Nature Study in January

At the beginning of each month I read from Amy Mack's Bush Calendar (free online) which I linked to here. At the end of each chapter she has a list of flowers to be found in bloom, birds that are breeding, birds that are arriving or departing - January doesn't have as much going on as some previous months.

We found this interesting fellow the other week - the larva of a Saunder's Case Moth (Metura elongatus). We had some friends visiting at the time and one of them said it might be a cocoon stick insect so we googled the name and found a picture and we were able to identify it easily as it is quite distinctive. It's very large for an insect and I was trying to get my mind around what kind of monstrous moth would develop from it. Apparently it's not so monstrous at all.

First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia by William Gillies told us quite a bit about the Case-Moth: it can remain without food for a long time; it doesn't behave like a normal moth and can take two to three years to go through its life cycle from egg to perfect insect. The mother moth lays her eggs inside the case in spring; in December the caterpillars that develop escape from the case by lowering themselves on a very fine thread to the ground or a plant below the mother's case. An hour or two after this the caterpillars have each woven their first case.

The little case-moth larva carries its home with it wherever it goes, holding it straight up but as it grows it becomes too large to be easily carried. Up to this time the case has been made of silk and bits of leaves but now the caterpillar begins to weave and add to the length of the case using bits of stick - very clever.
Now the case is no longer held up above the body. The caterpillar still moves around but when it gets tired, it fastens its house to a twig by a thread of silk and swings there until it decides to move again.

In about eighteen months after the caterpillar was born the time arrives for the larva to become a pupa. The insect fills up the case with silk and old skin and about six months later the moth emerges (around May to October). Apparently there are few creatures that have more enemies than the case-moth!
There are some good photos of the moth here. And some artwork from a natural history artist here.

St. Andrew's Cross spider

The case-moth is a weaver but the St. Andrew's Cross spider (Argiope keyserlingii) sews - a very nice zigzag at that. Well, that's what I told my daughter. He is actually an orb-weaver spider. This one is probably a male as he's not too large. The female is about three times his size. Fortunately they are non-venemous and not aggressive which is a pleasant change around here as we have some nasties - funnel webs for example,  which are both aggressive and highly toxic.
So we don't go barefoot outside and we stomp on our shoes before we put them on.

The Irreparable Past & the Irresistible Future

I've never thought of myself as a worrier but the other morning I woke up very early and the first thing to enter my head was a verse from the Psalms: Do not fret; it only leads to evil.

To fret: to agitate; to disturb; to tease; to irritate; to be vexed; to utter peevish expressions.

I had been fretting about some things that I really had no control over: about whether decisions made had been the right ones; about our children's futures; over decisions that need to be made, amongst other things.  Fretting is never helpful and doesn't change anything - except my ability to rest, receive the grace I need and believe that He will make a way then there seems to be no way.

Later, I read this by Oswald Chambers, a word of wisdom for the start of a new year: 

Our present enjoyment of God's grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday's sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterday's, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us.

Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future...

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

50 Classics in 5 years

The Classics Club

I found out about this at Worthwhile Books and thought having a goal like this would be a good challenge. Ten books a year is doable as long as they're all not as dense as The Brothers Karamazov.

Some of these are books I've been wanting to read for a while, some are (R) re-reads, (Chr) Christian classics, (C) children's classics, (A) Australian classics and a couple are books that might not yet be considered classics because they are more recent but from what I've heard might possibly be included (feel free to correct me!) Some are books I don't particularly want to tackle but think I probably should.

I probably won't be doing these in the order written but will be starting with the first one. 

My starting date is December 30th 2013 and I plan to finish by the 31st December 2018.

1) Island of the World - Michael O'Brien (Chr) a more recent book.

