“We are making a butterfly garden," she says, wielding scissors with blades gummed from slicing stems. 

How do the bees feel about this? Buzzing in the thatches of purple spear salvia, singularly focused, they pay no mind to the construction noise from the next door lot. And the hummingbirds? They have the honeysuckle trumpets and sugar water hanging from the eaves. The rosy bellied robins claim the lawn and fence posts while toads huddle in the shaded bark by the pond where a bronze heron stands sentry, fooling no one. Chattering squirrels and chipmunks scamper everywhere in mad zigzags like children at recess time. The moles hide underground beneath even the buried slugs and pale curled cutworms. The finch family owns the sky.

Perhaps the butterflies do need a patch of milkweed of their own and the shallow saucer of water on a stand thoughtfully pressed into the soil so that they might alight on the edge and, folding their wings, sip. Their place made, will the butterflies invite the other creatures to a garden tea to bask in the bright of zinnias and feather leafed cosmos? Oh! Here they come now, dressed in their best.

Words and photos by Sarah Anne Childers

Sarah Anne Childers is the online editor at luciajournal.com where she toggles between curating creatives as an editor and creatively curating ideas and the words they live in as a writer. 

sarah@luciajournal.com