Dragonflies in the Summer

This amazing crop circle appeared in England a couple of weeks ago.

The circles this season seem to be quite different than in past years. This dragonfly (as well as the jellyfish which appeared around the same time) and other recent circles have amazing details that I've not seen in previous circles. Notice the wings of the dragonfly. While the wings are symmetrical and geometric, the lines within the wings are delicately different. So are the tentacles of the jellyfish.

And the body from this "tadpole", (for lack of a better descriptor).

And then there's this circle image of an egg being sought after by 8 sperm (again, my own label).

Now check out this latest circle: while swallows have been the design for other beautiful circles, this newest one is unique with what looks like code floating behind the swallow! I wonder what secrets those glyphs hold? And why are they associated with the swallow/bird? It looks like a kite taking flight. Bewildering and exquisitely mysterious!

For more crop circle info, check out Crop Circle Connector and/or Temporary Temples.

Summer is not my favorite time of the year. Heat and I are not good friends (and hormonal shifts don't help that relationship, either!). Andrew and I moved to the NC mountains from Charleston, SC, because we wanted to live in these green mountains as well as where there were four seasons. In Charleston, there were only 2 seasons: hot and hotter!

Even this recent crop circle seems to recognize the hot weather with a fan designed with crescents! Or maybe it's referring to our upcoming 3 summer eclipses.

A few years ago, I decided to create an altered book depicting the things I love about summer: the ripeness, the abundance of scents and flowers, the birds and the bees. An "altered book" is a book on one topic that you alter the pages/cover/etc. to make it about another topic. I found a wonderful book on the sun at a thrift store entitled The Fire of Life, published by the Smithsonian and re-titled it "Summer Solstice". Some of the pages I left alone because they were about the summer solstice (astronomy, legends and myths about the sun, etc.). Other pages, I altered by covering with decorative papers, rubber stamp impressions, photos, postcards, calendar art, etc. I even took multi-page articles from magazines (such as on the Monarch butterfly from an old National Geographic) and made them into booklets so that I included books within the books. It was a labor of love, and made the heat more tolerable.

Dragonflies played a role in that book, and they hold special images for me that associate them with summertime and warm weather. I remember as a young girl going with my mom once a month on a Saturday morning to the cemetary where her mother was buried. While she trimmed around the gravestone (and I'm sure "talked" with her beloved mother), I walked, skipped, and ran along the sidewalks criss-crossing the large, open land, reading the grave markers and stopping at the statues overlooking the grassy blanket of ground. I remember always seeing dragonflies hovering and flying around a large statue of an open bible. They were so beautiful and irridescent in the richest colors imaginable! They could hover, zip forward, glisten in the sun, and dart wherever they wanted... they were magical. Nature gifted the dragonfly with very special paint colors!

As an adult, I remember being led by dragonflies down a country road in Tennessee. Andrew and I were looking for mountain land to buy to retire to; this was outside of Nashville and dragonflies literally led us down the road to the entrance to the property. While we didn't buy that property, it was a procession to remember!

A few years ago, I was swimming in a nearby small, man-made lake. Dragonflies and damselflies of all colors were darting just above the surface of the water. After my swim, I sat on the dock and spent some quiet time looking into the water just below. There were fish languidly suspended below the water while dragonflies were flitting above the water; and then there was my reflection on the water's surface. It was appropriate that my reflection was between the languid, relaxed and the active, darting images.

In Native American medicine, Dragonfly symbolizes "Illusion". According to "Medicine Cards" by Jamie Sams and David Carson, "some legends say that Dragonfly was once Dragon, and that Dragon had scales like Dragonfly's wings." Can you imagine how beautiful Dragons must have been?

Also, "Dragonfly is the essence of the winds of change and the illusory facade we accept as physical reality.... messages of wisdom and enlightenment, and connection with the elemental world and nature.... If you feel the need for change, call on Dragonfly to guide you through the mists of illusion to the pathway of transformation."

I've been talking with a lot of different folks about the need for change and flexibility in these times. Yesterday, I heard some shocking statistics: worldwide, extreme poverty means that a family lives on less than $2 per day; moderate poverty means that a family lives on $3 per day. In the US, poverty levels are those where a family lives on $40 per day. Also, in underdeveloped countries, a person uses 20 liters of water per day on average. In the US, each person uses 600 liters of water per day! Indeed, these are times for change and for breaking through the illusion that we haveunlimited natural resources as well as the entitlement to use them all up! Dragonfly seems to be a suitable symbol for the changes we all need to make, and the illusions we all need to release.

