Butterfly Beauties

~

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
.

Anne Frank

~

~

“Dwell on the beauty of life.

Watch the stars,

and see yourself running with them.”
.

Marcus Aurelius

~

~

“To be creative means to be in love with life.

You can be creative only if you love life

enough that you want to enhance its beauty,

you want to bring a little more music to it,

a little more poetry to it,

a little more dance to it.”
.

Osho

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

~

“Though we travel the world over

to find the beautiful,

we must carry it with us,

or we find it not.” 

.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

Sunday Dinner: Generosity

Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly on Lantana ‘Chapel Hill Gold’

~

“We need to spread more seeds

and fill this Planet with love

to be surrounded by flowers just everywhere!

It starts by simply opening up

our hearts and hands to one another.

It’s in simple things

where true Happiness may flourish.”

.

Ana Claudia Antunes

~

~

“Generosity is the most natural outward expression

of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.”

.

Dalai Lama XIV

~

Pearl Crescent butterfly on Zinnia

~

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

.

Kahlil Gibran

~

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly on butterfly bush

~

“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others,
the more he has for his own.”

.

Lao Tzu

~

~

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying

to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives.

In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender

before the miraculous scope of human generosity

and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely,

for as long as we have voices.”

.

Elizabeth Gilbert

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome

at The Williamsburg Botanical Garden

Enjoy the 4th Annual Butterfly Festival and Plant Sale 

August 4 & 5  free admission

~

~

“Silence the angry man with love.

Silence the ill-natured man with kindness.

Silence the miser with generosity.

Silence the liar with truth.”

.

Gautama Buddha

~

Zebra Swallowtail butterfly on Lantana

Garden Gold

Fennel flowers allow for easy access to their nectar.

~

The hotter it gets, the more gold in the garden glitters and shines.  As the mercury goes up, yellow and gold feel almost cooling.

~

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeds on Lantana ‘Chapel Hill Yellow,’ a fairly new perennial Lantana introduction. WBG

~

I don’t understand the alchemy of that, but I do understand the clear attraction of gold for all of our nectar seeking pollinators.

~

~

Gold flowers may just taste sweeter.  They certainly draw in the bees, wasps and butterflies who draw sustenance from their sugary depths.

~

Lantana ‘Chapel Hill Gold’ is also a perennial in Zone 7. WBG

~

All the while, these prolific flowers are also ripening seeds to delight goldfinches and other small birds who will feast on their ripe seeds well into the barren months of winter.

~

Flocks of goldfinches took wing from the wildflowers where they were feeding, as I walked through the Williamburg Botanical Garden yesterday afternoon.

~

Golden and yellow flowers often prove among the easiest for a gardener to grow.  Turn to dill, fennel and parsley for their distinctive round umbel inflorescence, all flat and easy to access;  Rudbeckias and Helianthus for their many petaled sunburst flowers.

~

The first black eyed Susans, our native Rudbecki hirta, have begun to open in our garden.

~

Coreopsis, Lantana, marigolds and Zinnias all bloom in shades of yellow, orange and gold.

~

~

The season ends on a wild and native note as Solidagos burst into bloom in September and October, towering over the black eyed Susans in our garden like great feathery plumes of living gold.

~

Solidago blooms alongside Rudbeckia in our garden, October 2017.

~

If the entire garden were nothing but green and gold, animated with swallowtail butterflies and goldfinches, what a beautiful display we would still enjoy.

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2018

~

~

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood

will show you something about the sun

which you could never get

from reading books on astronomy.

These pure and spontaneous pleasures

are ‘patches of Godlight’

in the woods of our experience.”

.

C.S. Lewis

July 2018: What Is This Freedom We Celebrate?

~

“ In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
     

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

~

~

” The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

~

~    

“ The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

~

~

“ The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

~

~

  ” That is no vision of a distant millennium.    It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
     

That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. “

.

Franklin D. Roosevelt,

excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress,

January 6, 1941

~

~

Much like this butterfly with a damaged wing, each of tries our best to keep moving through each day, gathering what we need, caring for those we love and enjoying the time at hand.  With faith and determination we persist, finding sustenance and meaning where we can.

Let’s pause this week to consider again the wisdom given to us in past years by our country’s greatest leaders.  Their words echo across the years, as fresh and true as the day they were uttered.  Those who understand and remember our nation’s history are best equipped to resist all attempts to corrupt our nation’s purpose. 

It is by keeping our American ideals in heart and mind that we find the energy to persevere, and to prevail in preserving human freedoms and individual dignity for generations to come.

Persist, Resist, Prevail!

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2018

~

 

Structure

~

“Life on earth is a whole,

yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies,

microscopic or visible,

plant or animal, extinct or living.

So there can be no one place to be.

There can be no one way to be,

no one way to practice, no one way to learn,

no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal,

no one way to live, no one way to feel,

no one thing to know or be known.

The particulars count.”

.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

~

~

“Nothing is less real than realism.

