Tag Archives: butterflies

Summer ought to be warm.

family, food and cooking, grandchildren, , ,

Daughter Kate and her family are visiting me for a while, so I’ve been occupied with them and not thinking about my blog. But today they are visiting friends in another city, and I walked around the garden where a pollinator party is ongoing….

This time it was a Cabbage White butterfly that got my attention, in the midst of bees who were also enjoying the lavender.

All the nectar-drinking creatures seem to be luxuriating in the heat; when they luxuriate it means they are all limbered up and move more easily, and faster. At least, that’s how it seems to  me. I feel that way, except for the faster part.

Kabocha squash growing bigger…

Many of the calendulas are spent, but this one just opened:

Before my family arrived, I tried a new zucchini bread recipe to have ready for them. I used this one from the New York Times Cooking site, but cut the sugar by half, and doubled the lemon zest: Olive Oil Zucchini Bread. (If you use this link you can access the recipe, that I am “giving” you.) It’s quite delicious. Unfortunately, I had to buy the zucchinis for it! I guess I didn’t sow my seeds in a good place, as the plants are not growing. I will have to wait longer to have a satisfying summer squash harvest. It’s been years since I’ve been satisfied that way.

I had a longing to make real strawberry shortcake, using the shortcake recipe from my oldest edition of the Joy of Cooking. We ate it for Rigo’s belated seventh birthday party. That recipe called for a little butter, plus “milk or cream.” Note to self: Don’t use all cream! Everyone loved it, but it was super rich.

We are all about soccer this week, as my dear people brought me their zeal for the sport and for the World Cup happening right now. I’ve watched two games with them already, and expect to see two more, including the final game this weekend. My children all played on recreational soccer teams as youths and I do love watching. These professionals are incredible athletes, and I am constantly amazed. Kate’s family have just moved from Argentina, and are excited that Argentina is still in the playoffs. When Raj and Rigo built a Lego street scene, it included a soccer field with a game and spectators. Go, Argentines!

See how they banter and riot.

nature, poetry, ,

It’s the season for Cabbage Whites! I’ve written about them before, and posted several poems. Mary doesn’t name these as Cabbage Whites, but I’m assuming. It doesn’t matter; the delightful thing is that she describes the essential “delicate in a hurry” nature of them, such that one wonders if they will ever stop and drink. Of course they eventually do, and I can get a decent picture of them then; but it’s the lobbing and banging I can never capture, so I’m glad Mary has done it, in rhythm and words.

SEVEN WHITE BUTTERFLIES

Seven white butterflies
delicate in a hurry look
how they bang the pages
…….of their wings as they fly

to the fields of mustard yellow
and orange and plain
gold all eternity
…….is in the moment this is what

Blake said Whitman said such
wisdom in the agitated
motions of the mind seven
…….dancers floating

even as worms toward
paradise see how they banter
and riot and rise
…….to the trees flutter

lob their white bodies into
the invisible wind weightless
lacy willing
…….to deliver themselves unto

the universe now each settles
down on a yellow thumb on a
brassy stem now
…….all seven are rapidly sipping

from the golden tower who
would have thought it could be so easy?

-Mary Oliver

 

Deadfall Meadows

family, mountains, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m currently staying at my daughter Pippin’s place in far-northern California. Her family lives at about 4,000 ft., but my first day here we took a drive and then a hike that brought us near Mt. Eddy and to an elevation over 7,000 ft., at Deadfall Meadows.

The meadows stretch up the mountain around Deadfall Creek, which fills Upper, Middle and Lower Deadfall Lakes. Thousands of butterflies seemed to be accompanying us through those meadows; we especially were taken with the small pale lavender-blue ones that gave the impression of flower petals fluttering in the breeze.

Actual wildflowers were even more abundant. I am sharing here fewer than half of the ones that we admired and usually tried to identify, or confirm the identity of.

Larkspur
Scarlet Gilia
Blue-eyed Grass
Bigelow’s Sneezeweed

As we hiked I was only using my phone to take pictures or use the Seek app, and I never checked the time. We had left the house before 9:00 and when we got back to the car with our hiking all done, it was after 4:00, which was to me completely shocking.

Jamie in particular felt the length of the day; he always says that he doesn’t mind hiking, it’s his legs that do not like it. He’s seven years old and is amazingly chipper even when droopy, or lying down on the trail.

Our goal was the largest Deadfall Lake, the Middle one. We sat on the shore for an hour eating our snacky lunch and cooling our feet.

A water snake streaked out from the rocks in the direction of my feet, but when he got a few inches away and had a good look, it took him a split second to shift into reverse and swim back into his hiding place. After poking his head out and looking at the more beautiful members of the family, he posed briefly for Pippin and eventually left the area altogether for deeper waters.

White Marsh Marigold

Some people ride horseback on this trail, and muck it up into mudholes in the many places where the path crosses the creek. On our way back down scores of little butterflies were drinking at the mud.

The pale lavender-blue ones are likely blues, coppers or hairstreaks. There are more than six dozen species in those three categories in California, so Pippin read to me when we later tried to narrow down the identity of the particular ones that day. We had to wait until the end of the trail to get a good view, when Ivy was given permission to catch a butterfly while it was focused on its refreshment.

Not long after our encounter with the drinking butteries, we were back at the parking lot and driving home. We had only hiked about three miles, but at our mostly meandering rate necessitated by those with cameras and short legs, and much trekking uphill, it had taken most of the day — a beautifully satisfying day.

Seep Monkeyflower

All these things happened.

housework, my garden, nature, ,
Not today’s specimen.

This morning as I was adding water to the fountain, a Monarch fluttered by, the first one I’ve seen this year. The next moment, I saw another butterfly across the garden, the one I see more often, and I thought I could find its name on my blog, but I can’t. It’s yellow and black. Two butterflies in two seconds!

I went to the community center to drop off my ballot, to the library to return a book, and to Costco to return an item that I’d bought impulsively only Sunday. As soon as I began unloading my car that evening, I knew it was a mistake, and did not even bring it into the house. It was a set of serving bowls that charmed me just long enough to necessitate today’s trip back to the store. Harder mistakes have happened.

Cabbage Whites have been about, too.

My last stop was the thrift store, where a whole box of stuff including toys was rejected, because there was an all-metal (and clean, I tell you!) Nyger bird feeder stuck on top. The attendant reminded me of some rude Chinese restaurant waiters I have known, in the way he angrily judged my offerings as being contaminated by “poop.” I admit I went away from there briefly miffed.

How could I not be happy, when I had accomplished my outing before noon, and cleared my garage of another small load of stuff?  My success gave me energy to keep sorting and organizing for a few hours. I threw away lots of pictures taken 60-80 years ago that are of people I never knew, or are so bad as to be insulting to the people I did know.

I took a nap, and then it was time to make dinner. While I was eating and watching the birds at the feeder outside, I read poetry. And it was the poetry that made me want to document that it was a morning with two butterflies.