California sister in a Healdsburg yard.
Monday, I wrote a blog post for Healdsburg History’s website; the title of the post is, “Serendipity finds me in Healdsburg.” www.healdsburghistory.blogspot.com
Yesterday afternoon, I swirled around in the northwest flowerbed chasing tiny butterflies, camera in hand. Flickering visions of delight, the butterflies—the smallest ones are about the size of my pinky fingernail—were a challenge to capture through my lens, as they danced their way from flower to flower and rejoiced in being butterflies.
The garden has provided me with butterfly riches this year—I’ve tentatively identified (with a lot of help) common buckeye, Western tiger swallowtail (although it has avoided the camera lens), painted lady, common white, fiery skipper, Acmon blue, California hairstreak, and common checkered skipper butterflies. Eight species—eight! Oh my.
After reading my post, but before knowing about my butterfly adventures, my friend Sheila, sent me a poem, which includes the following excerpt:
“Up they soar, the planet’s butterflies,
pigments from the warm body of the earth,
cinnabar, ochre, phosphor yellow, gold
a swarm of basic elements aloft.”
From a poem
by Inger Christensen
Translated by Susanna Nied
Butterflies—tiny delights of elemental sparkle, skipping through the air, playing tag, and frolicking across the flowers. The world is theirs but for a day, a week, or a summer. Sheila found my day in a poem—now THAT’S serendipity!
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