Butterflies and Hurricanes

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The weather has been beautiful here, cool and sunny, remarkably so for the end of August and early September when it is often suffocatingly hot and humid.  My husband has gotten interested in butterflies and is frequently chasing them with the digital camera so that he can get enough information to identify them.  The smaller ones seldom stop fluttering, so it is harder to snap them.

I’ve written before about butterflies being particularly beautiful because they are so transient. We’re battening down for hurricanes that may go close by — hard-hearted Hanna, Ike, and Josephine in quick succession.  At the very least, they will bring heavy rains that will probably strip many of the flowers from the butterfly plants.  They may also bring wind damage and power outages.  So today is a lull, time to bring in all the wind-movable objects from the yard, charge the phones and computers, stock up on bread, water, and toilet paper (my sister has observed that people in Baltimore always shop for toilet paper when they are stocking up for a storm), and enjoy what is here that may not be in a few days.

So in the interest of savoring by sharing before the storms hit, here are some of the pictures he has taken in the garden this summer.

First, here’s a corner of the butterfly garden planted with butterfly bush and Brazilian sage and Monarda and several other plants beloved by bees, butterflies and even hummingbirds. Notice the stone on the ground on the left. It has a hollow to capture water and ridges where butterflies can sun themselves before flying away.

Butterfly Garden

The pictures and captions tell the story.

Pipevine Swallowtail on Monarda

Black Swallowtail on Butterfly Bush

Large Lace Border Moth

Red Spotted Purple

Summer Azure on a Fig Leaf

We were right under the storm track of Hurricane Fran in 1996. There’s still a hollow in the woods behind us where a circle of trees were knocked down. We lost power for more than a week. Hurricane Fran hit the month after my mother-in-law died. She had always stocked our freezer with containers of home-made chili whenever she visited. So after Fran, we invited friends who couldn’t cook because of power outages, pulled out all the chili from the not-working freezer, heated it on the gas stove in our basement apartment, and ate dinner by candle light.

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Filed under Friendship, Good with the Bad, Savoring