I enter the workshop in the dark. You have to go inside to turn on the light, but that doesn’t matter, because I’ve lived here for ages, and I can find my way blindfolded. Hey, weird, there’s already a light on! And on the ground? Huh?
Glowing lights on the ground is a bit peculiar
There is a small window in the workshop, so it isn’t super dark, but this green light is quite bright, and unfamiliar to me. What is lying there on the ground? Did someone drop a tiny digital gadget, did a led-light fall out of a tool, what’s going on? How is that possible?
When the light is on, I have the greatest difficulty figuring out what it actually is, because the little light pales in comparison to all those lumens shining on top of it, and the little thing it came out of is apparently very small.
Look at that! A glowworm!
Why do they call that a worm? It’s not a worm at all. I had never seen one before. We do have fireflies here, but they blink. A glowworm is always on. Apparently, that is quite an effort, because the little insect doesn’t make a radiant impression – that is to say, it does radiate, because it is on, but it doesn’t look like there is much life left in it.
And so it isn’t a worm-like insect at all; it looks more like a woodlouse. (Why do they call that a woodlouse?) Those stole my heart once when I was painting a wall in the garden mint green, and poked hard into the holes with my brush, after which mint-green woodlice crawled out. And I subsequently thought: “Oh my god, look at that, how beautiful nature is, the insects adapt to the color of the wall!”
How much of a city-girlcan you be? Only on second thought did I realize it was because I had been poking so hard into those little holes with my mint-green brush that I had painted everyone mint-green in the woodlouse’s house. But anyway, woodlice are cute (except for their name) because when they feel threatened, they roll themselves up into a perfect little ball that is completely inconspicuous.
And otherwise, they just crawl through life without actually bothering us. They eat your strawberries, but well, since I’m not that successful in the strawberry farming anyway, they can eat those three pathetic strawberries for all I care.
Glowworms (why that name?) look a lot like them but cannot roll themselves up. Apparently not. This one probably had a dead battery; it wasn’t walking, crawling, rolling up, or anything, but it was giving off light. He let himself be swept up easily, and fell without a fuss onto the tile near a small patch of grass where I thought he would feel more at ease than on the concrete floor of our workshop.
Not much life. Still, just keep your light on
I think it’s impressive. I don’t understand it, and I’m not going to Google it either, but should you know more about it or have any nice theories about it, dear readers, I’d love to hear it, dear readers, I’d love to hear them!
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(Disclaimer: I’m a bit tired of the keyword stuff and Google’s dictatorship. So here they are, and I’m also hoping for the cleverness of AI in this matter that it will still be found and read, but that I don’t have to force myself to use the right terms in the title and headings. #glowworm #fireflies # Portugal)
We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal. We started to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa.You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere. Since Covid we rent the houses for a longer period of time, not as holiday houses anymore.
Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation.
In the weekend we publish it on Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.