Nature Noticings

I read  Patricia Grace's short story, "Butterflies "  years ago in college, and it has stayed with me all this time. In it, a little girl writes a story for school about how she killed all the butterflies. The teacher is appalled. Her grandfather observes later that the teacher must not grow her own cabbages. I have grown my own cabbages (and collards and kale and other brassicas), and must admit to some inconsistency on the matter. I can't bring myself to kill the cabbage white butterflies. However, I have no problem flinging their looper caterpillars, which are just the baby butterflies after all, off my plants and to their doom under the bird feeder. To be fair, I grow only a tiny bit of my own food, for fun and to help the environment a little. If I had to rely more on my own cabbages to feed a grandchild, I would undoubtedly have a different attitude altogether. Ethics can be a matter of perspective. I started pondering all this again the other day when I found t...

I am infatuated with the moon. I'm not sure what started it, exactly. Most days I keep track of when the moon is up, and its phase, and try to see it, cloud cover permitting. It's been stormy the last few days here, but this morning I spotted the thinnest waning crescent against the blue sky through a gap in the clouds. When you just keep looking, it's amazing how often you can catch a glimpse. Part of paying attention to the moon is paying attention to the tides. In the winter, the best low tides are in the middle of the night. I have yet to summon enough courage to go out tide pooling in the dark. Now, though, in spring, we are getting low tides in the daylight.  On a recent Sunday we had a -2.7 tide, and we headed over to West Seattle, to Constellation Park. There is a long, human-built breakwater that extends out into the sound and hosts many creatures. We saw lots of red sea cucumbers, sea stars, moon snails, and even a sunflower star. Sunflower stars have been hit par...