Mums and a Snail

My mother-in-law, June, gave me some lovely mums for my birthday. Tonight I got around to transplanting them in a slightly bigger pot and look what we found! A snail! Did he stay in that pot all the way from somewhere more moist like California?

Kurtis named him (or her) Hermie.

Hermie left an oozy slime trail on Kurt's hand while Kurtis discussed pool plans (as in billiards) with his brother Kelly. Hermie looks interested.

Nah, maybe he's more interested in the leaves.

It was quite a treat to find a snail in our pot of mums! As June said, "Mums from your mum." Ha ha! Thanks, Mum!

Slimed,
Dawn

Mama's 60th!

My mama's 60th birthday came and went last March and I never documented it here. I wish to do so now.

Thanks again to all family and friends who contributed to a lovely set of 60 notes for my mama to open, one a day for 60 days! We had such a fun celebration, too! These are among my favorite photos of the party:

First, arranging the colorful candles...


And watching them glow...


Then singing that birthday song...

And seeing her proud face after she blew them all out!


My mama is so dear to me. I love her very much and I am lucky to call her my mama and friend.

Blessed,
Dawn

Annual Bloom Night 2010

The Queen of the Night has returned for her annual appearance. I make it to Tohono Chul Park at 11PM Friday, June 16th in search of her majesty--the source of the refreshing, sweet aroma cast over the desert night. There's an hour left to find and capture her on camera before the park will close and I'll need to leave the flowers to the moths. She'll disappear by morning for for another year, so there's an important job to do. Like a member of the flower paparazzi, with my camera, flashlight, tripod, and cell phone in hand, I follow the softly lit trails, which like a red carpet will lead me to the celebrities of the evening, cicadas buzzing a celebratory song along the way.

The night blooming cereus (peniocereus greggii) seem more scarce to me tonight than usual. As I eagerly search, keeping a fast pace, I realize I haven't seen many and the ones I have seen are surrounded by other excited night-bloom enthusiasts. I check my phone for the time--11:15. I best hustle. As I continue my expedition, I come across a cereus who hasn't bloomed yet. Most of them bloom on the same night, but there are some early and late bloomers.


Stuffed inside, dozens of petals and a pouch of pollen dust wait to arrive to the mid-summer night's party.

I move along the trail, backtracking a few times before finally spotting a solitary bloom. I spend some time with her to ensure I get what I'm after. My cell phone acts as a nice lighting effect.


The giant sphinx moth is the only pollinator who can pollinate this flower because it has such a long proboscis. The overwhelming pollen lures them over, but their shyness may prevent them from swooping before the cameras. They're brilliant at avoiding the flower paparazzi! I'm sure they're lingering overhead, waiting for the human spectators to leave. I pause to take a deep breath, inhaling the glorious aroma. If a moth's mouth waters, every moth in the park has to be drooling. The moths have the perfect tool to drink their annual dessert--a fancy bendy straw to sip the delicious, sweet nectar from deep inside the elaborately pretty cup.

This flower depends on the patient moths. They feed each other. What an amazing relationship.


It's a quarter to midnight now and I think I have enough time for a few more shots before I'm forced to vacate the park.


The flower's stamen wave and call to the moths this one night of the year. As if in Wonderland, they call out, "Drink me."


They seem to show off with beautiful crowns and skirts. Most of the year they're rather plain looking, so I say, flaunt it, girls!


This is my favorite summer treat. Thanks, God.

Grateful,
Dawn

My Grandpa: New Here

Here's my grandpa; my dad's dad, Roy. He's new here--to Arizona, that is. At 89 years of age, he just made the move from a neighboring state and it seems to be a most excellent choice. He seems so happy here even though he made the big move to the desert in the sizzling heat of summer. The desert and my grandpa's desert family are so very glad to have him!

Happy,
Dawn

Patriotic Boys

Nathan and Justin were all decked out for the 4th of July, so photographs just had to happen!




This pictures is an attempt to replicate one I took of Nathan two years ago. Click here to see that photo.


I think these brothers are going to be great friends. It almost looks like they're giving each other knuckles!

Proudly,
Aunt Dawn

Liam's Hamburger

Independence Day is usually accompanied with a delicious feast of hamburgers, various salads, and scrumptious sweets, and this year my adorable nephew, Liam, got to enjoy this 4th of July perk, too! He was so eager at the very thought of a juicy burger that he began doing an antsy march and chanting, "hamburger, hamburger, hamburger" in his cute, unmistakable toddler accent. When, finally, the burger floated before his dark-chocolate eyes, his bite was ambitious and border-line ravenous.

