Thursday, July 1, 2010

Fairies in the Backyard

The other night I picked up our daughters from my mother-in-laws house after a baseball game.  It was after nine o'clock but Emily was wide awake and chattering about the lightening bugs in the backyard.

My mother-in-law mentioned that she has hundreds if not thousands of them in her backyard.  She lives in a townhouse and the land slopes downward from her place.  There is grass and brush and it is lightly wooded with another development behind hers. She led me over to her sliding glass doors leading out to her porch.

The sight before me was magical.  At the bottom where the land sloped all you saw was what looked like miniature flashing lights.  It almost looked like a fairy had sprinkled pixie dust and it was reflecting the moon's rays.  Except, there was no moon that night.


Emily grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the door.

"Come see.  Come see," she said excitedly.

Apparently the best view was from my mother-in-law's couch.  Emily perched on the back of the couch to peer out the window.  Our reflections in the glass made it a little more difficult to see but not according to my two-year old.  She thought it was even more beautiful.

Here is a video from YouTube that is a little like what we saw but there were probably about five times as many lights and it was even more amazing because you were looking down at them.  The little flashing lights are the lightening bugs.



We have been impatiently waiting for the lightening bugs at our house but they seem to have congregated at my mother-in-law's.  Only a few stragglers have shown up, nothing like the masses at her house.

11 comments:

Lift Like A Mom said...

I've been following you on Twitter...and finally your blog :)

Dina said...

growing up in nj we had tons of lightening bugs, now living in colorado there are none. its kinda depressing especially since my son has never seen one.and i believe they are fairies.

Stephanie Faris said...

Somebody said there don't seem to be as many fireflies as there used to be. I do know in the Smokies, they have a place every year where all the fireflies seem to congregate. We were up there while it was going on but you had to pay and take a shuttle to see it and we ran out of time. You got it free and didn't have to go anywhere!

Organic Motherhood with Cool Whip said...

Awwwww!!! What a wonderful, magical experience. We go down walking on this forest path by our house and there is this one meadow where the lightening bugs love to congregate. The boys just love it there. It's so beautiful!!

Mindy said...

I didn't grow up with lightening bugs, but they're one thing I love about the summer here. Ella and I went on a firefly hunt the other night and had so much fun!

Midnite Skys said...

We live in a city in Ohio. My daughters grandma lives in West Virgina in the rural area. The amount of lightening bugs at her grandma house was just like that 5 times and we also saw the lighting bugs on the ground.... She loved watching them fly around. We would sit outside for a long time just watching them. She didn't want to catch them, she wanted to dance with them... It was a beautiful site!
she called them the night time fairies.
There were also these flies that where all white that flew around in the day time, that she call the daytime fairies.

Lourie said...

When we lived in VA, we would see them by the hundreds every summer. I miss that.

Abby McG said...

We live in the Philly 'burbs, and this year, I have never seen so many fireflies! Every night there are thousands! Last year there were about six. Amazing - I love watching them!

The Drama Mama said...

There's definitely something magical about places where fireflies frequent. I love that we have an abundance of them here too.

CoconutPalmDesigns said...

We have lots of lightning bugs here. Sometimes they are so bright I am not even sure they are lightning bugs.

I have an award over at my blog for you.

Cheers :-)
- Rainforest Mommy

http://rainforestmommy.blogspot.com

hypermom said...

Over here, we have fireflies and they are truly magical :) Thanks for the reminder.

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