
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.

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.