In an effort to find an abundance of Mountain Laurels in bloom for an upcoming newspaper column, I headed over to a usually sure-fire venue, the Narragansett Trail to Ell and Long ponds in Hopkinton. But the off-year we're having on the ridge is turning out to be more widespread.  Of course, even without a Kalmia latifolia flower shower, a trek to both ponds is always worth the effort, and today was no exception. It was truly hard to determine what to highlight, but I'd have to say that the most mysterious find was a very noisy Hover Fly I found near the carnivorous plants at the boggy edges of Ell Pond. It had the striped thoracic shield of a Helophilus flower fly, but the abdominal markings seemed closer to those grouped into a kind of taxonomic holding pen called Anasimyia, which Jeff Skevington and company term "distinctive but tricky to identify to species." Jeff, alas, is in the field, so any guidance will have to wait.