Earth is Crammed with Heaven...

Jumping Spider (Salticidae)

2015-09-07T07:30:00.002+03:00

A spider lives inside my head

Who weaves a strange and wondrous web

Of silken threads and silver strings

To catch all sorts of flying things.

Like crumbs of thoughts and bits of smiles

And specks of dried-up tears,

And dust of dreams that catch and cling

For years and years and years...

-Shel Silverstein

Shale

2013-10-31T05:58:00.000+02:00

Ah, Teneriffe!”

Ah, Teneriffe! Retreating Mountain! Purples of Ages — pause for you — Sunset — reviews her Sapphire Regiment – Day — drops you her Red Adieu!

Still — Clad in your Mail of ices – Thigh of Granite — and thew — of Steel – Heedless — alike — of pomp — or parting

Ah, Teneriffe! I’m kneeling — still –

By Emily Dickinson

Glow worm (Lampyris noctiluca)

2013-10-31T00:49:00.000+02:00

"We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm."

Winston Churchill

Baby Opossum (Didelphimorphia)

2013-03-23T02:52:00.001+02:00

Two tricks has a 'possum
When danger is near.
To climb to a treetop
Or hiss full of fear.
But when these two fail
He tries this instead,
Rolls up like a ball
And pretends he is dead.

From the book "The Opossums" by Anne LaBastille

Butterfly

2013-01-04T06:08:00.001+02:00

Should have known it was all elementary
Lift my head and bow to the beat
Close your eyes and love is all around you
The distant wave of a sea

Closer to the edge I found
I was standing in the second round
I was laughing but I didn't make a sound
Now I'm flying with my feet on the ground

Hold me close you know that you have to
Tie me up pin my down
'Cause I won’t fly in a broken wing dimension
You change the chord and the sound
Closer to the edge I found

And me, I never had me a home
Never sleeping in a place with my own
I was crying but I didn't make a sound
Now I'm flying with my feet on the ground

Burlap to Cashmere

Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus )

2012-10-17T07:20:00.004+03:00

PERSEUS AND THE SEA–MONSTER

And now the monster was within the range of a stone thrown by a skilful slinger, when with a sudden bound the youth soared into the air. As an eagle, when from his lofty flight he sees a serpent basking in the sun, pounces upon him and seizes him by the neck to prevent him from turning his head round and using his fangs, so the youth darted down upon the back of the monster and plunged his sword into its shoulder. Irritated by the wound, the monster raised himself into the air, then plunged into the depth; then, like a wild boar surrounded by a pack of barking dogs, turned swiftly from side to side, while the youth eluded its attacks by means of his wings. Wherever he can find a passage for his sword between the scales he makes a wound, piercing now the side, now the flank, as it slopes towards the tail. The brute spouts from his nostrils water mixed with blood. The wings of the hero are wet with it, and he dares no longer trust to them. Alighting on a rock which rose above the waves, and holding on by a projecting fragment, as the monster floated near he gave him a death stroke. The people who had gathered on the shore shouted so that the hills reechoed with the sound. The parents, transported with joy, embraced their future son–in–law, calling him their deliverer and the saviour of their house, and the virgin, both cause and reward of the contest, descended from the rock.

Thomas Bulfinch

Spider Lily (Lycoris radiata)

2012-09-26T21:13:00.000+03:00

When you have only two pennies left in the world,

buy a loaf of bread with one,

and a lily with the other.

~Chinese Proverb

You're Making my Heart a Garden

2012-09-16T02:25:00.001+03:00

In the cool of the day
You come and meet me
All the blue fades away
The stars are winking
Your love's so strong
I can't recall
What was this thing
They called the fall?

