and never rest longer than what seems like half a second...a real challenge to photograph - it seems like as soon as you have one framed and in focus, they move along. There is a physical component requiring strength & balance, muscle & breath control - I often find myself contorting into odd positions and think of the benefit of my yoga practice. There is also the mental component of behavioral prediction which requires time, keen observation, and intuition. I think another key related to intuition is being adaptive - willing to move and flow with conditions - don't get stuck or overly committed to a specific angle or spot. Of course, added to all of these physical and mental nuances are the technical aspects like understanding your hardware, assessing lighting, choosing angles, framing, composure, etc.. Another thing is that on the back end, you have to be patient with the processing of data and disappointment - maybe my ratio will go down eventually but so far in my learning journey, I have found my ratio of good : not good shots to be quite large and a test of good data management practices LOL anyone relate to any of this?

Cheers to all of you who choose to make beautiful things happen and conclusion shoutout to Camryn who showed incredible adaptability and patience in the face of massive disappointment this weekend. She comforted and reasoned me out of my tears at the airport and didn't miss a beat all day on being a positive and happy little travel buddy. She is still down and out not feeling well on the couch this morning, but Roxy girl is doing her best to keep her company with all the snuggles <3

• 

• 

• 

•