2) Persuasion - Jane Austen (R)

3) Adam Bede - George Eliot

4) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

5) The Keeper of the Bees - Gene Stratton-Porter

6) Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens

7) A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

8) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

9) The Winter's Tale - Shakespeare

10) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar - Shakespeare

11) Twelfth Night - Shakespeare

12) My Family & Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

13) The Napoleon of Notting Hill - G.K. Chesterton

14) Bambi: a Life in the Woods - Felix Salten

15) The Weight of Glory - C.S. Lewis (Chr)

16) Home Education - Charlotte Mason (Chr)

17) The Small Woman - Alan Burgess

18) A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

19) The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis

20) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (R) but a very long time ago

21) The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie

22) The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith (R)

23) The Confessions of St Augustine (Chr)

24) The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope

25) My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin (A)

26) The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens

27) Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (A)

28) Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte

29) I Can Jump Puddles - Alan Marshall (A)

30) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie

31) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

32) For the Term of His Natural Life - Marcus Clarke (A)

33) The Tragedy of the Korosko - Arthur Conan Doyle

34) I Find Australia - William Hatfield (A)

35) Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers

36) The Five Red Herrings - Dorothy Sayers

37) The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

38) The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

39) My Love Must Wait - Ernestine Hill (A)

40) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

41) Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert

42) A Little Bush Maid - Mary Grant Bruce (C)

43) Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

44) The Metamorphosis - Frank Kafka

45) All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque (R)

46) All's Well That Ends Well - Shakespeare

47) An Old Captivity - Nevil Shute

48) A Fortunate Life - A.B. Fahey (A) I've read an abridged children's edition which  

       was excellent; this is the unabridged version.

49) The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy (C)

50) Madame Curie by Eve Curie

Other possibilities:

I Will Repay - Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The Thirty-nine Steps - John Buchan (R)

Cover Her Face - P.D. James
The Singing Sands - Josephine Tey
The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar - Josephine Tey

Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Sir Nigel - Arthur Conan Doyle
Train to Pakistan - Khushwant Singh
Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank (a classic post-apocalyptic novel)
The Keys of the Kingdom - A.J. Cronin
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman - P.D. James
The House of the Four Winds - John Buchan
Seven Little Australians - Ethel Turner
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Green Dolphin Country - Elizabeth Goudge
Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

The Birth by Gene Edwards

 
I read The Birth by Gene Edwards years ago (in 1995 actually) and just finished reading it for the second time. I have a friend who reads it every Christmas and I've always meant to read it again at this time of the year but I only just got to it this past week. It's a short, easy read and this poem which the author shares before the story starts gives an insight into what he had in mind when he wrote it:

I shall drink from waters deeper than the 

spring,

And from the poet's eye shall I read his 

book.

But, oh, what I might learn should I dare to 

look 

From God's view even of the simplest 

thing.

Christian Maynell

This story of the Incarnation begins in heaven when Michael the Archangel feels a strange compulsion to visit the Door, the passageway to the physical realm.

It had been ages since the Door had opened into that realm. Not since Malachi the prophet had there been commerce between the two creations.

It is the fullness of time and Lord has a mission for Michael: to open a pathway from the heavens to the earth.

Now the Door between the two realms opened again....Could it be that something of the very essence and totality of God was about to pass into the other realm?

In the midst of this incomprehensible moment, the voice of Recorder sounded forth once again.

"Many of us have passed through this portal that joins our two realms. Long ago, as you recall, the Door was always open. The two realms joined together...at a place called Eden. After the Great Tragedy, the Door closed.

"On frequent occasions, at the command of our God, the Door has opened. Several times the Lord stepped through this Door to visit Abraham. Once the Door opened for Moses and the seventy elders to step into our realm. Once also for Isaiah, who stood in this very doorway and looked upon our dwelling place. But always the Door has closed again......But never before has anything such as this occurred.

"Today, the Door opens inside a woman's womb!"

This unusual Christmas story is one that looks at both realms - from the angels in heaven as they see God's eternal purpose unfold; to Elizabeth and Zachariah, Mary and Joseph, and others in the earthly realm whose lives are woven into this wonderful drama. Even though it's a fictionalised account, I thought it was a refreshing and thoughful view of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.