Nothing can be willed into being, only waited on, for, or waited out.
A.K. Ramanujan from “Journeys: A Poet’s Diary”
I often find myself thinking of Ramanujan‘s words, especially when the blank page stares at me, the cursor steadily flickering its accusatory blink. I delete more than I write. The inner critic is always on duty. But write I do, in the end. After all, “you can always edit a bad page; you can’t edit a blank page.” Jodi Picoult would know.
All the hard work of the last four months has paid off (thank you, Covid-19, for the unexpected time off). The garden is lush and vibrating (literally) with insect life; as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I planned the garden to attract wildlife.
Painted lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui) on echinacea (Echinacea purpurea var. Magnus).
Tortoise-shell butterfly (Aglais urticae) and bumblebee competing for the same flower.
Tortoise-shell butterfly on aster (Aster amellus).
Painted lady butterfly in a sea of echinacea.
A bumblebee hard at work on a pink echinacea.
Peacock butterfly (Inachis io).
Bumblee on great masterwort (Astrantia major). Notice the raised leg, warning off other insects from the flower.
Two brimstone butterflies (Gonepteryx rhamni) have a meeting. Exchanging tips on best echinacea, maybe?
Now I’m off to the garden again, weeding, and deadheading, and watering, and, and, … work never stops in a garden. Or fun.
I hope you have a good summer, considering Covid-10 et al. Stay healthy, stay calm, and soldier on. And don’t forget to laugh.
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Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
by Robert Frost (1874–1963)
