butterfly days

Who could have thought I would have the gift of so many butterflies at the end of November . They came in clouds to nectar on the chrysanthemums. I managed a few phone photos while grinning like an idiot.

a lunch time mystery

While eating lunch one day I noticed these tiny pearls hanging from the leaf of an orchid that I keep in the dining room window. Each was hung by a tiny thread and arranged down the leaf with such precision that it was hard to imagine that it was natural.

With a bit of research I discovered they are  the eggs of an insect called the green lacewing, and it turns out that they are beneficial to the garden since they are predators that eat insect pests.

it will take a hurricane to move it

It was on sale—a rusty, cast iron rooster. I found it at a favorite nursery where it was being discarded. I spray painted and set it up in the bed of waning mist flowers where I finally realized that it would take a hurricane to push that iron arrow around. The joke is on me. Pretty though and I managed to capture a migrating gulf  frittilary butterfly in the photo.

a sunset

Look, Elijah, the sun is dropping into the lake!

Silly grandma—the sun is in outer space, he answers.

Ah, 4 year olds are so wise today.

So much for that poetic notion.

pottery angel

The folks who were here before me lived simply. They grew most of their own food and had few modern embellishments. Sometimes I come across small reminders of them. Recently this small fragment of china with a tiny angel running around the rim surfaced after a storm. I put it in a bowl with other similar pieces of found tokens of the past, pausing to remember the keepers before me.

my November rose

Defying the deer this rose reached high and made a web embroidered, frosted rose for me on my birthday.

rainbow cloud

I am always cloud watching. It seems my head is often in the clouds.