lightning bugs

[gurdonark]

When I had watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I pulled out the leashes, and took our two lhasas to Glendover Park. Our lhasas have a back yard and a doggie door, so park walks are in the realm of treat rather than daily duty. They love the sight of those leashes.

Our home is in a newish tract home neighborhood, where all the trees are five to seven feet tall from a year or two of growth, and every little yard is a teeny theater of grass. Our pansies lasted the whole winter; our snaps are now in full force. Our weather the last two days has been like Southern CA in February--unseasonably cool, simply bliss.

We headed over to Glendover Park. This very small city park is right by an elementary school, right at the end of our little street. It has a small open area where they put in teeny goals sometimes for tyke soccer fields. It has one of those plastic little playgrounds and swings...kinda "uber" McDonaldland...and it has a stand of trees, sole survivors of the time before tract home developers. Its highlight is the little park pond, with a fountain trying nobly to keep the small pond from going stagnant.

The planet Venus floated right by the moon tonight--simply irresistible, but I was not trying to put up my defenses anyway. Then under the stand of tall thin trees I cannot name, I saw something I've missed for years--lightning bugs. When I was growing up in small town Arkansas, summer nights were filled with hundreds of lightning bugs. I don't know if they exist everywhere, so I'll explain that they are insects whose thorax has a little luminescent "light" attached, so that they can, in mid air, make a little flash-light looking light. It's a quick flash, like a miniature xmas bulb, only slow and friendly. I have not seen them in profusion for years, but several were in Glendover Park. if only small bats had pierced the 3/4 dusk, I would have been transported to childhood Mays,
waiting for school to end, looking forward to
long summer evenings. While my dogs inventoried each grassy knoll and each tree, I just stood by the trees, and prayed for light. Well, not prayed,exactly, but whatever I did, God answered....bug after bug after bug....

Then we went to the small pond, and stood and saw nothing but heard millions of young frogs honking and I thought how I was in a sprawlized brickhouse tracthome confection and yet it was all connected, and somehow, I was there.

Comments

[asphalteden.livejournal.com]

Funny you write that. I was coming home from yoga mistress Iris (and a short side trip for the new Tom Waits CD) and I happened to notice how gorgeous the moon was with Venus to the upper right. I wanted to grab Bianca, but she was upstairs with Buffy, halfway through, 8:30pm EST.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Awww yeah!! we've got lightning bugs!!-- they come out here around June--so I haven't seen one yet-- but I LOVE lightning bugs. I once saw a neighborhood kid make a "crown" out of the glowing bug part-- it totally grossed me out that she would DO that but it was very bizarre.

lightning bugs and Shakespeare

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

We went to Shakespeare in the park last summer to see "Midsummer Night's Dream" and when the sun went down, out came the lightning bugs. Very cool. (Actually, it was stinkin' hot since this is Oklahoma but you know what I mean).

We saw a similar lightning bug show when we went to see a production of "Oklahoma!" that was outdoors.

Re: lightning bugs and Shakespeare

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

It's funny about that Midsummer's Night's Dream...it just says Shakespeare Park Summer in the same way that the Nutcracker says xmas ballet. I saw it once in London, and thought it was so
hip...here in Dallas, they have a great s in the p program, but they wait until it is sweltering to do so.

I love lightning bugs. If I were Galadriel, and lived with an elven ring in a forest full of self-important bowmen and
hip white trees, you can bet the skies would be filled with 'em in my little world.

[scott-m.livejournal.com]

"When I was growing up in small town Arkansas, summer nightswere filled
with hundreds of lightning bugs. I don't know if they exist everywhere, ..."

My wife had me look this up recently-- for some unknown reason, lightning
bugs aren't found often west of the middle of Kansas.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

In CA, there were almost no lightning bugs. I know that the l.b. popuulation generally suffered from sprawl and pesticides, but maybe now that they are banning many of those neurotoxins disguised as bug spray, they'll be back.

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

i loved this post. i found a new way to enjoy some of your posts too. i think it was you who said there was a literary quality to some of my posts, well, of course that's indeed true of yours. i enjoy hearing them read to me, when you talk about where you live and nature and such.

i downloaded a freeware version of readplease and fiddled with the voice until it's just how i like and i cut and paste pieces of your jaunts into it - it's just wonderful !! of course not perfect, but, it is really nice. i dunno why having it read aloud makes such a difference, but it is something most specific to your journal than to others that i tried it with, i still prefer to only read theirs. anyway, thanks for entertaining me !! :) .

ps i loved the lightening bugs in ohio. as kids off course we took those parts off the bugs (mean i know) while they were lit and smushed them on the pavement in streaks, glowing streaks that faded. well ok i might have done that once but i watched my brother do it many times. i was a little scared of those big buggers !

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

What a nice comment...thank you. If you can set your readplease to do an accent a bit like Bill Clinton's except less hoarse and a little softer, then you'd have my accent. I've never tried that speaking software, but it sounds like fun.