Chinese Pond Heron in September

Chinese Pond Heron (Ardeola bacchus, 池鹭).

Throughout the summer one sees these herons in their distinctive breeding plumage: a subdued chestnut-red from head to breast and with white wings under blue plumes. After the end of the breeding season ends,they adorn their winter whites and browns. This heron is one of two such birds, whom I regularly see fishing in Taozi Lake. In previously years, these herons were infrequently present there, and though fish and frog may think otherwise: they are a welcome addition to the scenic lake. Hopefully next Autumn the small lake will host even more fishing birds.

Time Flies

Nec unus dies ad nos stat: fugiunt omnes. Antequam uenit, abscedit. De hoc ergo die, ex quo loquimur, quantum iam fugit! Nec horam, in qua sumus, tenemus. Fugit et ipsa, uenit et alia, nec ipsa statura sed fugitura. Quid amas? Comprehende quod amas, tene quod amas, habe quod amas. Nec stat nec stare permittit. Omnis caro foenum et omnis claritas hominis ut flos foeni. Foenum aruit, flos decidit.

Not a single day stands still for us: they all fly away. Even before it arrives, it is gone. Even this day, which I am speaking about, how much has already flown away. And we cannot cling to the hour in which we are present. It flies and another comes, and that one will not remain but will fly away too. What do you love? Take hold of what you love, hold on to what you love,  keep what you love. But time neither stands still nor allows you to stand still. ‘All flesh is grass and all the glory of man is like a flower of grass. The flesh withers, the flower falls’ [1 Peter 1:24-25].

St. Augustine, Sermo 65/A.13. My translation.

Notes:
Sancti Aurelii Augustini Sermones in Matthaeum, ed. by Pierre-Patrick Verbraken (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), p. 401. In many editions, the first sentence of this passage is given as: 'Non ad nos stat nec unus dies, nec unus dies ad nos stat, fugiunt omnes'. Verbraken correctly restores that first clause to the sentence prior: a great improvement through a simple change in punctuation.

Returning Home

Homer’s Odyssey
   From the description of the meeting between Ulysses and Telemachus it is plain that Homer considered it quite as dreadful for relations who had been long separated to come together again as for them to separate in the first instance. And this is about true.

Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ed. by Henry Festing Jones (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), p. 32.

Five-dot Sergeant

Five-dot Sergeant (Limenitis sulpitia, 残锷线蛱蝶).

Its wings were a little worse for wear: naturally nature photographers like to photograph pristine looking insects, though in the field, missing legs and antennae and tattered wings are common among these short lived creatures.

Rough Potato

Rough Potato (Cynanchum rostellatum, 萝藦).

A climbing subshrub found in many temperate and subtropical regions of the far east. Here climbing up the reeds and wild vegetation in the far West of Yanghu Wetland. The English name is inexplicable.

Books and Beer on Credit

But the end of my first year [at Oxford] saw me heavily in debt: so many barrels of beer, so many books, shelf upon shelf of them, which had nothing to do with work. At Blackwell’s bookshop credit seemed to a newcomer endless (though they liked a little bit sometimes on account), but drinks were ordered through the college buttery and appeared on battels, as college bills were called (there was no credit given there) [...]

Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (London: Slightly Foxed, 2010; 1971), p. 128.

Truth and Myth

When we translate we get abstraction—or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of through with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.

C.S. Lewis, 'Myth Became Fact', in Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. by Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 138-42 (p. 141).

Hybrid Trumpet Vine

Hybrid Trumpet Vine (Campsis × tagliabueana, 红黄萼凌霄).

There are two species of campsis in the world: one from China and the other from North America. Since the nineteenth century they have been hybridized by gardeners. The plant is a logical choice for Changsha gardens as the plant is hardy, endures the full sun, and stays in bloom from Spring till Autumn.

Shortleaf Spikesedge

Shortleaf Spikesedge (Cyperus brevifolius, 短叶水蜈蚣).

Persistent hot weather from late summer to early Autumn has reduced the Xiang river, which had been bloated by indefatigable Spring rains. Many mudflats have  reemerged and new vegetation is swiftly conquering the rich dark mud. There is plenty rough cocklebur, yellowcress, and various persicaria emerging from the soil, but for now it is shortleaf spikesedge that is gaining the upperhand, with copious new growths rising from the dense cracked earth.

Poor Dear Old Oxford

 ...Poor dear old Oxford! if I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could desire, I should never forget, or cease to look back with something of a painful feeling on the years we were together there, and on all the delights that we have lost; and I look forward with extreme delight to my intended journey, down to the audit in October, when I shall take a long and last farewell of my old haunts, and will if I possibly can, yet take one more look at Bagley Wood, and the pretty field, and the wild stream that flows down between Bullington and Cowley Marsh, not forgetting even your old friend, the Lower London Road. Well, I must endeavour to get some such associations to combine with Laleham and  but at present all is harsh and ruffled, like woods in a high wind, only I am beginning to love my own little study, where I have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read or write till twelve or one o’clock.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., 5th edn, 2 vols (London: B. Fellowes, 1844-1845), I, pp-58-59 [II. To Rev. George Cornish, Laleham, September 20, 1819].

Saturnia Pyretorum Pupa

Saturnia pyretorum (樟蚕). Pupa.

A large silk-moth chrysalis: floating in the breeze on a branch of a willow tree in Wangling Park. I often see the caterpillars crawling about on the ground in the forests, but I rarely see the pupae or adult moths: no doubt I am out in the wrong places and at the wrong times.

True Nobility

Omnibus nobis totidem ante nos sunt; nullius non origo ultra memoriam iacet. Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse oriundum, neminem servum non1 ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit et sursum deorsum 5fortuna versavit. Quis est generosus? ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum intuendum est: alioquin si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est ante quod nihil est. A primo mundi ortu usque in hoc tempus perduxit nos ex splendidis sordidisque alternata series. Non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus; nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit nostrum est: animus facit nobilem, cui ex quacumque condicione supra fortunam licet surgere.

We all have had the same number of ancestors; there is no one whose ancestry does not extend beyond recollection. Plato says that every king springs from slaves and there is not a slave who does not descend from kings. All sorts have widely mixed together and fortune has turned them upside down. Who is well-born? He who by his nature is suited to virtue. That is what should be considered: otherwise if you call back to antiquity, there is no one who does not reach a time before which there is no information. From the first beginning of the world up to the present, we have been brought out of origins that were alternatively splendid and sordid. An atrium full of smoke-stained statues does make a man noble; no one lived for our glory and that which existed before us is not ours: the soul makes one noble, for it is allowed to rise above fortune from any circumstance.

Seneca, Epistulae, V.44.4-5. My translation.

Cyclidia Substigmaria

Cyclidia substigmaria (洋麻圆钩蛾).

A species of hook-tip moth, resting on a fern in Taohualing Park on Sunday. One of a great many butterflies and moths occupying the the overgrown grasses, weeds and forests.

Breakfast-Table

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests, have a piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gable (New York: Signet Classics, 2010; 1851), p. 91.