Butterflies endure, prevail

This is a story I have told before. Readers related to me may have already heard it. It made a big impression on me. On May 15th, the first spring we lived here, I looked out our front window and saw a hummingbird looking back at me. I found myself a cup hook, a hammer and a pliers and went outside to try my hand at getting the cup hook into the overhang in front of the window so that I could hang my hummingbird feeder there. My preparations proved unneccessary. A hook was in place already--exactly where I would have put it. I hung my feeder and have faithfully tended it, May to September, for twelve years now. Sometime in the first half of May when the fruit trees, wild and tame, begin to bloom, the little birds come back. If I don't have the feeder ready yet, they come near the window and look in as one did that first year. I figure if they know a feeder is supposed to be there, they must be returnees, which is impressive. So tiny, but they travel more often and farther than I do. [Of course, I stay here all winter and that's impressive too.] In late summer, wasps often start to hang around the feeder. It had three feeding ports, but the hummingbirds don't even feed with each other, let alone with a bunch of wasps. So there is much circling around, hummingbirds charging at wasps and vice versa, each trying to drive the others away. One afternoon I looked up from reading in my chair by the window and saw a newcomer sitting on one of the feeding ports--a large butterfly. Soon the wasps came buzzing around it and then a hummingbird came and feinted back and forth. Through it all the butterfly just sat there seemingly oblivious to all the commotion, slowly opening and closing its wings, patient and brave, and finally the only one left at the feeder.

Butterflies and gravel roads

Wanting desperately to live in a place like this was, I think, the last great passion of my life. When we were considering buying this house my mind was all awhirl with thoughts of the woods, the pond, the gardens and the garden shed, the chicken coop and the little barn, all the rustic little touches in the house and the precious privacy. No need for curtains here. I came on gravel roads and from the mailboxes back a half mile on a sand road, but they made no impression on me. It was a shock that first March to come home from a trip after a big thaw and wonder how we were ever going to get back to our little house in the woods. There are four possible ways to get from the highway to our house. That spring, and for several springs to come, all four ways were bad during breakup. Marijuana Lane was the name given by locals to the east/west road that goes past our mail box. It was apparently named for former residents and possibly their 'gardens'. A neighbor once told me that when she first came, several years before we did, it was really just a logging road through a shady tunnel of trees. When the frost came out of the ground it usually had two washouts. The one to the east of us was the worst. We once saw a car that had tried to cross hanging over the edge of the ditch We drove through the western washout a few times, but I never liked it much. Of the two north/south roads to the highway,one is called a Minimum Maintenance Road--enough said. The other one had two especially deep muddy morasses, one at each end. In spite of this, it was usually our best option. Get up some speed and gun 'er through. We always made it. After several years, a man stopped by and said he was running for a county office. He said our roads were a disgrace and if we voted for him he would do something about it. We did and I guess our neighbors did too. Marijuana Lane has been taken away from the township and renamed County 141. It's been widened. It gets some new gravel every summer. It's graded on a regular basis. In the winter the snow plows come several days sooner than they once did. A neighbor told us that it's even on a list to be paved, though it has been for six years. But always there is a price for progress. Several times each summer the ditches are mowed. They never were before. In late August and early September, as you drove along, you would suddenly notice drifts of something intensely blue among the grasses--clumps of fringed gentians. Now we need the Minimum Maintenance Road to see them. The other north/south road was also washed out one June when we had a flood, so bad that no one could use it. They came with big equipment on trailers from Thief River Falls and worked on it all summer and into the fall. But the muddy mess on the south end they couldn't seem to fix, though they put a culvert under it. If it rains awhile there's still fifteen feet of mud to drive through. Butterflies seem to just love mud. The other day when Bear and Sadie and I drove through we were suddenly surrounded by a cloud of butterflies. "Isn't it pretty?", I asked them. I have no idea if they think anything is 'pretty', but it was nice to have someone to mention it to.

Butterflies and milkweed

When my husband and I were married, his oldest brother was in the Air Force and out of the country. When first I met him, he said two things that made a very negative impression on me. 1. He asked how if one baby took up all of my time, could more babies take up any more. 2. He looked at the weedy little garden my husband had planted and turned to me and said, "Dianne, you must weed that." I had a three year old, a two year old and was great with child. Many years later all is forgiven. His wife's five babies and my five babies are all grown. He's turned most of his yard into a garden and I have gardens all over the place. We're kind of garden buddies, you might say. If he discovers a plant he really likes, he often saves seeds and sends them to me. Several years ago when we visited I noticed a lovely plant along his white picket fence. My sister-in-law told me it was a tame variety of common milkweed. It was lovely with rosy stems, soft blue-gray leaves and a unique pink and white flower, almost orchid- like. I had to have some. I was happy to find that it was hardy to zone 3. I planted my seeds and bided my time. My brother-in-law counselled patience. Milkweed comes up late in the spring and takes awhile to become established. Finally, during its third year, it grew almost as tall as my brother-in-law's and began to flower. And then--devastation. On one of our walks around the yard we noticed big fat green and yellow and black monarch butterfly caterpillars munching on the leaves. As I write this, only stems are left. Along the Minimum Maintenance Road and on the Beltrami State Forest Roads wild milkweed grows with abandon, unmunched. I get a little smug, though, when I read lengthy magazine articles on how to attract butterflies. My yard has always been full of them--many colors and sizes.

Oh Canada

I heard recently on the CBC that the mark of a true Canadian is the ability to make love in a canoe. I guess I'll stay on this side of the border. I usually get a little nervous just stepping into a canoe.