Tag Archives: cabbage white butterfly

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

 

We could dance and sing.

books, my garden, quotes, , , , , ,

Windows above my kitchen sink and near my computer look out on the garden. When the evening sun’s slanting rays make flower stalks shimmer, it is my favorite sort of painting to gaze at, and I can hardly believe it is right here in my back yard — especially in spring when swaths of those blooms are popping up in turn and in overlapping layers, first the white ixia, then blue penstemon and the palest yellow-white California poppies, now the lavender and the rusty yarrow, and banks of little daisies I can never remember the name of.

Probably I should go back and read some of Elizabeth Von Arnim’s descriptions of gardens, to teach me how to convey the scene that makes me so happy. Not only in Elizabeth and Her German Garden but even more in The Enchanted April she expresses her love for this kind of overflowing, colorful and scented landscape, and gardens that are so prolific with blooms that bowls of them bless the rooms of the Italian castle in April (in April, too).

I don’t have a cutting garden most of the time, but right now I am still getting a few heavenly-sweet sweet peas with short stems. When I was snipping them to stick into a tiny vase today, I spied a Cabbage White in the patch of chives. As I understand, those caterpillars eat just about anything, and some years I have seen evidence of that behavior. I wonder how this year will be….

I just discovered that I have never once reviewed a book by Elizabeth von Arnim, or posted a quote by her, on my blog. I guess this is because my relationship with her as a person and writer is about much more than any one of her books; and isn’t it always somewhat of a mystery why we connect with particular authors? Mary Kathryn says it is the writer’s voice that she connects with, and it doesn’t matter what they write about, if one loves that particular voice.

The distance in time and culture between Elizabeth and me seems vast, though it is “only” 100 years. Our life experiences are worlds apart, but as I’ve listened to her voice and her stories, rich with humor that makes me laugh out loud, I’ve been comforted again and again. Today, I didn’t know her name would even come up. Since it has, and while it is yet springtime, here are some words from her that express the feelings of us both:

“Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here!
What a resurrection of beauty there is in my garden,
and of brightest hope in my heart.”

Today when I went out to try for a picture of the Lambs Ears, I discovered that the Narrow-Leaf Milkweed flowers have started to open. These are the plants from which I collected Monarch butterfly eggs to incubate indoors, a few years ago. Aphids always decimate the plants, and after that first year’s destruction I realized that any hatched caterpillars would run out of food fast, because the leaves are literally slim pickings to begin with, and then the aphids suck all the life out of them. (By the way, you don’t want to bring in ladybugs to eat the aphids on your milkweed plants because ladybugs also eat Monarch eggs!!) Back then I had to feed my Monarch caterpillars from my Showy Milkweed plants which have large leaves and which the aphids don’t bother so much.

So far the aphids have not arrived — or at least, not noticeably. And the two plants of this species of milkweed come up bigger every spring. I see in the photo enlarged here that ants are among the insects hanging out there, so maybe the aphids will come soon. But for now, their delicate flower crowns are pristine. The bees will soon be “dancing” around them for joy.

She danced in with a leafy surprise.

my garden, nature, , , , , , , ,

I was following a Cabbage White around the kale patch, when I happened to look into a squash blossom. It was pointing straight up like a cup, and I saw a hoverfly in the bottom, not hovering at that moment, but I assume drinking nectar…? He didn’t move. While I was pointing my camera down there, another hoverfly zipped right in. For a moment they were piled up, but soon arranged themselves one on either side of the cup. Who knows how long they might have sat companionably at their juice bar if a third insect, flying so fast I couldn’t see, hadn’t flown in, and quickly out again; that agitated the fellows and they departed.

On the same tour of my estate I noticed bees at the dwarf pomegranate bushes. They would buzz around slowly checking out various blooms; I soon realized that they were looking for flowers that were at the right stage of opening, because they have to crawl deep into the narrow cave to get what they want. The flowers don’t seem to be open very long before they start to wilt, and then there is no way to get in.

I never believed in Mother Nature before this week, when I found a gift that was so clearly chosen with my particular gardening eccentricities in mind, I thought immediately that she would be the one who left it for me. But — I went back to that quote from Chesterton, following St. Francis of Assisi, who said we should think of Nature more as our “little dancing sister,” who delights us into laughter. We have the same Father, we and Nature. Okay then, I’ll say it was my Little Sister who gave it to me: a tomato plant.

I used to grow the absolute best flavored tomatoes that you could find anywhere. A big part of my method was to dry-farm them, the way the Italian immigrants to California used to do. You water when you plant them, deeply, but then not again all summer. I tweaked that system and usually gave mine a drink every month or so.

But in my new garden, I haven’t found a way to do this, or a place. This year I didn’t plant one tomato, and I gave away all my tomato cages. Recently I saw my neighbor Kim’s tomato “garden” which is all in big pots, and it gave me the idea to try that next summer, and I could put the pots in my nice hot utility yard, on the gravel.

This week I went out to the clothesline and saw a tomato already planted in that very space. I’m thinking it must have a deep root, as it’s not near a water source. I did laugh, I can tell you. Whether or not I get a tomato from this plant, it was a very sweet and thoughtful gift from my little sister, and I take it as a pointed word of encouragement about my idea for next summer’s tomato experiment.