Little Doughty

My art, my plants, my cats

[littledoughty]

I skipped inktober this year because I am Tired. But I know drawing is good for me and I’m trying to stay off social media (to small/medium avail) and I have thousands of projects half started or barely birthed. So here’s a lovely autumnal sweetgum that I started two years ago that I finally finished.

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A flying fish fry from last year. Baby fishes are often referred to as fry. Flying fish live almost exclusively in the neuston zone, laying eggs, feeding on plankton, and evading many predators.

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This is the first thing I’ve ever crocheted. The left side was started by my grandmother, and I inherited the unfinished blanket and yarn. Just last year I finally made my foray into the fiber arts, and it has been immensely soothing. This blanket is almost entirely double crochet (I think it’s treble in UK?) with a single crochet edge.

Everyone loves it, me, the cats, the spouse. I’m attempting a granny square sweater right now but the urge to make another blanket is strong.

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Been working on something new

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Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,

the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders

of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is

nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world

you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver

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The argonaut octopus is pelagic, and unusual in that it lives close to the ocean’s surface and that the females secrete a paper thin protective shell, which is unique to the genus.

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Floating anemone are rarely seen, but they hang out in the neuston with a bubble float on their pedal disc.

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Phytoplankton! One of the bedrocks of both freshwater and ocean ecosystems, also essential to the carbon cycle. They account for at least half the earth’s oxygen production despite being about 1% of biomass.

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Anchovies are an abundant filter feeding fish, their larva have been found in marine neustons and are abundant source of food for many predatory marine animals. And also people.

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Today we have some goofy mola mola or sunfish larva. These are teeny tiny, smaller than a lentil, and some of them will grow into the heaviest bony fish in the sea.

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Sargassum is a macroalgae that the Sargasso sea is named after. It serves as both a temporary and permanent environment for many ocean creatures.

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Magnapinna, or bigfin squid. Possibly one of the deepest squid, its adult form has only recently been photographed, and its also known for its long tentacles.

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Ballyhoo! The ballyhoo halfbeak resides in warm waters and eats other small creatures as well as seagrass. There are many species in the halfbeak family, and all of them are a little silly.

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Chaetognaths or arrow worms are mostly a small and short-lived phylum of ocean creatures. They are the second most common component of zooplankton, copepods being the first, and both are a key food source for the predatory fishes of the ocean.

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This pelagic ctenophore, or comb jelly, is a mostly translucent animal, the rainbow colors are scattered light from its moving cilia.

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A baby oarfish trying to survive to adulthood in the water column. Giant oarfish are the longest bony fish.

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A humble copepod, a type of zooplankton that is prolific in all oceans.