We’re Bugged

greenbee_mums.jpg

But with these chilly nights, not for much longer. This morning the mums are covered with dew. A few lethargic insects who waited too long after dinner to find suitable lodging are still right where they were when darkness fell, temperatures dropped and their cold-blooded machinery ground to a halt.

Won’t be long, the buzz will go silent and the shrill wind of winter–and the creeks until they freeze over and go silent too–will be our only nature-sounds.

So, since it’s been far too long since the last insect pictures (if you leave out the gnat flight pattern pix from last week) here’s a nice colorful display of nature’s palette, though I wouldn’t have chosen coral, but the emerald and saffron of bee and flower work well together, don’t you think?

We take’em as we find’em.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. Lovely, Fred, Spencer and I have been watching the bees and wasps move slowly through the goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies as the day warms uo. They are becoming slower and slower, and it will not be long until they are not there at all.

  2. It surprised me, yesterday, to hear a mosquito buzzing about my head as I fought the purple wintercreeper in our woods. Had thought that we were past that. I like the colors in your beautiful photo!