Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
September 12, 2020
Maybe not the best day in the year, but I did turn things around today. Lost my patience this morning after vacuum became unplugged several times, screaming and swearing loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. Promptly put vacuum away and sat down to read a book and drink coffee. Then set my sights on other tasks.
Pleased to report I ended up accomplishing much and smiling often(ish).
Earlier this week, I prepared for the coming massive drop in temperature (over 60 degrees in 24 hours) and snowstorm by putting buckets over three of my sedum plants. The sedum had just come into bloom and I couldn’t bear thinking about the bees and butterflies losing that food. While we did lose a huge limb from our red maple, the plants fared better.
September 12, 2020
The sedum survived and my winged friends were out in force today.
(Shout-out to Michelle who would’ve been fifty years old today. She also loved flora and fauna.)
Allium and butterfly. May 22, 2020.
River walk, Blakeslee, PA. August 18, 2019.
If you look closely
over and underexposed
but also detailed
Irrigation ditch. March 30, 2019.
Delicate balance
sustainable extraction
symbiotic life
I’ve been trying to work on my revisions this afternoon. I’m listening to Beethoven through my earbuds in an attempt to drown out the present reality and it seems to work in short bursts. I’m focused and then . . .I’m not. So I decided to look at some photos to find something to put here, and began examining pictures of birds, flowers, waterways, and other typically calming images.
May 3, 2019. Clearwater, Florida.
Well? Right now, my heart is racing. Adrenaline is pumping and it’s as if there’s no escaping my anxiety.
Rather than try to (unsuccessfully) distract myself from these feelings, I’m going to try another approach. I’m going to sit with my anxiety. Because maybe it’s like how you’re not supposed to run when you encounter a bear: if I don’t run from my anxiety, maybe it’ll quit chasing me.
White Admiral Butterfly. Blakeslee, PA. August 8, 2019
outshining the rocks
White Admiral Butterfly
no salute required
True strength is delicate. ~ Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
Unidentified butterfly, South Fork of Cave Creek. May 15, 2019.
Photo taken on hike to Square Top Lakes. August 28, 2019.
Soon-to-be Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly. Blakeslee, PA. August 18, 2019.
Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn’t look anything like a butterfly.
~ Lynn Margulis
My wish is to stay always like this,
living quietly in a corner of nature.
~ Claude Monet
Skipper butterfly
darts quickly around flower
buffet of pollen.
Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal. ~ Russell Lynes
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
~ William Wordsworth
I just called my Democratic Senator and Representative in Washington, D.C. to tell their staffers I absolutely support Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey’s twin resolutions for a #GreenNewDeal. Neither staffer could tell me how my so-called representatives felt about this bold plan for stabilizing the climate via jobs and economic/social/environmental justice. We’re headed for a fiery, hot crash and many of the people in power don’t seem to care. I’m exhausted by their willful ignorance, but at the same time I believe we-the-people can and must rise up to protect our natural home. We cannot betray her.
I hope you’ll join me in fighting for the planet. Please call your Representatives and Senators today to urge them to support the Resolution for a Green New Deal.
Delicate yet fierce
battered, tattered survival
no one gets out whole
Last year’s invasion
Painted Ladies everywhere
wish they’d come again
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
A good reminder
full lifetime packed in two weeks
live as if that’s all
There’s no palette as rich as a garden.
And the intensity of it – I make this statement all the time:
You can’t plan nature; you court her.
~ Robert Irwin
Yesterday, as Zippy and I walked Emma around our neighborhood, we noted a larger-than-typical number of butterflies. We wondered if we were in a migration path. Sure enough, when we got home and looked in the backyard, we discovered this:
Rather than orange and black like the monarch butterfly, the Painted Lady is orange and brown. Migrations are also happening elsewhere. It was awe-inspiring to be in their lovely company as they soaked up the sun and flowery nutrition from the rabbit brush.
Another generous gift from Mother Earth.
When I was in Florida visiting my mother last October, we took many walks around her community. On one of those walks, I spotted the familiar orange-and-black-and-white markings of a Monarch Butterfly. It was completely intact but no longer of this world. I gently cupped it in one hand for the rest of the walk and, when back at my mom’s, carefully wrapped the body in a tissue and tucked it inside an empty medication bottle.
I forgot about my little treasure until today.
While we have lovely butterflies in Colorado (lots and lots of Swallowtails), I have never seen a Monarch here. I know they’re struggling as a species, and that hurts my heart. It’s strange to have lived a childhood filled with these beauties feeding on milkweed plants, and then exist without them.
I was very happy to find this one on our walk, even if was no longer in flight. Nothing else looks like a Monarch.
.
