The mystery

Monarch butterflies have played a small part in my life for as long as I can remember. That changed, however, last summer when for the first time I was involved in capturing the monarch caterpillars; first with my son and his family in East Aurora, New York, and later when we came back to Vermont. While the caterpillar that I hoped would mature into a butterfly never made it out of the chrysalis stage here, the caterpillars that we found in East Aurora did become monarchs and headed off to Mexico after the metamorphosis. The whole experience affected me very deeply. I will never see butterflies in the same way again.

When I was mowing the lawn the other day, I saw some milkweed growing in the grass. That could only mean one thing to me, monarch butterflies! Here is some food for monarch butterflies. They must be on their way back to North America. I will be seeing them soon.

The tiger swallowtails have already arrived. I was able to get some photos of one the other day.

Apparently they feed on red clover, the Vermont state flower, which is ubiquitous this time of year. Funny how that happens. I was planning on writing about the butterflies and milkweed, among other things, today. Last fall I was peripherally involved in an article about monarch butterflies that appeared in the Vermont Zen Center newsletter. When I went to my computer this morning, this link had been sent to me by a member of the Center who had read that article. She thought I might be interested in seeing it.

Video of Monarchs: https://youtu.be/lWOySU_hAz0

I have found that in recent years that certain emotions take on a newfound power. It seems that the most powerful emotions that I experience are such that I can't even label them in the usual way; anger, fear, boredom. The usual emotions are related to me as a being. I am mad at her. I am envious of him. These deeper emotions are felt, but there is nothing to which they are attached. They feel like they are beyond the realm of self and other. Awe/reverence is about as close as I can come to a description. That is how I felt when I viewed this video. Thank you Meredith.

How this video came to be presented to me on exactly the day I needed to see it in order to put it on the blog is another of those mysteries that cannot be explained.