Yesterday I uploaded 5 Observations. It was a poem of a day:
Bird, bee, ant,
Fungus, plant.
The Colonia where we live now, Centro, has had over 1750 Observations made in 2024. My “Year in Review” tells me only 740 were mine, which means the majority were other Observers.
Our new home is in a totally different part of the city, where just 40 Observations have been made in 2024. (Only one was bees, not N. perilampoides.)
I do not have much, being not a “have things” girl by nature, however the new house is half the size of this house, which I have long felt is entirely too large for us, so some shoehorning will have to take place. Likely I will reward myself or run outdoors when I feel my spirit flag, here and there and then eventually only there.
I look forward to swooshing our new Colonia’s number upward for 2025 and I feel good that this Colonia will have plenty of Observers in my absence.
But I would be remiss if I did not share my gratitude now, because when I started on iNaturalist in 2020, that poem of a day was how I saw it, but yesterday I knew Cinnamon Hummingbird, Western Honeybee, Twig Ant, Wax Scale, Graceful Spurge.
And that is entirely thanks to the community here. 
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I secretly hope that you are keeping a journal that will be made into a book or movie some day. That’s because your life often sounds like a book that I’d like to read or a movie that I’d like to watch!
Thanks for being such a kind, spirit-focused presence on the forums here. It means a lot to me, and I bet a lot of other folks.
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This is exquisitely kind.
I like you, too. :) I smile when I see your username.
Also look what just… hatched? I am unsure of the right word.
I am so glad! I had stopped taking daily photos of the pupa and linking them in the Similar Observation Set and was just sort of waiting until the day I saw ants devouring it, figuring it was a bust.
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That’s so cool! I think I’d call it emergence? Look what emerged?
Both you and broacher are favorite voices and are great storytellers! That’s a gift not everyone receives… keep talking, please!
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Eclosure : )
Go and put your new place on the map! But equally it’s nice to be a drop in the ocean, to know that so many other people are active!
Ps, what is a ‘Colonia’? Something like a urbanizacion/rural barrio/parcela?
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A Colonia is a leftover word from when Spain was colonizing. It is literally a colony. So originally each Colonia was once sort of functioning independently within the colonial rule, anchored by its own church (shocker).
Now it means a geographic area with it own CP (postal code). A Colonia no longer has any local governing authority and is basically a neighborhood within a larger town or city , though it may still be delineated with walls and/or gates.
That said Colonia Centro is a misnomer because it is actually comprised of all the neighborhoods in the center of the city that were in recent years smooshed together into one giant Colonia for ease of revitalization and instilling requirements regarding non-desctruction of historical buildings and so on. So Colonia Centro is actually comprised of many smaller barrios with their own churches/forts, such as La Ermita (the oldest here), San Juan, Santa Lucia, San Cristobal, Santa Ana, La Mejorada, etc. Here is my neighborhood (and the local accent).
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Understood, thank you : ) Funnily enough there are some similarly named towns in Spain, mostly as a response to the depoblacion after the conquests of the christian kingdoms.
So colonia can be used as a smaller social geographical term, rather than a political/government one? I like the adaptation of colonia centro!
All in all there are disappointingly few words that have made it from the Americas to the peninsula. If I have more questions I will message you, lest the thread be de-railed : )