So, I have been in Virginia for a week of marketing meetings, with limited photo opportunities. I got a very itchy shutter button finger! First thing Saturday morning I gassed up my scooter and headed out for a photoprowl. First stop, the Kennebunk Plains to check the Blazing Star bloom…more on that one day soon…and then on to Old Falls Pond and the stretch of the Mousam River there to check for dragonflies, etc. etc.

At Old Falls Pond I was delighted to find a stand of Cardinal Flower. I am pretty sure I have never seen it in Maine before, though it was common in the Southwest when I lived there. I find that it is actually native to the East Coast, from Canada to Florida. The southwest variety is a different species, though essentially the same flower. It is, of course, a stunning plant. In the right habitat it is both tall and showy, and there is nothing in nature quite so red as the red of the blooms. I was on my way over to the stand, which was right on the edge of the river, with my camera all set to macro, when I saw the Slaty Skimmers and Blue Dashers buzzing around it. Wouldn’t it be perfect, I thought, as I drew closer, if a dragonfly landed on the Cardinal lower…and just then a Slaty Skimmer did! Of course I had the wrong camera in hand, and the wrong setting on the camera I had. By the time I fumbled through menus and got the setting changed, the bug was gone. There is one good thing about Slaty Skimmers (all Skimmers) though. They return to a favored perch many times. I got the camera set (I did not dare to take time to get out my long zoom…and I was really too close anyway…so I stuck with the Samsung Smart Camera’s limited reach), and the dragonfly did indeed return and pose on the Cardinal Flower for a few shots. After I had my shots, I got out the Canon SX50HS, but, though I waited 10 minutes, and returned to the stand of Cardinal Flowers on my way back upstream and waited some more, the Slaty Skimmer never perched on the flowers again.

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Macro focus setting. 416mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 d@ 1/90th @ ISO 400. Processed in PicSay Pro on the 2013 Google Nexus 7.

And for the Sunday thought: I sometimes think our creator God has to enjoy the delight we show when we are surprised by the unlikely beauty of moments like a Slaty Skimmer perched on Cardinal Flower beside a stream in Southern Maine. These things happen too often to be any kind of accident. And though I do go out consciously and eagerly looking for them, I would not do that without some measure of confidence, based on past experience, that they do happen…that it is reasonable and right to go looking for them. Cardinal Flowers. Blue dragonflies. What kind of theory of randomness would bring them together just as I walked up with a camera in hand? And yet…there it is!

And, honestly, what can you be if not thankful? Okay God. Yes, you got me again. Tickled me good. Thank you.

And doesn’t most of the fun in tickling, belong to the tickler?