Butterflies and Dragonflies

The two yellow butterflies are dancing in the air. They dip, pirouette and soar. I'm sure they must be birth twins and they are celebrating life, the end of the cocoon and the wonder of the wings. They land near each other on one garden plant, both opening and closing their wings in synchronization.

After a short rest they again take flight, one coming up to investigate the upper deck and this person observing them. The other studying the wonder of the trees and the fruit ripening on them. Then they find each other to resume their freedom of flight dance. Their life cycle may be brief but it is beautiful, brilliant, unique of design and symbolism.

Today dragonfly also came to visit the garden, different in shape and more steady in flight than the butterfly but vivid itself in color and sense of peacefulness and liberty. The Chipmunks are playing tag in and out of the boulders, climbing up the barrel in down again after investigating all the flowers, they revel in the garden and seemed to feel I have designed, planted, carried home and placed large rocks just for their pleasure to romp in like children let loose at a theme park.

I feel like I'm the Disneyland in the neighborhood as so many animals love to explore my garden. I try to discourage them from acting as if it is the local luncheonette and eating up all the flowers and plants. The cotton tails and deer can be especially destructive but I realize it is their home and they have inhabited it long before we people came to join them and it is our idea to change the landscape, preferring roses to wild sage, lilacs to scrub oak and fruit trees to firs.

So I gently discourage total destruction and try to combine the wild with plants that are natural to the area. I search out seeds that are indigenous to the high mountains, cold winters and that can survive warm summers. Watering is a daily ritual done slowly and thoroughly by hand it is a time to meditate, to enjoy the beauty of God's country where I am privileged to live, surrounded by beauty, and sharing it with the creatures of the wild.

06012001