Meet Hercules

 

 

The Eastern Hercules Beetle is the largest beetle in the United States. This one turned up on the porch this afternoon and believe me, he's BIG!

 

The lens cap is about 2 1/2 inches across so he's pretty much average as far as Hercules beetles go.

 

I know he's a male because only males have the horns on the side of their heads.

I think that's his wings dragging behind him.

 

Hercules beetles live an ordinary insect life and when they change into the pupa stage they make a case for themselves out of bits of wood and debris stuck together with their saliva. They emerge in the spring and live about 3 months over the summer.

 

We were careful not to rile this guy up because they release a foul-smelling odor to discourage poking and prodding and, one would assume, being eaten by owls, crows, and woodpeckers and mammals looking for a crunchy treat. In spite of that less than friendly habit, they apparently make interesting pets and are available in pet stores for purchase.

Thank goodness my kids never wanted to spend their allowance on one of those!

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Stoney-Baynard Plantation

 

Ghosts of its former owners are said to haunt the tabby ruins of the Stoney-Baynard Plantation on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Parts of the plantation house and slave quarters stand in the deep shade amidst huge oaks draped with hanging moss that add to the eerie atmosphere, even in the light of day.

The house was built by Captain Jack Stoney in the 1790s. He and his wife arrived in South Carolina from Ireland in 1774 in Stoney's own merchant ship, the "Saucy Jack." He participated in the American Revolutionary War as a privateer, acquired a sizable fortune in the process, and purchased the 1,000-acre Braddock Point plantation in 1776.

With the help of slave laborers, Stoney began construction on the plantation overlooking Calibogue (pronounced cal-ah-bogie) Sound in 1793.

 

Captain Stoney was killed in a hunting accident on the island in 1821. His son inherited the plantation and then, legend has it, lost it in a poker game to William Baynard in 1840. It's a good story but more likely he bought it from a Charleston bank. Baynard and his wife raised four children there.

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The 1850 South Carolina Agriculture Census shows that the plantation produced 36 bales of cotton (a bale of long staple cotton weighed between 300 and 400 pounds), 1,000 bushels of corn, 500 bushels of peas, 1,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, and 350 pounds of butter.

Crops and animals were valued at $12,000, a lot of money in 1850 dollars.

This tabby foundation is what is left of the foundation of slave quarters. Called "double pen quarters," it housed two families of domestic slaves, who worked in the plantation house and kitchen, in 336 square feet.

The family owned 129 slaves but less than 20 would have been "house slaves". The slave quarters were over-crowded, hot and damp.

 

 

Union forces invaded Hilton Head Island in 1861 and the Baynards fled. The residence was raided and served as Union headquarters during the Civil War before being burned. The tabby foundations of the slave quarters became foundations for the platforms of the soldiers' tents.

 

Over the years, visitors claim to have seen the ghost of William Baynard and even his entire funeral procession wandering the site after dark. I won't be hanging around to find out. The mosquitoes were bad enough in the middle of the day!

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Sunday Morning Bike Ride

We've had some days of lower temps and humidity here and I have enjoyed getting outside. Mostly it's walking but after our mornIng walk today I got my bike out and set out for a long ride.

 

 

So often there are clouds building like this, morning and evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The view from the other side of the road is a pre-Civil War rice field, now filled in with cat tails and marsh grasses.

In the foreground you can see the old dike built to hold in the water to flood the rice field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An anhinga dries his wings in the morning sun over Margaret's Island.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will leave you with this summer Sunday thought:

In spite of all the farmer’s work and worry, he can’t reach down to where the seed

is slowly transmuted into summer.

The earth bestows.

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus

 

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Port Canaveral, Florida

On our way home from visiting my mom, we took the "scenic route," Highway A1A which travels along the narrow barrier islands off the coast of Florida, and stopped for lunch in Port Canaveral.

Port Canaveral is a cruise, cargo, and naval port on the Banana River in Brevard County, Florida, one of the busiest cruise ports in the world. The cruise ships are docked to the far left of the photo and the whale tale on the horizon is part of a Disney cruise ship.

As a deep water cargo port, it's a busy place. Four million tons of cargo a year move through including cement, petroleum, and aggregate.

The port opened in 1953 for commercial fishing. Cargo vessels arrived within a few years with oil and newsprint, and tanker vessels began carrying central Florida's orange juice to New York in 1958.

 

The port is located on the Banana River and on the far right horizon you can see the Atlantic Ocean. To enter and leave, ships travel through a lock connecting the river and the sea.

 

 

 

 

The photos were taken from here, the Exploration Tower, the 7th floor open deck at the top. I appreciated the elevator, even though there was a charge for it. That would have been a lot of stairs to climb!

 

 

 

This would be a fantastic place to watch a space launch from nearby Cape Canaveral.

 

 

 

 

 

Inside are exhibits of various marine topics, Florida historical figures, the history of the space center, and marine art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate lunch at a restaurant on the water (steamed shrimp, grouper, and stuffed flounder) and were entertained by a musician playing the steel drums and manatees rolling in the surf.

