Monarch Sunflower Magic

It's mid-October. The daylight is getting a bit shorter. The leaves are turning on the trees; so many have already fallen. And when I visit the sunflower beds now, the bulk of them are done. The spent blooms have a unique texture: seed patterns, ratty edges, almost soft looking. They remind me of old, well-worn stuffed animals, like the Velveteen Rabbit, that have been loved almost a bit too much.

The birds and the bumblebees continue to visit the sunflowers, and so do I. And all through their blooming time, I've been waiting and watching for one particular shot: a monarch butterfly on a sunflower. Alas, the monarchs have been few and far between this year. But when I do see one, I greet it well and thoroughly. I zoom in, photograph it; later, admire its spotty black-and-white pajamas, its wing patterns, its proboscis.

I stopped by the Arboretum very briefly on this day, just a few minutes over lunchtime. I was walking quietly along the sunflower beds, enjoying the sounds of the birds, the ultra-blue blue of the heavenly blue morning glories on the arbor, the blooms so absolutely BLUE against a perfect blue October sky.

And suddenly, overhead, what's this? A spot of orange in motion. Can it be? An orange butterfly?! The much-awaited monarch?! Flitter-flutter this way, flitter-flutter that . . . and then it SAT! Yes, it finally LANDED on one of the blooms!

I wasn't that close. It wasn't that clear a view. There wasn't even time to zoom. But - startled - I snapped off five quick shots in succession. (This is some kind of photographers' reflex test, I think. In the crunch time, can you get the shot!? Can you GET it!?) Then I ran around the beds quickly, hoping to get a better angle from the front . . . but the butterfly was gone, as though it had simply . . . vanished into thin air. Just like that. Gone. The entire visit lasted maybe 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

Back at my computer, I downloaded the shots, checked them quickly. Five shots. Three were blurry. *sad sigh* But aha! - two were not. Crop, crop, crop, look again. Ah, THERE you are, my sweet orange butterfly, my sunny yellow bloom. Finally . . . monarch . . . sunflower . . . magic!

The song: hmm, it has to be something with the word magic in it, so let's go with this one - America, You Can Do Magic - which I send out as a word of encouragement to photographers everywhere, who are just trying, perhaps against extraordinary odds, to get that much-coveted shot, whatever it may be . . . :-)