*************************** Following last week, I went again with some clients to “Hinemo,” an oden, skewers, and wine bar in Shimbashi. The wines we ordered were the following two bottles. When I don’t carry my digital camera, I used to have to take slightly blurry photos with my phone or give up on photos entirely, but with Rakuten blogs, it’s convenient to quote images directly from the shop.
Minervois du Donjon Tradition ’05
Coteaux du Languedoc Laurier ’04 (Ma Fraquie)
On their own, both wines give the impression of typical, decent Southern French wines. But when paired with strongly flavored skewers like at this place, wines with this level of punch and character work really well.
When I got home, the dragonfly nymph that had been surfacing the night before finally climbed fully out of the water. The moment had come. However, even after midnight, the emergence hadn’t started, and since I was fairly tipsy, I went to sleep. Early the next morning, I checked…
The emergence was technically successful—the dragonfly had emerged. But…
What I feared became reality. The emergence site was too close to the water surface, so the wings and abdomen were submerged. The dragonfly must have struggled in this posture for hours. It was completely weakened.
I carefully lifted it out of the water and began drying its wings.
I took a commemorative photo. It wasn’t trying to fly much, so I placed it on a branch of the grapevine on the balcony. When I looked again, it was gone. All we could do was provide a safe starting point; the rest depends on the dragonfly’s own vitality.
There are still several nymphs that seem likely to emerge soon. Next time, I extended the two chopsticks to make a higher path and lowered the water level, to avoid repeating this mistake.