I had a little visitor when I was out back hand washing the hummingbird feeders today. The Eastern Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus) is the largest of the 965 species of click beetles of North America. As you can probably guess, this one gets its common name from the pair of false eyes on its …
Author: Uncertain Pilgrim
The Little Pollinator that Could
Today's image is a bee from the genus Agapostemon, a striped sweat bee gathering pollen from some Echinacea flowers next to our mailbox. It might be difficult to see, but you might notice the yellow "saddlebags" that the little bee is sporting. I'd seen that before but never gave it much thought, but it seems …
Red-spotted Admiral
I've decided to re-launch this blog by focusing on logging my ongoing efforts to expand my skills as an amateur naturalist. Posts will focus on things I've seen in the Piedmont area of Georgia (since I'm spending most of my time at home during the pandemic) and have learned a little about. Today's entry is …
In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo
I volunteered to write a short devotional for my church's Lenten devotional book. The one I chose was based on the text from Jeremiah 17:7-8. When I sat down to write a couple of days ago, this re-imagined version of Rumi's "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo" came out. It's based on the Coleman Barks adaptation …
Pursuing a Depth Year
Some of you may have heard of the concept of a Depth Year, first suggested by blogger David Cain at his site Raptitude (by the way, I heartily endorse his blog). If you aren't familiar, you may want to read Cain's original post, Go Deeper Not Wider, and his follow up post from earlier this …
KonMari-ing Facebook
Unless you've been blissfully un-involved with Facebook over the past few years, you're probably aware of the love-hate relationship most of us have developed for the platform. In my case, it's more of a (grudgingly) tolerate-hate relationship. There are, of course, many reasons for this - data privacy issues, the addictive nature of its design, …
Happy New Year!
My one week away from writing has turned into a month. Again. Rather than beat myself up about it, which is a common trait of 9s, I've decided that it's okay. I don't know that I had anything coherent to write over the past month, anyway. With Christmas, travelling, etc. it was also a busy …
Reflections on the Enneagram, Part 2: On Getting in Touch with Emotions
As usual, I'm not really keeping up with the pace I had hoped. In some ways that reflects quite well the issue I wrote about in the first installment, i.e., facing unpleasant and difficult things. While I don't find writing unpleasant, I do find it difficult, in that I so often lack confidence that what …
Continue reading Reflections on the Enneagram, Part 2: On Getting in Touch with Emotions
Reflections on the Enneagram, Part 1: On Difficult Things
At the risk of sounding a bit new-agey, I must admit that I've long studied the Enneagram and have gained a lot of insight into myself and my relationships through that study. Of course, personal development comes in fits and starts (at least for me), so I have not always fully heeded the sage advice …
Continue reading Reflections on the Enneagram, Part 1: On Difficult Things
The New Journey Begins
I've decided to return to WordPress using a paid account. Github Pages was a good way to make static pages, but posting new items was cumbersome and took quite a few iterations to get right. I also wanted an option for having feedback and curated comments on posts, which wasn't easy to do on Github. …
