Change and Hope

It's hard to believe that another month has passed and it's time to start photo blogging about P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of January - Change and Hope. There might be some political commentary in this one, so if you disagree that's fine, but we'll probably have to agree to disagree. The first two photos fall into the change category, in my mind and the last three photos fall into the hope category.

1 & 2. Change

Both of these shots don't seem like there's much change associated with them, except when you consider that both were taken in the middle of January. In years gone by, the thought of seeing sunflowers blooming on January 10th would have been unheard of, with the exception of inside a hothouse, but out in a garden somewhere? The same thing goes for seeing not one, but two different snakes slithering out and about in the middle of January. They should be underground, hibernating the cold months away.

What can we do about it? Lots of things, but we really need to think about this on a long term scale. To blindly say, maybe we are, and maybe we aren't affecting the climate isn't good enough anymore in my opinion. What we need to do is to further invest in alternative energy sources, ones that don't have as big of a carbon footprint as our current energy usage is. Can we get there immediately? Obviously, no, but every little step in that direction will help. 

3. Hope

As noted above, the last three photos I have are centered around hope in my mind, with the first of the three sort of a bridge between the two different themes. Once again, a changing climate is allowing us to see butterflies out and about more frequently in colder months. Granted, I love seeing butterflies, but not when they're not supposed to be out. However, this Common Buckeye butterfly gives me hope for the resiliency of the species. As you can see, it's pretty battered and bruised, but it obviously hadn't given up on its life mission. It was still flying around, either looking for food, or looking for a mate so it could pass on its genetic material to the next generation.

4. Hope

Those of you who know me, know I've been obsessed with painted rocks. I started seeing them during the spring and summer of this year while I was out on walks. There's a local artist who has been planting a variety of different kinds of painted rocks around the neighborhood. Either they've finally gotten bored with that activity and have moved on to something else, or perhaps they're getting discouraged that many of their pieces of art keep disappearing. This is one of the reasons why I've been photographically documenting them when I see them, so there's some kind of permanent record of them existing. I also thought this new one I spotted this month had a great message that fit in with the hope theme.

5. Hope

Finally, with the vaccine starting to roll out, there's hope for the future again. Hope that I'll be able to get back on the hiking trail with longer hikes and more camping. I've been staying very close to home, not spending any overnighters anywhere since a year ago February and I'm hoping, at least, that that aspect of my life can return to a semblance of normal. I have a couple of backpacking excursions planned over the next couple of years and I hope I can get back on the trail soon. I also want to label my posts more than just with the California tag.

Well, there you have it. My take on the them of Change and Hope. As always, I welcome your comments. Please click on the link above to see how other people interpreted the same theme.

Paths

A very dear friend of mine gave me a tee-shirt when I retired last year. On it was the imprint of a boot print, but the print was actually words, which said, "Of all the paths in life you take, make sure some of them are dirt."

I've been trying to do that on a daily basis, not always successfully, but the park just north of my house has a nice walking path of dirt, so I count that, but I think I want to amend that phrase to include something about paths covered in flowers. The photo doesn't convey how orange this really is, but it literally is covered with orange petals from the tree at the right of the shot. 

If you can, walk on a flowered covered path sometime soon. It will make all the difference in the world.

June Bugs in July?

We've had lots of June bugs this summer for some reason.  It's probably because we had such a wet winter.  I actually saw a photo today, that said it was a good thing they only eat plants.

Every so often, I like to take photos of insects and creepy crawly things.  Most of the people on Facebook already know this.  I like spiders.  Insects, not so much, mainly because they're pests.  They fly in your face and annoy the heck out of you.  They suck your blood and spread disease. And so I like spiders and bats, because they eat lots of insects.

However, insects do provide many important things for us. They pollinate the flowers we love to smell and they pollinate the flowers of all of our food we eat. We need to be thinking very clearly about bees in the future.  Actually, we need to be acting on bee welfare right now.  We run out of bees, half of our population of people worldwide will probably disappear due to mass starvation.  That's a sobering thought.

And so I leave you with this June bug on some Hydrangea flowers. Yes, I know this post is in August, but I took the photo in late July.