Dragonflies

"Study nature,

Love nature,stay close to nature.

It will never fail you."

Frank Lloyd Wright

Dragonflies are magical winged insects. Their striking silhouettes grace countless gift items from jewelry to wall hangings to fabrics to garden ornaments and other items too numerous to count. I started counting dragonfly items around the house and stopped at 50!!

For some these insects have been a symbol of life and death to others a good luck charm.  One cannot help but be drawn to their gossamer  jeweled wings, their brilliant colors and most of all their spectacular aerial abilities.  They are particularly noticeable at the lake as they hover, soar and zip about at 20 miles an hour. Truly these insects are doing their part in the scheme of nature keeping the mosquito population down. And this year with all the rain we have had swarms of mosquitoes that have been unleashed. It is amazing there are over 435 species of dragonflies and damselflies. According to my dragonfly identification book this one photographed is a Twin-spotted Spiketail, female.

I am including in this blog a parable about dragonflies that I have printed several times and placed in sympathy cards with a dragonfly photo. 

In the bottom of an old pond lived some grubs who could not understand why none of their groups ever came back after crawling up the stems of the lilies to the top of the water. They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what happened to him. Soon one of them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on the top of a lily pad and went through a glorious transformation, which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings. In vain he tried to keep his promise. Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below. Then he realized that even if they could see him they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.

The fact that we cannot see our loved ones or communicate with them after the transformation, which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist.

By Walter Dudley Cavert