Celer crab spider lurking in the rose vervain
UPDATE: The flowers pictured above were originally misidentified by the Spinster Vegetation Dept. as phlox. They are, obviously, rose vervain. We blame a crappy Wildflowers-at-a-Glance laminated pocket guide. But we do not apologize for any inconvenience. It is hard to imagine anyone being inconvenienced by a mistake on a heartwarming nature crap blog.
A ridiculous heterogeneity of flora has sprouted up almost overnight here at the rancho. So spectacular is the tableau that I have to wipe a heartwarmed tear from the Twisty eye whenever I leave the bunkhouse. Floral spectacularity, like certain airs in minor keys played on violins, is the opiate of the obstreperal lobe. So it can be somewhat startling, when you sproing across a field to stick your nose in a flower, to discover that the object of your nostalgic spasm is full of bugs.
Most of the flowers around here are full of bugs. It turns out that the only flowers that aren’t full of bugs are the ones you pay a dollar a stem for at the grocery store.
Flower scarabs yukking it up in a prickly pear
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34 comments
Agasaya
May 2, 2009 at 11:10 am (UTC -6)
Lovely! If you want to bring any flowers into your home, select your targets and spray them over a few days time with dishwashing liquid diluted with water (the natural types only). You’ll have bug free flowers to take inside.
Of course, no blamer would ever buy non-organic flowers from a florist. Women are dying like flies from picking and packing those pesticide loaded atrocities, while earning slave wages.
Feminist Avatar
May 2, 2009 at 11:19 am (UTC -6)
But such beautiful bugs.
sonia
May 2, 2009 at 11:20 am (UTC -6)
ah hah hah. no one has ever looked more awesome on a unicorn. I think IBTP readers should have a Twist-off. We should all dress up like your beehived mascot, like that picture you took after the haircut that one time, and see who looks more Twistacious.
just let me see about finding a unicorn this end.
I like the spider. after all, heartwarming nature crap is the antithesis of male domination, right? I realized that one time when they had that show on VH1 with Gene Simmons and his plastic surgery addict wife. Gene had to go camping, and the trailer for the episode showed him crashing through the underbrush, hacking away at greenery in full face makeup until in utter frustration he finally shrieked “I hate nature!!”
it was a feminist revelation moment. thank gawd for VH1 and unicorns, I guess.
Comrade PhysioProf
May 2, 2009 at 11:29 am (UTC -6)
What’s that much smaller insect on the left side of the scarab beetle photo?
Twisty
May 2, 2009 at 11:44 am (UTC -6)
How the hell should I know?
AntiLoquax
May 2, 2009 at 11:46 am (UTC -6)
Wow, either you have mutant enormous Texas-phlox and Texas-beetles or a really sweet camera. Either way, you win.
Citizen Jane
May 2, 2009 at 12:07 pm (UTC -6)
Love the new style sheet. I love the sarcasm and I also just love it in and of itself.
Do I love rainbows and unicorns just because I do or is it because I’ve internalized infantilization of women?
Noshoes
May 2, 2009 at 1:38 pm (UTC -6)
Heart-warming nature crap? Bring it on, Twisty. Over here at the beach I find myself so gloriously distracted by all the dolphins, seagulls, pelicans, sandpipers, sand crabs, sand sharks, sea lions and jellyfish, I could almost forget there’s a patriarchy that needs blaming. Almost.
huzzah
May 2, 2009 at 1:55 pm (UTC -6)
Delightful new banner.
I bet the phlox smelled wonderful.
sylvie
May 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm (UTC -6)
Those scarab beetles are really cool looking.
The unicorn is supposed to be pooping cupcakes, I think. Or farting flowers, I can never remember.
Comrade PhysioProf
May 2, 2009 at 2:40 pm (UTC -6)
Now that this is Twisty’s Heartwarming Nature Crap Blog, you owe it to your readers to find out! We pay good money to read your Heartwarming Nature Crap, and dammit, we demand answers!
humanbein
May 2, 2009 at 2:41 pm (UTC -6)
Unicorns and rainbows fall within the vast universe of truth and beauty that exist outside of the increasingly more constricted male-approved world of sex, sports and violence. The more consumed you are by culture rather than nature, the more you expose yourself to the corruption of male oppression, which permeates human culture like water in mud.
If this blog went all nature all the time I would love it just as much. But the feminist wisecracks will still be popping, I trust.
delagar
May 2, 2009 at 3:44 pm (UTC -6)
Rainbows! Heartwarming unicorns! Where are the kitties! Kitties must come next! (I do like the spider.)
Pinko Punko
May 2, 2009 at 4:09 pm (UTC -6)
Truth and Beauty, humanbein. Truth and Beauty.
Enid
May 2, 2009 at 4:45 pm (UTC -6)
The new banner is the best thing in the history of time. with or without the patriarchy.
Heart heart heart cupcake kitty heart.
BadKitty
May 2, 2009 at 7:22 pm (UTC -6)
I love to come home from work and go out stalk around my garden with the camera. Yea, yea, the flowers are pretty but I like to try to photograph the bees and the butterflies and various assorted insects that live there. The darn hummingbirds are impossible for me to catch in a photo but I did get a really sweet shot of a black capped chickadee the other day.
masaccio
May 2, 2009 at 9:56 pm (UTC -6)
I know, I know, it’s a sweat bee. The thing next to the flower scarab.
