1.
There’s a butter-yellow butterfly fluttering among the Irises. The blossoms came out of nowhere and opened last night. And the butterfly has found them, uncertain about the white fall, intrigued by the yellow anther.
And there is an orange butterfly in the Lacey Oak, resting on a branch, opening and closing its wings. As the breeze blows and the brown-orange leaves of the tree glow in the late afternoon light, it’s hard to find that butterfly if you look away.
There are Mason Bees buzzing around the holes in our bee house. I didn’t notice any overwintering there this year, so maybe these bees are lost, looking for some other holes in some other place in some other puddle of warm sunlight.
And there is a lizard stopping for a drink at the birdbath. The sunlight is glinting off the water’s surface, and the lizard’s silhouette strikes a micro-Jurrassic pose.
2.
After the race, after taking a shower, we sit on a patio drinking tea and orange juice in the warm weather of the early afternoon. It was hot running, and we ran slowly with sweat running down our cheeks. (Ok, the sweat was mine. The fair and industrious Trudy barely breaks one, ever.)
The leaves on the side walk begin to stir. A breeze whips around the corner of the building. High above us, a construction crane turns in the wind like a weather vane.
And in twenty minutes, the temperature drops twenty degrees, and our warm afternoon is gone.
3.
“Maybe the tomatoes will be ok,” she says. “Ben covered them. Maybe they were warm enough.”
I shake my head. “It got too cold.”
The night before, the temperatures continued dropping, and from a high in the upper seventies yesterday, it got down to 26 last night. I peek at the tomatoes, removing the stones, lifting the burlap, picking up the overturned bucket. They are dead, dark green lying limp on the ground.
Even the tomatoes in the green house couldn’t make it. And the dozen or so Iris blossoms are gone. Pale green lying limp on the ground. And the Spiderword, too. When we left, one was beginning to open its purple blossoms. They’re on the ground, too.
And there are no lizard or butterflies to be seen.
4.
But you know the lizard is there somewhere. And the butterflies. Waiting for the water in the birdbaths to melt. Waiting for the next wave of blossoms.
Indeed, here comes the next wave. The Agarita is covered in yellow, and its fragrance fills the air. The the Mexican Redbud buds are beginning to open. And the Prairie Verbena. And the Anemones.
Another warm day comes. Blue skies. Sun. But then the cold again. Cloudy gray. Rain falling from the sky. Thunder and hail.
Thank heavens for the rain. We can deal with the cold. But hail? I could do without the hail.