Indiana Bob, The Elusive Butterfly & Other Bugs.

September 1^st “Departing summer hath assumed, An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade, Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling.” (September by William Wordsworth)

Rain stopped play. Well, that’s not quite the truth, rain didn’t stop play this morning, sheer laziness did. I got up a little too late to walk the ladies to school and then just “Couldn’t be bothered”. I decided to go after lunch, alone if necessary, but then rain did stop play. I thought “never mind, we can both have a little stroll after dinner”, but, the rain didn’t stop. It started just after lunch and carried on until much later in the evening.

Huan went out on the bedroom balcony late afternoon, she had seen a dragonfly and wanted to take a photo of it with the Fuji. She didn’t get it! However, she did get another passion fruit in full bloom, maybe we’ll be luckier with that one. She may also have found out why one of the previous flowers died, check out these insects. In the second photo, which unfortunately is not too clear, you can see a monster up on his bad legs destroying everything he can!

September 2^nd Not so early out today, Huan was making dumplings and steamed bread when I got up so waiting for the flour to rise was first followed by the kneading, filling and steaming. Still we were out in time for a decent walk. Where to go? Well Huan’s phone said rain by eleven, which I didn’t believe, and my PC said rain by one. A village route was decided on, keeping on the hard stuff so that no boots were needed. First off we found that the trees were being pruned on the way into town. If you check the first photo you can see a branch on the way to the floor. The second photo shows where the chopped branches go. I’ve seen a wood chipper in operation before but I’d never realised just how fast they do their work, it’s almost milliseconds from the log being fed in to the sawdust coming out.

As always, Huan keeps asking me to take photos of butterflies, which nine time out of ten don’t work; my lens won’t reach far enough. I got this one today without being prompted though. Can you spot the second insect?

This next photo gives you an idea of why we like our country walks, beautiful views, not many people around, country sounds and fresh air.

Not an insect this time, but, according to Huan, still a pest?

More butterflies today, in fact there were many, far too many for me to photograph them all. I purposely avoided the more bland white and yellow ones and tried to get you some shots of the brightly coloured ones. Sometimes they won’t keep still long enough.

This one, on the other hand, spent ages on the same small flower so I was able to take quite a few fairly decent photos. If I knew what I was doing and took the camera off automatic who knows how good they would be?

I also managed to catch the ‘elusive butterfly’, the one who really hates having her photograph taken. (Who sang that song in 1969 in the UK? Answers on a postcard please, unfortunately no prizes though.)

I’ll finish today with some bad news; Her Majesty was not over keen on today’s dinner! Yesterday we had bratwurst with onions and potato salad American style, went down very well for both of us. Today was pork, beaten to be fairly thin, fried, with the remainder of the potato salad and shop bought sauerkraut. Being lazy today I served the sauerkraut cold, which may not be the best way, it was very vinegary, more so than it should have been. Her Maj scoffed everything else but was forced to leave some of her sauerkraut on the plate. Me, I mixed it with my potato salad, it made it a little more palatable. Ah well, lesson learnt for next time!

September 3^rd No walking the ladies to school today, Huan was running late and she’s first in the bathroom! Instead I checked the weather and decided on an afternoon walk for a change, too lazy for a morning one today. However, I did manage to catch the dragonfly on the balcony, every time we walk out there it flies away, today I got it! It was silhouetted against the white background so I’ve had to turn the lightness way up to see any colours.

After lunch I kept my promise to myself and went out, alone, Huan didn’t fancy  being one of those ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. I decided I’d be a ‘hunter’ and went off looking for more butterflies, my turn off from the main road taking me through a little village.

I had hardly got more than a few metres round the bend when I spotted the first two butterflies. You may need to zoom a little.

Not far up the road, yet another one.

Now all three of those butterflies were spotted before I had really started into the countryside. This next photo shows where I was heading, after the yellow and black markers the road bends around to the left thus leaving the city and construction on the right far behind. Within a few hundred metres it becomes peaceful, and, on this route, shady.

After the markers and just around the next bend I came across the workers, it’s amazing how many of them are kept alive by this industry. You may wonder what they are collecting, especially as I purposely made it black and white to keep you guessing. It is in fact, 槟榔 (Bīnláng), or “Areca catechu whose common names in English include areca palm, areca nut palm, betel palm, Indian nut, Pinang palm. In English this palm is called the betel tree because its fruit, the areca nut, is often chewed along with the betel leaf.” Despite the nuts (seeds) being intoxicating, slightly addictive and carcinogenic, (it has a direct link to oral cancers) some local people still like to chew on it for hours on end. You can tell who does this by their red teeth!

As I made my way higher up the hill the butterflies became smaller, faster and rarer. It was nigh on impossible to get decent photos at all. Even this little critter, not a butterfly obviously, took many shots to get one anywhere near in focus.

This next photo shows where Huan and I would usually turn left and head back to the main road, today I thought I would try going right.

Luck was still not really on my side, the butterflies were winning. This one was very difficult to capture, of all the shots I took this is the only one worth keeping. In all the others it looked just like a leaf, whereas in this one, at least you can see its antenna.

A little further on, about four kilometres from home, I decided to turn back. Maybe if I’d had my other boots on I could have continued!

My return walk, while very scenic, gave me no more photo opportunities until I was almost back to where I had got the first couple. Can you spot this one? I couldn’t really crop it anymore, it was already losing whatever detail it had.

And here’s another one, I couldn’t make up my mind whether its markings were out of focus or whether I was!

Nothing like finishing the day on a high though is there, this last butterfly allowed me fairly near and didn’t move too much. Handsome creature isn’t it?