Details are confusing.

It is only by selection, by elimination,

by emphasis,

that we get at the real meaning of things.”

.

Georgia O’Keeffe

~

~

“The basic structure of the universe

is balanced on a razor’s edge

for life to exist”

.

Sunday Adelaja

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

~

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Structure

Sunday Dinner: Gratitude

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Verbena ‘Lollipop’ at the Heath family’s garden in Gloucester.

~

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy;

they are the charming gardeners

who make our souls blossom.”

.

Marcel Proust

~

~

“Beauty is not who you are on the outside,

it is the wisdom and time you gave away

to save another struggling soul, like you.”

.

Shannon L. Alder

~

Alliums with Iris, Gloucester, VA

~

“I believe that what we become

depends on what our fathers teach us

at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

.

Umberto Eco

~

Allium in our Forest Garden

~

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up

trying to pay back the people in this world

who sustain our lives.

In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender

before the miraculous scope of human generosity

and to just keep saying thank you,

forever and sincerely,

for as long as we have voices.”

.

Elizabeth Gilbert

~

The rare daylily left ungrazed to bloom in our garden; for which we are most grateful!

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

With love and appreciation to all of those Fathers

who give of themselves so generously

to make this a more beautiful and more loving world for all.

~

Zantedeschia aethiopica in our Forest Garden

~

“You pray in your distress and in your need;

would that you might pray also

in the fullness of your joy

and in your days of abundance.”

.

Kahlil Gibran

~

 

WPC: Half-Light

~

Morning has broken like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing,
Praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.

~

~

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.

~

~

Mine is the sunlight,
Mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise ev’ry morning,
God’s recreation of the new day.

~

~

Morning has broken…

.

lyrics by Chris Hazell and  Eleanor Farjeon

~

~

 

This beautiful song, performed by Cat Stevens, has been a life-long favorite.  It speaks not only to morning, but also to the morning of the year:  spring.  It is the perfect lyric to accompany these photos taken in our garden today.

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

~

Sunset

~

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light

“Share a photograph inspired by a favorite poem, verse, story, or song lyric.  See if you can capture the beauty of morning or evening half-light in your corner of the globe.”

~

 

Dark Butterfly

~

“Light always trumps darkness. It always has, and it always will.

Therefore… if you believe that your world is darkening…

if you believe that the culture of your nation

is growing dimmer by the year…

don’t blame it on the dark!

Darkness is only doing what darkness does.

“If darkness is winning the battles, my friend,

it is because light is not doing it’s job.

You are light.

So wake up. Wake up.”

.

Andy Andrews

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2015

~

Moving On

~

Summer is moving on towards its climax in our garden.  I found the garden filled with butterflies this morning when I came out to water.

The butterflies we’ve watched for since April are in residence now, and flutter constantly from flower to flower, shrub to shrub; as they drink their fill of warm, sweet nectar.

~

~

I counted five individuals on a single Lantana this morning.  When I turned around, more fluttered behind me in another flower bed.  They surrounded me as I moved around the garden, watering.

~

~

No longer timid, they continued feeding as I approached.  They no longer fly away when my camera beeps.

I can watch them from the window above my kitchen sink.  In fact, I would say that every window opens out onto views of butterflies moving on from one flower to another.  One may get lost in simply watching them; a voyeur of sorts, hypnotized by butterfly wings.

~

~

Perhaps they are the ones entranced.  There is a rich buffet of flowers beckoning them to feed:  Lantana and Butterfly Bush, Rose of Sharon, mints and Sage, Echinacea, Zinnia, Monarda, Rudbeckia, Hibiscus.

The litany of sweet flowers goes on and on in the August garden.  Butterflies float from flower to flower almost like devotees fingering prayer beads.

~

Lycoris radiata

~

Two new flowers have come into bloom this week, which signal our shift towards autumn. The Lycoris radiata never appear before mid-August; timed with the onset of our hurricane season.

The ginger lilies also begin their bloom towards the end of August, just as Labor Day draws close each year.

~

White Butterfly Ginger Lily coming into bloom

~

We have a crescendo of growth now, in this third week of August.  Cannas and ginger lily tower over our heads.  Colocasia leaves reach gigantic proportions in the shade.  Ferns grow tall and Begonia flowers emerge thick and vivid from their canes.

~

~

This is the season where wishes materialize, beautifully fulfilled.  The garden crawls with life, never silent and never still.

Newborn blue tailed lizards skitter up the wall above the hose.  Cicadas whir and bump in the border.  Birds call to one another as wind rustles through the tall stems of lily and Canna.

~

~

And butterflies float by silently, above it all, moving on in search of the next nectar filled flower in their never ending quest for summer’s sweetness.

Woodland Gnome 2015

~

Morning Glory

Sunday Dinner

~

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

.

Leonardo da Vinci

~

~

“I am the wisest man alive,

for I know one thing,

and that is that I know nothing.”

.

Plato

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2015

~

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly on Lantana