From the roadside

I was so excited to see this Tiger Swallowtail, I did not even notice the tattered wings...not even on the right. S/he is still a beauty in my book.

I tried to capture several butterflies, but this is the only one that was still enough for me to have any luck...and even with it I snapped two photos and it was gone.

Never still

I made a mad dash to the strip pits after Lorelei and her mom went home tonight. I have other photos I will show later next week on my other blog...but for now I thought I would show this dragonfly...notice the wings. The wind was blowing till it was hard for them to stay put part of the time. It just blew their wings ever which way...and let me tell you there was a lot of them out there.
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The toot had her mom and I in tears...she is just so funny. It is impossible to describe some of her antics...but will tell you she had her doll and was waving its arm and saying bye-bye to her papaw and me. And she had her dancing feet with her a big part of the time...they were climbing feet as well. When she gets a bit older, she will be climbing everything in sight.

I had a regular little step stool in the kitchen, and she climbed up on it first thing, and was looking for something to get into...and helping me cook! Then she wanted a banana...she would take a bite of it and go off and play a minute, then come back to me and tell me 'nana.'

But the funniest thing of all was late when Sarah was about to get ready to leave, I was playing with her...she went to the kitchen door and sort of pounded on it with her hand...and told me "Gotta go! Bye-bye!!"

Fishing for camels....

I have planned to do a post about fishing for camels for well over a year now...I wanted to take pictures to go along with it but have not seen any camel holes to even attempt it. So, I thought I would show you one of the scenes where fishing for camels took place....hours and hours of it over the years...this is the elementary school I attended for 8 years.

When we were in grade school, we always seemed to all do things in spurts...we might play basketball every day for a month, or softball, or playing hide and seek, and other things. And then there was fishing for camels...

A camel in this case is a grub much like some of those pictured here...if you are at all squeamish, you might not like to look at these. I always thought the ones we caught were skinnier and had more of an actual hump...but maybe I am remembering wrong. I do know they had that brown head.

Anyway, I don't know who would start it, but fishing for camels would come to be the thing to do at recess. Someone would ask what somebody else was going to do and the answer would be Fish for Camels...and suddenly we would all be fishing for camels. We always hunted for a stem of grass....the part that holds the seed...minus the seed was a favorite. And I think we preferred them dry.

Of course it being a school yard and trampled daily by kids playing, there were lots of bare spots of ground. We looked for holes about a quarter inch in diameter. Getting down on our hands and knees, poking the straw down in the hole 6 or 8 inches till it stops and then wait. In short order it would start to move slightly...you grab that straw and jerk and you feel this very slight resistance...and out plops a camel. A grub in other words.

I guess the straw invaded its home and it is holding on to it trying to push it out...that is when we would see the stem/straw move and that is when we would grab it and jerk it out of the hole, bringing the camel/grub with it.

I know I often caught more than one but don't really recall how many. And we didn't do anything with them...though I think they were good fishing bait. I think we just left them laying when the bell rang to call us in from recess.

But I can see us all now, plain as day. Kids hunkered down all over the school yard a couple kids here, three more there, another over there...hands at the ready to grab that straw and catch a camel. Sometimes, I think kids just do not know what real fun is any more.

When I started to do this post, I wondered if any other soul had heard of this or if it was just something done in our area...so I googled the exact term 'fishing for camels' and found this little story. He mentions doing it in the spring, but I don't recall it only being in the spring...but I could be wrong.