Juliet
May 2, 2009 at 10:10 pm (UTC -6)
Dear Twisty,
Though rainbows, unicorns, and heartwarming nature crap are very charming, it seems like an eternity since you have done any blaming. I know it’s springtime and you are busy frolicking outdoors… but please, think of us blamers. We need you.
slythwolf
May 2, 2009 at 10:29 pm (UTC -6)
Well, of course flowers are full of bugs. Bugs are the reason for flowers, after all.
In case anyone cares, I’ve got songbirds in the tree outside my apartment that sing even in the middle of the night. Since the tree is outside my living room, and not my bedroom, I’m happy about this; I can stay up late and still hear the music of springtime.
elm
May 2, 2009 at 10:31 pm (UTC -6)
I think my heart just exploded from rainbows and unicorns and love for the spinster aunt.
She-cago
May 2, 2009 at 11:05 pm (UTC -6)
Hahaha- love the new banner :-)
Susan
May 3, 2009 at 12:49 am (UTC -6)
The Heartwarming Nature Crap Blog is awesome and your photos are, as always, gorgeous. I’m fond of insects because they’re so crucial to our continued existence and, especially, because I once read somewhere (probably on the web) that something like 98% of them are female. Of course, in Southern California, the insects mostly prefer to be outside. A friend of mine in Texas said that her insects were always trying to get inside, and that might not be quite so endearing.
I’m glad you’re enjoying your beautiful environs. There will still be plenty of blaming material when/if you rejoin the unnatural world.
AdmirerofEmily
May 3, 2009 at 6:45 am (UTC -6)
Spring must really be springin over there!
Those rainbows upon rainbows are so 60s (or it 70s?)
Over here we are enjoying a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and thinking the warm days will never cease.
speedbudget
May 3, 2009 at 6:57 am (UTC -6)
The new banner is the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.
Agasaya
May 3, 2009 at 8:35 am (UTC -6)
As this is the blog of Twisty, may we assume that the banner’s symbols of a spinster aunt riding a unicorn were not chosen at random?
The Unicorn has a single horn symbolizing great power which can only be ‘tamed’ by a ‘maiden’. The maidens were forced to lure unicorns into their vicinity so that hunters could capture and/or kill them, therefore completing the theme of innocence and betrayal.
Yes, purity is the ultimate threat to male power and must inevitably destroy that power.
Just a by-product of too many childhood hours spent gazing at the unicorn tapestries in NYC museums.
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/~delahoyd/medieval/unicorn.html
http://sacred-texts.com/etc/lou/lou05.htm
yttik
May 3, 2009 at 8:47 am (UTC -6)
Like the new banner!
I’ve been off having spring, too. Just returned from Twilight territory, not because of vampires or patriarchy but because it’s a rain forest that’s been engulfed in shadows and mist for 9 mos. When the sun finally peeks out and spring hits, the place is breathtaking. No unicorns or rainbows, but I think I saw some fairies and I either heard a banshee or a bigfoot. I can’t find either one in a field manual, so I just gave the sound a wide berth.
PandanCat
May 3, 2009 at 9:02 am (UTC -6)
Meet the beetles, you say? Ohhh no; I am already all too well acquainted with the one that was hanging out under the toilet seat. Pretty yellow markings and all, but not something you want poking your rear with its sharp legs.
I’m feeling the heartwarming nature crap. After moving to a seaside town a thousand kilometers from the hypermegalopolis whose air was poisoning me, it’s fabulously refreshing to wake up to birdsong, blue skies and green mountains. Then to turn on the computer and see painted buntings and purdy flowers? And unicorns and rainbows to boot? Other than complete global revolution, what more could a girl ask for?
Josquin
May 3, 2009 at 11:40 am (UTC -6)
Ha ha ha! I just noticed the banner! I could go on about the nature of Nature: I’d say maybe 20% heartwarming and perhaps 80% opportunistic, creepy, competitive, weird, unfathomable, greedy, heartbreaking, sad, disgusting, and/or comical. Certainly 100% fascinating.
Dang. I think I just unwittingly paraphrased an ad for a credit card company.
Pam I
May 3, 2009 at 4:57 pm (UTC -6)
Tadpoles. As of today I have tadpoles, acquired via a long chain of web connections. Eight or maybe more if the blobby-looking remnants of frogspawn go live. They are installed in my barrel pond and I will now spend hours looking at, or more likely for, them, cups of tea in hand. The returning swifts appeared today too, shrieking across this very urban sky.
larkspur
May 3, 2009 at 8:10 pm (UTC -6)
Yummy yummy nature, gimme a spoon I will eat it all up.
Uh. That would be rude. Sorry.
Meanwhile, I must tell you that I know not of any “sweat bees”. Sometimes I might see the occasional “glow bee”, which I assure you is way different from either a glow worm or a sweat worm, the latter of which I never see either.
LJ
May 4, 2009 at 3:43 am (UTC -6)
Any chance we can get any duckling pictures? Or even vultures making off with ducklings?
speedbudget
May 4, 2009 at 5:57 am (UTC -6)
larkspur: I suspected that might not, in fact, be a sweat bee. All about sweat bees. I’m not sure what it was.
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
May 4, 2009 at 11:22 am (UTC -6)
Thank you, Twisty, for not posting photos of bugs (or birds, or worms, or snakes, or elephants) doing the humpty dance. You can’t escape that crap on tv.
gare
May 5, 2009 at 5:30 am (UTC -6)
If youre going
to san fran crisco
be sure to wear
A ridiculous heterogeneity of flora
in your hair
Readers Digest and Twisty .. it pays to increase yer wordpower!
g