On a rare Friday off from work, I decided to take the I-83 expressway out of Baltimore to see a wonderful local sight that heralds the end of summer. Winding across the county line, I drove through the woodlands and over the road bridge that spans Loch Raven, continuing north on the Jarrettsville Pike. In the fields by the roadside, tall rows of corn were planted and approaching harvest-time. Past Hess Road, a sea of sunflowers was blooming underneath the clear September sky, stretching across the rolling hillsides to the horizon. I parked in the gas station lot across the road, and spent an hour walking among the flowers. Before leaving, I stopped at the stand by the roadside to buy little bouquet of sunflowers for Jane, wrapping the stems in moistened newspaper for the car ride home. That night, we discovered a white, woolly caterpillar feeding on the leaves. Jane raised this little creature in a glass terrarium for the next three weeks, picking plants from the sidewalk and watching as it fed and cocooned itself underneath the decaying leaves. It transformed into a beautiful Virginia tiger moth (Spilosoma virginica) in the early days of autumn.
