Dark jewel
For reasons that may, or may not, have an explanation—blame it on the frigid spring... blame everything on the frigid spring...—the odonates have been slow to appear. But they haven't been entirely absent, and today, in the garden, one of the stalwarts showed up to work the boxwoods, which have played host to a hatch of tiny midges: Ebony-winged Damselfly food. This handsome gentleman—the males have all-black wings; the females bear a white spot at the top of each wing—had filled his quota of bugs and, in the still-chilly sunshine, harvested some warmth from the light to recharge his flight batteries. With any luck, he'll head back to the wetlands to tell his compadres about our Buxus largesse. Maybe that'll convince the odes that it's time to trust the season and get going.