Backlit ferns I think just about everything in nature looks wonderful backlit, so when I decided, despite the steamy weather that set in after the deluge yesterday, to go to the Miner Preserve and walk my survey route in the late afternoon, I had a pretty good idea that the light would be conducive for drama. It didn't disappoint. I came back from my trek with lots of good images of butterflies and moths, but these were species I'd posted before—especially Great Spangled Fritillaries and Hummingbird Moths. I wasn't fast enough to capture the first definite Monarch of the year. The high- and fast-flying dragonflies weren't being cooperative, and I'd already featured wild grapes, now lush and aromatic everywhere, in an earlier entry. So when I was walking out of the woods after chronicling the start of the vernal pool season—they now are holding water—I spotted a backlit fern and, sucker that I am for this kind of cliche, I stopped and shot.