But the actual bite was but a small sample--almost of crumb-sized proportions--of the burger's top bun! This is a classic case of the eyes being bigger than the stomach...I mean, the mouth.

Swept up to his highchair and presented with a whole plate-full of Liam-sized broken-up burger-bites, he happily devoured his feast. I ardently applaud his optimistic efforts!

Almost independently,
Dawn

Joy to the 4th!

From our lawn chair seats in a park, a low set of fireworks illuminated the star-spangled sky for us this 4th of July.

The empty middle seat is evidence that Nathan was there with us but he simply cannot sit still for a twenty-second shutter. So instead Nathan is a vague blur throughout the photo and while light sprouts from the sky, bouts of laughter sprout from us.

Joy x Joy x Joy x Joy,
Dawn

Bunny Wishes

I was on the phone with my mama while she was babysitting Nathan and Justin. In the middle of our conversation, Nathan urgently ran to his Gee-gee with a very important request. I heard: mumble, jumble “bunny.” My mom broke away to say to Nathan, “What’s that, honey?” Again, I heard: garble, farble “bunny.” Trying to clarify his words, my mom asked Nathan, “You want a bunny?” As though he were simply agreeing to her brilliant suggestion, he very clearly replied, “Okay.”

Good luck with that, Mama!

Love,
Dawn

Stripey

We have a cat with a striped tail who has a particular fondness for our stripey chair. The chair was a cheap find from a thrift store because of a little stain and a few dangling threads, but its classic shape and green and yellow stripes drew me to it despite its flaws. I worried that the armlessness of the chair wouldn't yield comfort to a sitter, but Max has found great comfort on it and that makes me glad.



Stripe-ily,
Dawn

Web Designer

Based off the title, you may have been expecting to see a slouched figure at a computer, sporting, perhaps, a gel-enhanced head of spiky hair and a screen-printed tee, but no. Instead I present to you a web designer of a different sort--a web designer in its most original meaning. The one I'm about to show you, though, does have some spikes of her own, indeed.


This is a type of orb spider--a spined micrathena. Her remarkably symmetrical web and her strong work ethic entranced me and pulled me over like gravity. I, too, could be trapped in her web if I'm not careful.

Back in August of 2007 while we hiked in a state park in Illinois, we came across this busy spider. I snapped away, completely enthralled with her beautiful work and her ability to make something so much larger than herself so intricately and so perfect. Captivated and almost as busy as she, I noticed that there was something unproportionally large on her back. Was she carrying her wrapped up prey while she wove her web? What could it be? I've assumed all along that she was hauling something with her, or perhaps a parasite was using her as a life source.

Whatever was on her back, it didn't seem to be slowing her down, but it certainly did weigh her down.

As we rediscovered these pictures, we realized that the bulbous black "attachment" was really a part of the spider and in no way was a parasite or any sort of hoarding behavior of her food. It was the spider's HUGE, spiny abdomen.

This discovery, nearly three years later, led to a flurry of research! If you're curious, you can read more about this type of spider on a less sticky web:

• Click here and scroll down to "Orb Weaver Spiders (Araneidae)".
• Click here for one other interesting site which shows other spiders of the type also photographed in the wilderness of Illinois.
  
• Finally, this site has loads of facts about this type of spider.

That's just a small taste of what's out there. The pictures on the sites above are incredible! I'll have to invest in a macro lens some day that would allow me to get a bit closer to these intriguing small critters...if I can!


I read that the she-spider will keep the frame of her home/nest/trap/artwork from day-to-day but ingest the inner silky threads every night to sustain her and then she'll rebuild the central orb each morning. Every day with a fresh new web, she'll wait for prey to entangle themselves in her sticky trap. Comfortingly, I read that this type of spider rarely bites humans and if it does bite, it would be similar to getting a bee sting. That's good to know, but I'm sure those intimidating spines probably aid in the arachnid's survival a little bit, don't you think?

I've never seen a spider like this in Arizona. What a treat it is to remember the woodland creature building her multi-functional home in such a nonchalant manner. She seemed so at ease, I imagine her humming as she weaves, carelessly glancing up at me with a few of her eight eyes every now and then. She apparently paid no attention to me as I hunkered close to her creation--as close as I could possibly get with my lens before I couldn't focus any more. She never retreated, never crouched in a threatening pose. I'm used to shier spiders that dash or cave into themselves when they realize I'm near (if I dare). Had I realized those were large spines on her hiney, though, I would have probably felt a little less bold. But it's a strange affect that spiders have on me--especially talented weaving ones. I gravitate to them and want to document their artistry, but unfortunately, I also am very susceptible to the heebiejeebies. However, I think I got more squirmy looking at these pictures close up on my computer screen just now compared to how I felt as I stood beside her in a damp, dark wood. I was amazed there in the forest as I orbited her web and examined it from all angles. I was witnessing a marvel; a little bit of magic.

