Butterfly Dreams Take Flight!

It was a task I'd been putting off for a while, but it was finally high time to clear out the milkweed patch in front of the azalea hedge. It was probably our least successful year ever for raising butterflies, though we had the biggest and best milkweed patch we've ever had! Milkweed is the only food that monarch butterfly caterpillars eat.

I hated to remove them, because they seemed like prayer flags for butterflies to me - white floss atop the remains of skinny black sticks. But the milkweed remnants were falling all over the place already, and many of the milkweed seeds had already dispersed.

In a short period of time, the task was done, the black and rotten twigs removed in a pile to the yard's edge, and white fluffy seeds flying all around. I held a bunch of the seeds in my hand and they felt like silk. Then I opened my hand so they could fly!

The seeds took flight. And then, in a spiffy maneuver not unlike those of Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Olympics, the final seed made a leap, and bounded off my little finger, and from there, to the air! Let's give it a 10.0, shall we?

Dash away, dash away, dash away, all!!!
Let's grow those butterflies!

And now my prayer flags are all gone from here,
But my prayers are in the air, flying, flying,
Up, up, up - straight up to the heart of God,
Who knows all of the butterflies' secrets, hopes, and dreams.
Please bring us MANY MORE butterflies next year!

Here's a song for this blip: the Cranberries, with Dreams.

P.S. It turns out that this is Blip #4000. Thanks for all the kind good wishes! And please, if you would, plant something in YOUR yard, too, for the butterflies!  <3