Thursday July 1st at 2:30 PM. 75° F and very humid after a brief rain
After arriving to the site, the first thing noticed was that the ground was clearly much more wet and muddy than the previous times I had visited. Many plants’ roots were submerged underwater and the ground sunk under my steps. Directly next to the lake was a patch of plants sprouting from the ground where a copious amount of dragonflies sat. All around the site and above the lake, dragonflies flew, darting around, hovering in mid air. Different species of dragonfly were present as some were large with heavy black bodies and loud wings while others had small dainty light blue bodies with equally dainty wings. I witnessed multiple pairs of dragonflies mating. The pairs could fly together while mating, which was surprising, and one pair of large black dragonflies landed on a branch just a couple feet from where I sat. Their abdomens seemed to be joined together at the ends as they faced each other. After moving to get a closer look, the quickly abandoned the branch they had just sat on to flee from me.
In the muddy soil at Lake Surprise grows a tall spindly flowering plant, Earth loosestrife (Lysimachia terrestris) or Swamp candles. Using the native plant database from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at UT Austin, I selected the New Jersey as the state I had found it in, and also selected yellow as the bloom color. After seeing the 700 results, I scrolled through and looked at the pictures of each plant to see which matched the plant I had found at the site. After seeing a plant with small yellow flowers with five petals and a ring of red inside – identical to the picture I took – I had found the plant. An interesting fact about Swamp candles is that they were introduced to cranberry bogs in the northwest US to promote biodiversity in the bogs.
Sketching my objects was very time consuming and definitely tested my patience. For most of them, it was hard to find a comfortable position to draw in and I kept adjusting how I sat or stood but the perspective would change so I would have to stay in one position for a while to get the perspective down. Sketching made me more attentive to the surroundings and details of the site. I hadn’t paid attention to many of the bugs by the lake but sketching made me more aware of the different bugs visiting these plants. Next visit, I want to see how the buds on the tree changed from this past visit.