Well, Carlotta was (yes, was) female. She placed her egg sac on the cactus pad and, after attaching it with the fine filaments of her silk, she left. We haven’t found her body and we haven’t found her. Further reading indicates that her life’s work is done after reproduction, and that her time here has [...]
On spindly, but stealthy, multi-hued legs, Carlotta scuttles across the light green nopal (cactus) pad. Her uniformly mottled abdomen is plump in brownish-black and yellow, accessorized with orange. Upon closer examination, we find Carlotta’s hairy face and head resembles that of a minute monkey. Eight bristle-haired legs, articulated in three places, stretch as she moves [...]
We have flowers. Lantana, dianthus, buddleia, hibiscus, salvias, lilies, rose mallow, poppies, alyssum, ceanothus, and more, have given us a bountiful blessing of blossoms since the early months of 2009. There was no long “gap time” in our yard this year when we didn’t have something in bloom. The show becomes even more vibrant as [...]
The door bursts open and the shouting begins—bring the camera, hurry, hurry! Saying, I’ll call you back, I drop the phone to the computer table and rush for my favorite visual recorder. I walk out the open front door into the blazing hot sun and find Leonel standing on the dry patch of short weeds [...]
As the sun’s reflection shines in the dark pupil of his bulging eye, and the mosaic lines that constitute the lovely iris pattern, Facundo Chulo sits on a rock in a small, somewhat stagnant pond filled with water lilies and pickerel weed. I see myself reflected in that same dark pupil as I snap photo after photo of my magnificent friend who keeps my garden bug-free and calls when he comes home after a jaunt.
