Dew Drop In

Seen on the ground cover on a walk at the Sea Ranch New Years 2008. I like the way the drop pooled in the center of the star. Most Nifty Nature!

Purty

Sunset. Sea Ranch, CA 12/2008

One Mighty Ant

Throughout Costa Rica we found many a leaf-cutter ant. There fascinating little guys building highways through the undergrowth and carying leaves someitmes great distances back to their nests. As it turn out, the soldier type ants int he colony are very strong. In Arenal we visited a hanging bridges tour and out guide demonstrated the strength of the ants as shown in the picture. If you zoom in you will see that he is holding the ant and that the ant is holding that huge leaf! Wowzers!

Guady Leaf Frog

 

OK, it has officially been WAY too long since I posted here!  It has been a crazy and wonderful summer getting married in May, going on a honeymoon to Costa Rica, teaching summer session 2, and then getting ready for the new school year. Tomorrow is the first day of classes and I think I might actually be ready.  So, here is a picture to start things off again.  Courtney and I had a fantastic time in Costa Rica and I will post several pictures here over the next little while.  Courtney has a great set of blog posts describing the trip if you'd like to check them out here, here, here, here, here, and here.  The first place we visited, Lapa Rios was one of my favorites!  It is a great resort near the Corcovado National Park and there is an incredible amount of wildlife there. One the last night I went on a night hike and say lots of nifty things.  Now, most were spiders and other creepy crawlies, but I did get to see one of these Red-eyed Tree Frog (or Gaudy Leaf Frog) hanging around on a branch.  I was very happy to be able to find one of these in the wild--most cool!  He is a little guy--only a couple inches long but nifty!

Feeling a bit Luna-ey

A couple of weekends ago I joined Courtney and Kate for tour of chicken coops in Oakhurst...yup, you read that correctly :) If you want to see a post on the coops then check out Courtney's post where you will also get to read about my Peep experiments! :) At one of the stops, the one with the baby ducks, there was the incredible Luna moth sitting on one of the coops. I don't remember ever having seen one before and was amazed. he is pretty big--3-4 inches across. and was just sitting there for the many photographers to come by and have a ball taking pictures. A truly beautiful animal!

Powerful Sights To See

Another travel blog:

Today was a day for a walking tour of the old town (Staré Mésto) of Prague—we headed out the apartment into the old town—only a couple blocks away.  Our first stop was the Old-New Synagogue (Staranová synagóga).  This is the oldest practicing synagogue in Europe (begun 1270) and was very interesting to see—it is fairly plain inside, but there is a lot of history for the Prague Jewish quarter and much of it is reflected here.  There is a very old banner, red, with the Star of David on it that was given to them by one of the past kings.  It is carried by 8 members of the congregation on the occasions of a royal visit to the Jewish Ghetto (no pictures allowed).  They also have a great clock tower that counts time backwards in honor of the fact that Hebrew is read right to left.  We then headed over to the old Jewish Cemetery (Starỳ Židovskỳ Hřbitov).  For a period of a couple hundred (439-1787) years the Jewish inhabitants of the city were not allowed to bury bodies outside of the city and were only allowed to use the small space within—the result is a very small cemetery, say a couple hundred feet on a side that has a couple thousand tombstones and then under each one can be up to 12 bodies—it is believed that there may be as many as 80,000 people who were buried there.  It was fascinating to visit.  Also attached to the cemetery is a converted synagogue (Pinkas Synagogue—Pinkasova synagóga) that lists on the walls the names of all of the Polish Jews killed during WWII.  It is a very humbling thing to see.

Did Someone Say Look Up?!?!?!

The year was 1530 and the Bebenhausen Monastery ceiling needed a little bit of primitive painted sunshine.  This is what they got :)