Each new summer morning in Florida, we, the grups, thrust our heavy legs out of bed and force ourselves to walk while the day is still cool and before the thunderstorms begin to build. We might not spring up as well as we once did, but once the coffee takes effect, inertia has been overcome, and we are almost as good as new again. Motion lotion gets us out of doors and into the early morning light where we find Nature stretching her legs too. We recognize another combatant once more waging war against entropy. The orchard orbweaver, Leucauge venusta, has been busy weaving all night while we slept. She may be tiny now, but she has a voracious appetite for lots of things, maybe even what a bean-eating caterpillar has wrought. Now I see in the photo above why those lovely green beans in my garden went missing and what they have been sacrificed for--el Arte--a long-tailed skipper--Urbanus proteus.
"All Nature's apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever...."
**************************************************************
"Every conquest over Nature increases her domain. The stars do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure them: the soul does not become Nature till we can psycho-analyze her. The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature. As long as this process stops short of the final stage we may well hold that the gain outweighs the loss. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same...." (from C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, 1947)
**************************************************************
Please visit Rambling Woods for this week's Nature Notes and see what other bloggers have been inspired by in nature.
