Paper Wasp Nest

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. 

It started in literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. 

It started with walks through the grass and woods and lagoons, 

and ended in walks through the high plains of theology.

Not that nature and literature and grass and woods and lagoons disappeared,

but they became more obviously copies and pointers.

John Piper

Emerging Cicada (Tibicen cholormera)

Most of the North American species are in the genus Tibicen: the annual or dog-day cicadas (so named because they emerge in late July and August ). The best-known North American genus is Magicicada, however. These periodical cicadas have an extremely long life cycle of 13 to 17 years and emerge in large numbers. Another American species is the Apache cicada, Diceroprocta apache. wikipedia

Night

The Dark Night Of The Soul

Once in a dark of night,

Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose

(O coming of delight!)

And went, as no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,

Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,

(O coming of delight!)

In dark when no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone

Surer than noonday sunlight over me,

And lead me to the one

Whom only I could see

Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one,

A lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast

Which I had kept for him and him alone

He slept as I caressed

And loved him for my own,

Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall

The wind came down to winnow through his hair

Bidding his fingers fall,

Searing my throat with air

And all my senses were suspended there.

I stayed there to forget.

There on my lover, face to face, I lay.

All ended, and I let

My cares all fall away

Forgotten in the lilies on that day.

Saint John of the Cross

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Arabesque Orb Weaver (Neoscona arabesca)

In 2007, A Giant Spider Web began to form in an East Texas State Park. Several different types of spiders worked together This is one of them. I took this picture in the park where this phenomenon took place. It made world wide news. You can read more about it here:

http://spiderjoe.com/giant-webs-2007

An excerpt from the news:

If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and even the weedy ground.
But if you hate mosquitoes, you might just love this bizarre web.
“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said park Superintendent Donna Garde. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown.
“There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.” …