Edwin Hutchinson, Gulf Fritillary
Lady butterfly,
I saw you a week ago.
Now you are back,
with your lover,
In tandem flights
And helical tangents:
How many times
You return gladly!In the legends there is the story of the butterfly lovers. The loved each other so much that even in death, their hearts were fixed faithfully upon one another. In honor of their devotion to each other, the gods changed them into butterflies and let them come back together in reincarnation after reincarnation.
Would that all of us could manifest such determination and faith to what we love!
A friend of mine was growing passion flower vines and became annoyed at all the little holes that were being eaten with. She wondered what she could spray them with, and I said, “Oh, don’t do that! Those are holes from butterfly caterpillars feeding on them. If you destroy them, you won’t have all these gorgeous butterflies around!” So she fell in love with butterflies, gained a new hobby of studying them, and now grows even more native plants and other butterfly flowers instead of just her roses, and introduced me to how to grow roses organically. It seemed to be a good exchange.
I have an entire wall outside my house covered with passion flowers and butterflies right now. I love to go out in the garden and see them flitting about, watch the butterflies enjoying their new wings, and hunt for the little caterpillars. The big carpenter bees have also taken a love to these flowers. From all this exuberance, there is one passion fruit on the entire mess of vines. And the dogs will probably find that and pull it off to play with it.
No Responses