Spring: beauty everywhere..and a wood duck

There is so much beauty popping up everywhere—singing, flying, blooming, buzzing, growing—that it’s hard to keep up with all of it! And of course I can’t, but it sure is fun trying.  As Emily Dickinson puts it, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Beauty also shows up in unlikely places, the scum pond, as we affectionately call it, for example. On the property next door there is a shallow cow pond. It’s not remarkable at first glance. In the summer, thanks to the cows and sunshine, it has a brilliant green scum on top that sticks to the cows as they cool off. When they emerge from the pond, they are covered with green confetti. A lovely sycamore that stood with feet in the pond was badly broken in the ice storm a couple years back and looks the worse for wear.

Yet the pond is such a treasure. Iridescent dragonflies emerge in shimmering colors. I watched our resident pair of hawks mate (!) in the broken sycamore just recently. In the early spring, we wait for the chorus of peepers to begin the singing season, later deeper voiced frogs take over for summer. (You can listen to a springtime chorus of peepers I recorded at the bottom of this post. If you are reading this by email, you may need to go to the actual post to play it.)

Then last week on a cold, rainy day I looked out from my home office window and saw a small duck on the pond. I dashed inside for binoculars and camera.

First ever sighting of a wood duck at Larrapin Garden. What a beauty he was! The sighting was more delightful because we’d seen our very first wood duck ever — a female standing in a tree— just the week before on a vacation to Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas. And here was another one, this time the beautifully colored male.  He stayed and dined on something in the water for a few hours, then flew on to wherever he was headed. What a great day.  Here’s to beauty everywhere.

If you enjoy wildlife in the garden, I heartily recommend one of my favorite blogs, Beautiful Wildlife Gardens for inspiration and ideas. And please listen to the spring concert in the audio in the podcast player below, courtesy of spring peepers at Larrapin, and a few thoughts thrown in by yours truly. It’s about a minute and half long…just click the arrow to play. Enjoy!

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
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