A visual chronicle of suburban NJ
I actually wanted to make the photo below my main photo for this post, but the above shot makes a better thumbnail. But the POINT is in the photo below.
In Nomahegan Park, there is a little river that is so very densely populated with these little plants— algae?— that it appears to contain no water, only plants. (This is not the case.)
It’s very strange, stumbling upon a stagnant lime-green river.
The dragonflies are out!
When I read a book about evolution a couple months ago, I learned that dragonflies are in a (disputed) evolutionary group called Paleoptera— “primitive wing.” Most insects can fold their wings back over their abdomens (making them Neoptera, “new wing”), but NOT DRAGONFLIES. Unfoldable dragonfly wings are the kind of wings that bugs had back when bugs first evolved wings.
Cool, huh?
As I was walking through Nomahegan Park, snapping photos here and there, a passing bicyclist saw my camera and gave me a heads-up about “[mutter mutter] in that tree over there!”
Curious, I surveyed the opposite shore of the lake, until I saw what appeared to be a life-sized bronze statue sprawled out in a tree.
As I squinted, the statue moved its arm!
(The bronze color, it turned out, was only a trick of the setting sun interfering with my color perception.)
Lounging in a tree over a lake! What a perfect way to spend a summer weekend, don’t you think?