Entrapped,
Dawn

Loveseat

In December we picked out a new couch for our living room, but because we choose a custom material that is so tightly woven, our cat's claws, theoretically, shouldn't be able to pierce through it (fingers-crossed!), it was going to take six to eight weeks before it would be ready to adorn our small living room. So, here's our sitting arrangement as it has been for the last several weeks:


But this weekend we were able to pick up our new loveseat (which appropriately is red).


And here it is from the front...almost heart-shaped, don't you think?


And I do love sitting in it!

Happy Sitting,
Dawn

Max's Scratches

We are getting a new couch soon and knowing Max's affinity to stretch his toes on the sturdy structure of a big piece of furniture, we have been trying to train our cat to use other sources to satisfy his clawing urges. We've been giving him treats whenever he scratches on acceptable posts and we have a squirt bottle ready to fire should he choose something not appropriate. The only problem is that we don't have much right now that's not okay to claw on, so he hasn't gotten many doses of streaming water attacking him, and whenever he does claw something he shouldn't, he just flops over in a furry heap before we can negatively reinforce that bad-cat behavior.

In the picture above, Max is relaxing on the edge of his very own emery board, given to him by my mom. (Thanks, Mama!) It's specifically designed to help keep those sharp claws in a little duller shape. We also have a special pair of little kitty-claw scissors to trim those pointy daggers--and that's always a fun process we're still trying to master! No matter how much Max enjoys a good grooming session though, I wouldn't have thought he would be so happy to have an emery board or that he would even use it! He doesn't know the emery board's true purpose, you see. He thinks the texture is just awesome and that it has the amazing, magical ability to produce cat nip! He and the emery board are now quite good friends.

,,,,
Dawn

Hair Raising

This is what happened after Nathan went rolling and bouncing off the walls, couches, and carpet.

I patted and smoothed down the static-infused hair and then...


...this is what happened right after that.

Luckily,
Auntie Dawn

Justin's Slumber Shoot

During one of Justin's many naps, his mama dressed him in some adorable stripes and we positioned him carefully so I could photograph my newest nephew in all his pliable, cuddly cuteness.

Happily, he treated us with a smile! I like to think he smiled because of me, but I know better. However, I most definitely smiled because of him.


Justin's profile is much like his brother's was two years ago...just adorable.


Justin's lips look like a kiss. Or could he possibly have been dreaming of lemonade?

I can't help but nudge in as close as I possibly can to his darling features until I can no longer keep focus. He's just so sweet. Sleep, little boy. Don't mind me.

Will his hurricane-like, swirly cowlick remain? I'll keep checking.

And then he awoke. Hello there, baby! Maybe he heard my one hundredth-or-so shutter click.

Click, click!
Auntie Dawn

Justin's Birth Day

Here he is--Gayle and Mike's highly anticipated second baby boy, Justin Donald James Warren, born Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 5:46 AM. I'm so grateful I got to be present at his birth! Thanks, Gayle and Mike, and congratulations!

After a rough night of contractions, Gayle pushed out a healthy, beautiful baby boy with a hearty set of lungs.

All hands were on deck as I hovered near by to capture his first few moments of breathing in air through those lungs. He arrived at a whopping 9 pounds, 1 ounce and he measured up to a length of 20 inches long. I love his scrunched up face.

He and Nathan both have their daddy's mouth!

To see Nathan's "birth day" pictures to compare, click here: http://picturedawn.blogspot.com/2008/03/nathan-michael-martin-warren.html

Pretty similar, eh? But the more you hang around them, the more different they seem! It's pretty remarkable!

And this new little guy has his daddy's eyes and nose, too! I think he just might be an exact replica.

My sister seemed to be in heaven once she had her baby in her arms at long last. They bonded beautifully.

His little profile is pretty adorable, I think.

Here's my mama, affectionately known as, "Gee-Gee", (that's a "g" as in "green" and rhymes with "key") with her new grandson. She's so happy and proud!

And here's "Poppy" with his grandson! Oh, the potential in this boy! They'll be riding tractors together very soon, I'm sure!

He's so precious. I can't wait to get to know him better. Right now, I feel like I don't know much; only that I love him. One thing is for sure, he will feel the love from many.

Look at those dark eyes. What a handsome fellow.

That morning, I enjoyed a hot cocoa with sprinkles, in Justin's honor, of course. Happy Birthday, Justin!

Love Always,

Auntie Dawn