And You walk with me
You never leave
You're making my heart a garden

Oh, why would I hide
Away from Your face
When the light of Your love
Illuminates

Your hand in mine
A steady line
Drawn on my heart
And deep in my mind

All the broken are mending
The mournful rejoicing
Seeing through tears
Of peace overflowing

And You walk with me
You never leave
You're making my heart a garden
You walk with me
You never leave
You're making our world a garden

Matt Maher

Green trillium (Trillium viridescens)

2012-08-27T20:10:00.000+03:00

To God’s elect. . .who have been chosen

according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,

through the sanctifying work of the Spirit,

for obedience to Jesus Christ

and sprinkling by his blood.

1 Peter 1:1-2.

Fairy Garden

2012-08-23T20:04:00.004+03:00

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames--
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus)

2012-08-22T19:24:00.004+03:00

Did you know

okra is used to make rope, coffee and paper?

Jellyfish- What Kind?

2012-07-12T21:27:00.000+03:00

What Am I?

Hermit crab out of Its shell (Pagurus bernhardus)

2012-07-09T21:21:00.000+03:00

A House For Hermit Crab

"Time to move," said Hermit Crab one day in January.

"I've grown too big for this little shell."

He had felt safe and snug in his shell. But now it was too snug.

Hermit Crab stepped out of the shell onto the floor of the ocean.

But it was frightening out in th eopen sea without a shell to hide in.

"What if a big fish comes along and attacks me?" he thought.

"I must find a new house soon..."

Eric Carle

Cannonball Jellyfish (Stomolophus meleagris)

2012-07-05T08:48:00.000+03:00

We are perishing not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

G.K. Chesterton

White Oak (Quercus alba)

2012-07-01T08:40:00.000+03:00

A North Country maid up to London had strayed

Although with her nature it did not agree,

Which made her repent, and so bitterly lament,

Oh I wish again for the North Country.

Oh the oak and the ash and the bonnie ivy tree,

They flourish at home in my own country.

English Folksong

LISTEN

Cherry-head Red-foot Tortoise

2012-06-26T08:26:00.000+03:00

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu

Bagworm (Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis)

2012-06-22T20:18:00.003+03:00

There's nothing so snug as a bug in a rug.

Mary Ann Hoberman

more information about bagworms

Rye Grass in Winter

2012-03-31T19:36:00.000+03:00

The Poet's Song

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He passed by the town, and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,
And he set him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
The snake slipt under a spray,
The hawk stood with the down on his beak
And stared, with his foot on the prey
And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Texas Longhorn (Bos...)

2012-03-17T00:38:00.001+02:00

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

- P.G. Wodehouse

Crimson Clover (Trifolium incarnatum)

2012-03-10T23:22:00.000+02:00

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?

No wound, no scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And, pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?

Amy Carmichael

Beach on Atlantic Ocean

2012-01-25T17:10:00.000+02:00

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Mottle Purse Crab (Persephona mediterranea)

2011-10-14T00:59:00.003+03:00

"The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved."

~ G.K. Chesterton

Royal Starfish (Astropecten articulatus)

2011-10-10T00:31:00.002+03:00

Stars

Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head,

White and topaz

And misty red;

Myriads with beating

Hearts of fire

That aeons

Cannot vex or tire;

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill,

I watch them marching

Stately and still,

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness

Of so much majesty.

Sarah Teasdale

Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata)

2011-10-05T01:16:00.002+03:00

"What we called love down there
was mostly the craving to be loved.

In the main, I loved you for my own sake,
because I needed you."

"And now! You need me no more?"

"But of course not!" said the Lady;

and her smile made me wonder
how both the phantoms could refrain
from crying out with joy.

"What needs could I have now that I have all?
I am full now, not empty

I am in Love Himself, not lonely, not weak.
You shall be the same.

Come and see. We shall have no need for one another
now we can begin to love truly."

The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis

The floral structure of the Passionflower was seen to symbolize the crucifixion. The three spreading styles atop the stigma were thought to represent the three nails by which Christ was attached to the cross.

Figeater Beetle (Cotinis mutabilis)

2011-09-16T23:02:00.000+03:00

Forgiven

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...
And Nanny let my beetle out -
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -
She went and let my beetle out -
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.

A.A. Milne