One more dragonfly story: on Monday of this week, my son Allen was driving us somewhere and a dragonfly bounced into our car windshield and slid down into the windshield wipers. Allen asked if he should turn on the wipers to help set it free. I said I thought that might injure it more. So we pulled into a parking lot and Allen got out and gently helped untangle the dragonfly from the wiper. We were thinking it was already injured, so Allen had intended to place the dragonfly on the ground in the shade of a bush. But as Allen lifted the dragonfly from its entrapment, it lifted up out of his hands, hovered a bit, then flew off. The look of wonder and joy on Allen's face was a beautiful sight. I'm so thankful for dragonflies!

I hope today brings you positive change full of beauty.

Peace,

Kate

Dirt Therapy

Yesterday, I spent almost all day trimming potted plants on our back deck and planting herbs in pots and in our south-facing herb bed. Mmmmm... the delicious scents that swirled around me all day! The honeysuckle vines are rampant in our backyard (I am a gardener of the Romantic persuasion) and their rich, scents seduced me all day long. It's like music for your nose.

By the way, this crop circle just appeared this past week in England. It makes me think of music and how interconnected and intertwined all our spheres and links are. It is in a young field of barley and is the 15th one reported this season. To me, it holds the central symbol of the sun as well as sylized yin-yang symbols on either side connected by lines and circles to create a repeating loop of energy. Isn't it exquisitely beautiful?!?

(Back to North Carolina...)

We also have ligustrum shrubs blooming now, with their cone-shape clusters of small white blossoms that have a fresh scent much greater than the blooms promise. I remember as a little girl we had a hedge of ligustrum along one side of our yard and my dad had pruned them so that they looked like one big long bush. Well, inside those branches were cubbies between the trunks of the bushes, a perfect place for me to crawl in, curl up on the cool dirt, and watch the world from between the leaves. This was in summer when the blooms were burgeoning, so whenever I smell that fresh scent, I flash back to hiding from the world surrounded by green smells and the soft buzzing of busy bees.

(Sometimes I still want to do this, you understand. Instead, though, I just sit outside and sniff after days gone by.)

The butterflies were enraptured with the blossoms, too. One kept fluttering its wings as it sucked nectar from honeysuckle blossoms. I'm sure it was so she would stay where she needed to be, but it sure looked like she was trembling with excitement about all the sweetness around her!

The herbs I bought last weekend at the Garden Jubilee in downtown Hendersonville were great to play with, too! I bought several scented geraniums, and potting them was just a cornucopia of lovely smells! If you don't know scented geraniums, you need to check them out (scientific name, Pelargonium, but google scented geranium and you'll find plenty of resources). They are not as showy as the more common geraniums you see everywhere, but those don't smell good at all (in my opinion). The scented ones have a soft fuzz on the leaves which hold oils so that when you rub their leaves, you can smell rose or lemon or an assortment of other relaxing scents. Nature sure knows her purfumes.

I also bought a bay tree which needs to be potted here in the mountains since it gets too cold for them to winter outside (so I understand...). And I potted some basil for pesto (yum! Andrew calls pesto "husband repellent", so I eat it when he's not around...) My son Allen helped me plant a curry plant, two tarragons, a lemongrass, a thyme, and two big pots of sweet woodruff (check out the recipe for May wine in an earlier post). So now our deck steps are lined with lovely plants that when you brush against them they will send out welcoming scents! And we have new perennials in our herb bed for pickin' and cookin'. The sage planted a couple of springs ago is going nuts, as is the fennel and lavendar, and a couple of varieties of mints. Time for mint tea. Mmmmm...

The birds are ecstatic nowadays... there was song all around me yesterday. I laid in the hammock for a while, breathing in the smells, watching the sight of the sun shining through the feathers of outspread songbird wings flying above me from tree to tree; ppssttt-pppssttt-ppsssttt-ing so the birds would come closer to check me out so that I could check them out.

It's amazing what loud notes can come from such small bodies! If only humankind would sing to claim our territory instead of go to war... wouldn't it be a lovely world?

So now our back deck looks lovely and welcoming. (Isn't it wonderful when you accomplish something that's been on your mind?) And last night we ate on the deck, and were joined by a couple of friends so that we sat well into the darkness talking and catching up. The honeysuckle sent out its welcome the entire time. What abundance!

This weekend is, for me, about getting some of my to do list done: tasks that are constant reminders of what I haven't done yet... like planting herbs, trimming potted plants... and next is de-cluttering and organizing my studio so I can create without distraction (or wondering "Where did I put that....?") I'm halfway there!

I hope you are having lovely, sensual outdoor experiences with Nature, too!

Peace,

Kate