Firefly Delight

Photo by Jim Richardson

Happy Fourth of July to you all.

We had a busy but beautiful night in the Garden last night. We all noticed an increased presence of my favorite insect of all time, the magnificent FIREFLY. You should all shuffle yourselves down to see them in their glory in our little shared space. It's pretty darn neat that we have so many of them in the middle of Brooklyn. Sheila recently sent me this NY Times article on Fireflies, which is a darn good read.

Here are some interesting facts: The larvae live in the ground for two years, and it's in their last two weeks of their lifespan, where the adults come out to glow to attract mates. They aren't flies at all, but beetles and there are more than 2.000 species worldwide. And there is a predator that looks like a firefly that blinks to deceive the male fireflies into thinking that they are females luring them in for a kill!

It really is a great article. Nothing, in my opinion, is more magical and definitively summer than the sight of the blinking firefly