Perhaps the greatest challenge to the monarch butterfly, though, is the depletion of the milkweed plant, which serves as their food, breeding ground and habitat while travelling north. The herbaceous plant, which grows throughout the butterflies migration route, has been disappearing thanks to urban development and the aggressive use of weed control on American farms.”
Awake early, out with Charlie, into the heat of our yard where I water the flowers. My mind is very preoccupied with an issue I am trying to work out. I wake this way, thinking, thinking, thinking out a puzzle, a conflict, I cannot in this moment solve. It does not feel like I am going anywhere in my thinking but circles, and this is a familiar pattern. Thinking solves nothing; time brings clarity. A new moment, being present, deeply present and aware in the moment is what brings peace and perspective. I am dragging the hose across the yard. In the garden nearest the meadow I water the bee balm and hydrangea and black-eyed Susans and cone flower and then I see the fluttering out of the corner of my eye, the lightness and the spontaneity of the tiny bright being as it flits about and finally lands on the cone flower blossom. And lingers. I look, I don’t move. It’s lingering there as the water shoots from the hose. Will I be lucky to capture this magic with a picture? I still the hose and step carefully closer and closer. Still, the monarch lingers on the flower. It doesn’t mind me at all. I creep closer, I aim, I shoot my picture, a glorious capture. Now, I am no longer lost in my circular thinking and unsolvable problem. The monarch has captured me. Perhaps the monarch, as legend goes, will whisper its wish into my ear and let me fly away with its wish so that it will come true. I know what the monarch is wishing for: milkweed. More and more milkweed to grow in the meadows.