So my day of butterfly hunting didn’t go too badly after all. At least there are a few varieties there to keep students and fans of Lepidopterology happy! As for me, well I had walked just over eight kilometres up and down hills, even better, I arrived home about a quarter of an hour before today’s daily dose of rain showed up.

September 4^th Going out walking today we had to pass the local clinic, which today was carrying out free BP and sugar tests. Yesterday I had convinced Huan that she really doesn’t need to do this again, we were both tested in April. Today, seeing the tables set up outside she changed her mind, maybe because of the free gift of a shopping bag and some fresh eggs!

Huan’s choice today and as she often does she managed to confuse me. “Let’s go up the turning opposite the police station” she said. Well, there’s no turning there so through a process of Q and A I realised she meant the second turning off the main road, alongside, not opposite, the “gun police” as we call them and not the police station. The “gun police” are “The Chinese People's Armed Police Force” but, like the armed police in the UK, they keep a low profile. Anyway, we didn’t go that way either because Huan was looking for a fish pond further away. Instead we decided on the third turn off, which again has no fish pond but is a pleasant enough walk uphill to a village. However, within a few hundred metres the boss had changed her mind, too much dust from passing trucks! Coming back down she suggested we take the back road through someone else’s residential complex; we could go through there because it was open for construction traffic. At the front gate we would have been stopped. To our surprise we found a wall, not quite the Great Wall of China, but a wall nonetheless.

We were trying to work out what it was used for before, with little success, then Huan told me that the name of this apartment complex includes “on the lake”. I would guess that in years gone by the land may well have been a lake, but like many lakes not always full of water hence why they were easily able to build roads and buildings there. When it was a lake, the wall would have made a nice scenic walk around it. We had a good walk around, both ends are in a state of disrepair so we could only explore the middle. Searching down one side I suddenly realised that there was a leech on my leg. It obviously hadn’t found the right place to attach itself because as I screamed “leech” and shook my leg like mad it fell off!

Here’s the Queen, surveying her realm from the ramparts, and her chamber, luckily without a cauldron of boiling oil at hand.

And here’s her knight in shining armour with his lance at the ready. (The lance was used mainly for the dispersal of the myriads of cobwebs on the path.)

Just before we left the path and made our way back out to the main road Huan found a flower that she insisted I take a photo of. Looks like bootlaces to me, do you know what it is?

We were both still on the lookout for wildlife of any sort, especially as Huan thought I had been bitten by something yesterday. The top of my foot was bleeding when I got home, I hadn’t felt anything at all of course. Whatever it was, animal or vegetable, it had gone right through my shoe and my sock and punctured my skin. I suppose it could also have been mineral, something like barbed wire. The first thing we saw today was this bug, Huan had to lift the leaf for me to get the shot so it’s not as clear as I would have liked.

We did find another butterfly too.

There was even another one, but that photo wasn’t worth sharing. Instead, how about something from Madagascar?

This tree always pleases us, something to do with its unusual colouring, and as you can see, we were in luck this time; the tree had an identification plate. What does it say? Well with Huan’s help and Google Translate

 Overlord Brown

Alias: Bismarck Brown

Distribution: Native to Madagascar, well cultivated in South China

(Ecological habits) Overlord palm is tall and magnificent, grows fast, likes a sunny, warm climate and a good drainage environment. Drought-tolerant, Hardy.

And that’s just about it for today, except for this bunch of people doing a good impression of British workmen leaning on their tools. By and large Wuzhishan, like most of China, is kept very clean by hordes of cleaners but every now and then, for some reason, ordinary people get involved too. These people are just waiting for the man with the high pressure hose to move down a bit and then they will continue with their sweeping.

September 5^th School for Huan and lazy morning for me, to start with anyway. I did wake up a little and cook the weekend’s stew again, chicken this week. My plan was another afternoon walk and today I had my travelling companion in tow. Our first stop was the gatehouse where we found Yu on duty. She was covering for her husband while he, along with the other members of the maintenance team were off drinking baijiu somewhere. I had to play with the hats.

Next up is a progress report on our scenic bridge. It looks like the walkway base has now been completed and they have begun the railings, not sure when we’ll be able to walk across though.

Would you believe it, we found more butterflies today, and another bug to boot!

September 6^th “Clinomania” struck this morning! We had both woken at half past five but foolishly gone back to sleep. I woke up at nearly nine with a stinking headache, no walks this morning. The word ‘clinomania’ means ‘an excessive desire to lie down and stay in bed; morbid sleepiness’. It comes from https://www.facebook.com/GrandiloquentWords. In retrospect we should have got up at half past five and had a nice long walk before the sun got too hot.

A lazy day was had by both! Huan needed something new to watch so I suggested she look for something foreign with subtitles. Here they do both Chinese and English subtitles. I ended up sitting with her on the sofa, something we don’t do very often, watching “2 Broke Girls”. I’ve heard of it but have never seen it, almost hooked already!

What to do when you’re stuck in the house all day? Well, watch TV, watch movies on the PC, check FB now and then and sit on the balcony watching the local municipality workmen. Yet again they are marking out motorbike parking spaces, hundreds of them. Perhaps they are going to make Wuzhishan a car free zone?

We did manage an after dinner walk so at least we weren’t complete zombies today. We both even managed a little go on the geriatric exercise equipment but I avoided having the evidence in a photo. Huan didn’t, here she is obviously having fun!

September 7^th End of the week, nothing to report and no photos. Huan did go out Dama dancing but as today was the first day I thought I’d give them a break from the camera. As it happens, nobody turned up anyway so she was back within a few minutes. All you could hear then was the “Sound of Music” with Huan practicing on the keyboard and me murdering the guitar! At least the neighbours aren’t complaining, yet!

Bye for now, see you next week.