Cicadas

In my bedroom there hangs a painting that I bought from a talented art student some six years ago. In an unusually long 1:4 ratio, it depicts a beautiful woman with a giant green cicada fluttering at heart level, and her face, looking down on it, seems illuminated by the cicada. I think of her as an archetypal mother goddess watching over one of her more bizarre creatures. I love this painting, my son is terrified of it. The only part he wants to look at is the cicada. He thinks the cicada is protecting him from the dark woman.
When these little, okay, disturbingly large, buggers started showing up, this was the first he saw. Running around a tall spruce, he noticed the glimmer of it's green wings. "Mom, it's the SERKADIN! The one from your picture!" He jumped up and down, gesturing wildly. His "bug friend," just lazed against the tree, not particularly caring that a four year old was coming dangerously close to harming his iridescent wings.

When I told him that it would be a long time before we saw the cicadas again, he was sad and insisted I take a picture. Since then he's enjoyed finding their shed forms littering the playground, calling me over to see where one of his bug friends used to be.
He still doesn't like the woman in my painting, but now he's sure the cicada is his friend, after all, it came to visit him one day at the park.


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The Wild Flower Book, by Donald Stokes: a Review

The Wildflower Book: East of the Rockies - A Complete Guide to Growing and Identifying Wildflowers by Donald Stokes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was very much written from the environmental moralist standpoint. That can be nice, but it can also be off-putting. I wish the pictures had included more than just the prettiest of blooms, but also pictures of the various plants throughout their annual lifecycle to help prevent the accidental weeding of precious wildflowers. The information could also have been improved upon by making it clear whether each plant discussed was edible or not. An occasional plant was described as poisonous or had a blurb regarding herbal or traditional uses, but on this subject, most plants' entries remained silent.
If you're wondering what that pretty flower you saw might have been called, it's a good book. If you're looking at wildflowers with a mind to foraging, it wasn't quite as useful.
I did appreciate the brief section outlining which "wildflowers" are pernicious weeds, rather, invasive imported species.