Bunny Bummer (108/365)

Ralph Wiggum: You smell like dead bunnies.

The Bart of War. The Simpsons. Season 14: Episode 21. May 18, 2003

TIME:  5:49 PM
PLACE:  Elementary school
SUBJECT:  Dearly departed rabbit

We had our bi-weekly Daisy meeting this afternoon.  The girls’ project today was beautifying the school by planting flowers in the beds surrounding the trees in front of the building.  While Miss Jody (our fearless leader) was prepping one of the beds for the girls to plant, she came across a bunny…Dum dum dummmm!…a dead bunny.  !  The girls were fascinated and horrified by it at the same time.  They wanted to give it a funeral and bury it in the flower beds, but Miss Jody and I nixed that idea.  In the end, she placed it in a plastic flower pot and disposed of it in the dumpster.  RIP bunny rabbit.    

Flower No More (281/365)

 
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), British poet. The Princess (l. 164-168). . . Tennyson; a Selected Edition. Christopher Ricks, ed. (1989) University of California Press.

TIME:  6:16 PM
PLACE:  Front yard
SUBJECT:  Dried, dead flower

Autumn is my favorite season ~ I love the colors, the cool, crisp air, the celebrations of Halloween and Thanksgiving ~ but Autumn also brings out the melancholy in me.  Autumn days seem to bring about more reminiscing than any of the other seasons do.  The death of the plants, flowers and the leaves on the trees very much reminds me of my own mortality.  I think about how we are not here on this earth for a long period of time and how stuff I think is very important really does not amount to much in the grand scheme of things.  No matter what happens in my life, the earth will still turn; the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west and the cycle of the seasons will still continue.

Victim (257/365)

 
“Caught in a web
Removed from the world
Hanging on by a thread…”

Dream Theater. "Caught In A Web." Awake. By James LaBrie and John Petrucci. East West Records, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, 1994

TIME:  7:47 AM
PLACE:  Front porch
SUBJECT:  Wasp in web

I don’t like wasps (who does?) so I wasn’t too upset when I noticed this one caught in the rather large spider web located in one of the corners of our front porch.  MB found two more webs and two very large spiders in the back yard while taking the dog out this morning, but when I went out there to investigate, the spiders had hidden themselves away.  After supper, MB and I went back outside and saw one of the spiders sitting on its web.  I took photos but I the pics I snapped did not capture him very well.  I’ll try again to take the arachnid’s picture ‘cause I’ve got to show you how big & creepy he is. *shudders*

Memento Mori* (231/365)

 
“In the cicada's cry;
No sign can foretell;
How soon it must die.”

Matsuo Basho (famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. Recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; master of brief and clear haiku, 1644-1694)

TIME:  4:43 PM
PLACE:  Front Porch
SUBJECT:  Cicada

One of the things that always reminds me of summer is the buzz of the cicadas in the trees.  They seem to be particularly loud this year.  I found this guy while I was sweeping the front steps this morning.  He stayed around all day which allowed me to take his picture this afternoon…How did this happen you may ask?  He was a dearly departed cicada – that made it really easy to take his picture.

*Memento Mori:  Latin for "Remember you are mortal", or "Remember you will die." It refers to a wide range of art whose purpose is to remind people of their own eventual death.