Leaf of the Day: Thinking Time and Two Tiny Wasp Galls..

Today was one of those days where the long twisting path of good intentions takes the whole day to navigate, with little to show.. well on paper anyway. I have finished the essay, the 4th rewrite after finding yet more fascinating information about Catesby, stretched some big paper, cleared a space for the even bigger drawing board that has the paper on it, which involved rearranging the nature table yet again, and thought about what to put on its gleaming, white, pristine and untouchable surface.
I am at the ideas stage of a few projects which all seem to need "thinking about". Thinking time is a great part of being a designer or artist or writer etc. Sometimes it is a good excuse for going for a coffee or not doing anything at all, but usually it is just a necessary part of the process. Staring into the middle distance is not so much a state of catatonia, as a state of contemplation.(maybe sometimes it is hard to tell the difference). I often just sit down with a sketchbook and scribble and have done quite a lot of scribbles over the last few days. If any of them develop legs I will post the development process but without an end result they would be incomprehensible.
The only problem I have with ideas is having too many. They circle round and round my head like swarms of annoying flies and sometimes are just as difficult to catch. If I don't sketch them immediately, they are gone. Then there is the agonising, decision-making process; which ones to pursue?.. and then I am plagued by the possibility/ probability that I have made the wrong choice.

So I was pleased to leave all that and simply draw this little piece of wood with the two tiny wasp galls. I have found even more photos from Berkeley University's Calphotos, which has a staggering 290 photos of wasp galls, most by Joyce Gross who took some of yesterdays wonderful photos. See this great resource here . These I am sure are what I found, created by Live Oak gall wasp.



I also neglected the architect of these wonderful creations yesterday. These tiny Gall Wasps differ from species to species but here is the Live Oak gall wasp by Edward S. Ross from Enature.com field guides,

here


Tomorrow some thing very important is happening here in America and I doubt I will get any drawing done !

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Two Tiny Wasp Galls