Serendipity Also.

I saw the empty chrysalis first,  thinking Ugh, I MISSED Lucretia. Then her orange tint flashed on the gargoyle's opposite wing. Fearing she'd take flight any moment, I ran QUICKLY into the house for my camera, and QUICKLY back to the garden.

She modeled all her gothic glory in the bright sun:



We took a trip together to the dill and pentas patch.

She flit from my finger to the spindly dill...

...showing off her monarch lady-like thick black lines:

  

The garden's dill released scent with the brush of my hand and her wing.  Dill is meant to play host plant for the black swallowtails, but they've yet to find it. So, Lucretia adopted it as a hang spot while her wings dried. 

Lucretia, being a monarch, is prone to migratory habits. But South Florida's warm March weather may keep her nearby, a member of South Florida's non-migratory "sink population" of monarchs. Or, since it's March, she could be a daughter of migratory monarchs passing through as they "wake up" from their overwinter in Mexico.

Whatever her roots, I'm thrilled she spent time in my garden and on my gargoyle.

References for this post:
Florida's 'sink population'
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw311
Monarch Spring migration:

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/spring2011/update031711.html

For video of Lucretia and her grotesque-style gargoyle, 'Like' Butterfly Confessions Also on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Butterfly-Confessions-Also/138588801956

Serendipity.

Ser∙en∙dip∙i∙ty (ser-ĕn-dip-ĭ-tee) n. the making of pleasant discoveries by accident [and] a knack for doing so.

     From the OAD(Oxford American Dictionary) ©1979, the paperback edition that sits on my desk between a Roget’s Thesaurus and two copies of my book Confessions of a Butterfly Gardener. 

     In case you don't recognize the wings, paws and haunch pictured here, that's Muscadine - guardian grotesque of the butterfly garden and named for a wine grape that can stand Florida's summer heat.  Cats have pupated on him in the past, their empty, shredded chyrsalises a tease and a testament to what I missed.

     But no missing THIS one. Still wet from a garden watering, this jade gem sparkled in the afternoon sun - a beauty to the beast from which she hung.

Or he.

Magnifying glass in hand, I paused work on this chapter of Bfly Also and headed to the garden. Daylight Saving Time shone bright at six o'clock in the evening, and I was hopeful to find the teensy evidence of monarch male versus female located by the cremaster.

Cremaster.

/kri'mast'ә/ ▪ n. 2. Entomology. The hook-like tip of a butterfly pupa. Origin, Greek, kremastēr, from krema - 'hang'.

From the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) © 2004, eleventh edition, the hardcover that sits on my desk between  Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to Poisons and a copy of some wine guide that I've never cracked because it's on my desk and not the kitchen where it should be.
      Though the necessary spot on the chrysalis is twirled against a bump on Muscadine's sculpted wing, my guess is female.

Such a challenge to come up with a name befitting a lady bfly  pupating on a gargoyle wing. It called for something dark, something gothic. I turned to Confessions readers for help, and got...Lucretia. 

It's from a song.  

This reader dug deep into gothic music territory back to the godfathers of gothic rock, The Sisters of Mercy. They in turn dug deep into Italian Renaissance territory for the name 'Lucretia', a nod to Lucrezia Borgia, famous for her role in the power-hungry Borgias' rise to Italian power, infamous for her rumored poison ring and its role at dinner parties.

Lucretia, the gothic butterfly. Perhaps I'll serendipitously catch her emergence.

Reference for this post: Various sources concerning Lucretia/Lucrezia, including:http://www.allmusic.com/song/t1529650



Metamorphosis.

Lately, it's the Confessions, not the garden, that've gone by the wayside.


The garden looks great.
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The cat house had two guests - first, a purchased pupa of a tiger swallowtail named Phoenix.

He emerged beautifully. I have cell phone video of him, but nothing prepared to post for Bfly Confessions Also.

ALTHOUGH, if you head on over to Butterfly Confessions Also on FB, you'll see the most recent cat house guest - Lovegood. A fuzzy, pale-green luna moth. As beautiful as the words 'luna moth' imply.

So, truly, all is fine with the garden. I just haven't written about it.

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I suppose we (meaning the garden and I) have reached a point in our relationship where we'll be in each other's lives whether I write about it or not. You, as a Confessions reader, have been with us on that journey, and I hope that you've enjoyed the ride.

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So, here I am, back to writing it about it. But the nature of the posts may change a bit - it will always be butterflies, but it may not always be about my garden. You see, blogging time has morphed into reading time.

I mean, there's gardening. Yoga. Walking.  All that.  Did an 'official' walk a few weeks ago - a lovely Saturday morning mile walk to raise money for the SPCA's horse rescue efforts. Joined a gorgeous yoga studio.


But the reading is what put the dent in the blogging.

I FINALLY finished Wilkie Collin's The Moonstone that I started months ago. I have a weakness for old English novels, particularly if they are touted as the world's greatest detective story.


Then there's Vicki Myron's Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched The World. I adore libraries. I adore cats. There you have it.

Then I immersed myself  in Tara Cleves' The Guardian of Baine Manor - my first ebook read. You mystery and ghost story lovers would eat it up. I couldn't resist the cover, and the story has oh-so-paid-off with plenty of romance, suspense, ghosts, gargoyles, even a butterfly garden, all set around central Florida and the Keys. Loved it and I hope she makes good on her promise for a second novel.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Guardian-of-Baine-Manor/Tara-Cleves/e/2940011134456/?itm=1

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And now what's got my pages all a-flutter?  It's all the literature I've found of late on butterflies. Not just field guides - I'm talking literary prose and naturalist journals. Though I'm not happy about letting my bfly blog slide, I'm thankful I used the time to discover such gems as Sharman Apt Russel's An Obsession With Butterflies and the stories of lady lepidopterists like 17th-century Eleanor Glanville and Victorian-era Margaret Fountaine.

What I'm reading, what I'm learning, well, it's going to trickle into Confessions. Bear with me as I explore this new vein for the blog - it's truly a happy metamorphosis (and I promise to throw in the beauty of the bfly garden and its bflies, too.)