It turns out I wasn't better, but I am guardedly confident tonight....

Okay, I know this isn't a great picture...but it was a great rainbow. To have a rainbow you have to have rain and we still have rain and its almost July. Actually, its so close to July that if it didn't rain till then I think just about everything would be okay. I hope this isn't too direct a challenge to the gods/Gods?; and now they don't feel obliged to dry out the rest of the summer. Its a good thing I am too insignificant to warrant divine intervention.

Still, it seems odd that this is also the first day I have seen any number of fireflies. Sitting in my chair at the big window, reading an odd poem by Adrienne Rich, they just seemed to appear; first I saw one then another then more than a dozen then more than that. I have always been impressed by and interested in insects; it goes along with being interested in plants. Today at work I noticed that Kelley, the Dogwood Intern, seemed to be getting into the insect world. They are fascinating. I have known, still know, a number of entomologists. None of them ever want to talk about the yearly appearances/timing of particular populations. I know some years I don't see many butterflies till late spring or early summer and other years they seem to come months earlier. Fireflies also seem to vary in the timing of their numbers. Intuitively, that is in the absence of scientific background or knowledge, I would have though that a warm winter like we just experienced would have allowed for the survival of more adults and resulted in earlier higher populations, but of course some counterintuitive situation has occurred. I don't care; I just love the lighting-bugs.