 

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Flowers That Fly

That's what butterflies remind me of -- flowers that fly.

Yesterday we visited the beautiful butterfly house at Honey Horn Coastal Museum.

 

 

I was able to take a lot of photos because we were pretty much the only ones there.

 

Zebra Longwing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giant Swallowtail

You might recall the Orange Dog caterpillar that defoliated our lime tree a few weeks ago (below). Well, this beauty with a 5 inch wingspan is the eventual result!

There is nothing in a caterpillar

that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

Buckminster Fuller

Orange Dog caterpillar of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly

 

 

 

 

Black Swallowtail

Much smaller than his giant cousin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Swallowtail

 

 

 

 

 

Black Swallowtail

 

 

 

Monarch emerging

 

 

 

 

 

Not a Butterfly,

a brightly-colored

Metallic Green Bee

 

 

 

 

Happiness is like a butterfly which when pursued is just beyond your grasp

but if you sit down quietly may alight on you.

Unknown

 

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Readin' & Ritin' & 'Rithmatic

Wow, South Carolina schools start next week already! It sure still seems like summer to me.

I live in one of the poorest counties of the state and I imagine most parents will be emptying their pockets at Walmart this weekend to stock up on school clothes and school supplies for the kids, taking advantage of tax free sales the state allows for a few days.

As a teacher for most of my life, I had many memorable students, dozens for their wonderful qualities, a few that sorely tried my commitment to teaching. The ones that pulled hardest at my heart strings were the ones whose parents (or grandparents) were clueless, living in poverty, addicted, or otherwise unable to provide adequately for their children.

 

 

These are the kids who come to school on the first day with the disintegrating ratty backpack from last year and nothing much inside it while their classmates fling brightly colored new everything into their cubbies or desks.

While classroom teachers almost always have a stash of school supplies for those students, those supplies come out of the teachers' own pockets, and there is never enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In mid summer schools publish a student supply list on the school's website of items necessary for each grade.

Would you consider giving a child a great start to the school year

by filling a backpack for a child or two

and dropping it off at your neighborhood school?

I found two brand new bags (though gently used would have been fine), a Purple print messenger bag for a girl and a black backpack for a boy, at a charity shop for $3.50 each. I used the supply list for a 4th grade boy and one for a 5th grade girl and spent about $50 total. There are brightly colored scissors, sharp new crayons, neon post-it notes, folders and binders with sparkles and super heroes, crazy pencils.

I bought the brightest everything I could find and I hope when two little kids open those backpacks and fling that stuff into their lockers, they are going to feel like it's Christmas in September with the most exciting year of their lives ahead!

 

 

 

 

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A Walk on the Indian River

 

My mom lives on the Indian River, a 121-mile long saltwater lagoon which separates the barrier island from the mainland on the coast of Florida and forms part of the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway. When we visited her last week we spent some time walking on this beautiful river.

 

 

This is a little part of Florida with no hi-rise condos, just parks and private homes and plenty of nature.

 

 

 

 

 

A bug sculpture created from metal debris and driftwood.

 

 

Metal seahorse sculpture on the river

 

 

Osprey nest with young,

driftwood sculpture

 

 

Pelican Island in the background

 

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt designated the island as the first National Wildlife Refuge to protect brown pelicans and other native birds nesting on the island.

On this small 5-acre mangrove island 5000 brown pelicans nested, and egrets and as many as 60 roseate spoonbills were killed by poachers every day.

Their feathers, harvested to adorn women's hats, were by weight worth twice as much as gold.

 

Because of the tireless protection of this simple guy, Paul Kroeger, a refuge was created and the slaughter of the birds was stopped. Kroeger, a German immigrant, arrived in Florida in 1881. He homesteaded on the river bluff looking out over the island and its flocks of birds.

The 1880s were a time when the area had no roads and the Indian River was the "highway". There were alligators, poisonous snakes, and hordes of mosquitoes. It was a frontier where living was hard and dangerous.

Kroeger saw poachers slaughtering the birds and became their protector, for years sailing out to the island when he saw boats approaching and standing guard with his gun.

After the creation of the refuge, the Florida Audubon Society paid Kroeger $1 a month to continue his work as Congress had only given the island the designation of refuge but provided no funds for its protection.

 

 

In the 1960s developers tried to buy the actual river around Pelican Island to fill it in and build on it. They were nearly successful. A group of citizens saved it by purchasing it instead and leasing it to the refuge.

In recent years the Jungle Trail was created, an historic and scenic public road that provides a buffer between upland developments and the refuge waters and is now a designated Florida Greenway and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, the Pelican Island Wildlife Refuge has over 4,359 acres of mangrove islands, bottomlands, and uplands with viewing areas, hiking trails, and a boardwalk that leads back through history.

These are some of the birds that nest on Pelican Island today.

 

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