Happy Effit Friday and Stuff

This is a happy dog. These are happy ferns that will likely break my heart this winter, as they struggle to survive indoors in Illinois.
As will I too, I'm sure. Every change of season I promise myself I'll not mourn the one I didn't get enough of, but try enjoy the one I'm in.

Maybe that's why I can't stop running out to the edge of my yard to smell the September Sedum. The official last bloom of my season, they change from green to pale pinks to vermilion, to sangria to rusty brown to brittle.

For now we linger in pink, fragrant and astonishingly busy with every kind of bee, wasp, butterfly or other mystery I can imagine. I look them up from time to time, as the names will not stick, just the memory of their wings, colors and shapes.

I have watched fierce competitions to feed, maybe occasionally to couple, but I cannot tell the difference. I just know the innocent butterfly leads a life we can hardly fathom.

This tiny, struggling Monarch taught me that chrysalis creases are discernible signs of defects to come, that the will to live is very strong. His or her wing deformed, abdomen curled up as if in spasm, it struggled to hold on to a houseplant, safe indoors from our 25 mph winds and our 45 degrees, struggled mightily to crawl, and amazed me by flying away after 2 days and 2 false starts. Once again I stared in the face of the mystery and power of nature, humbled and privileged to watch it unfold, in all its glory and its pain.


He/she flew. And the next day, when the weather was calmer, I went to smell the sedum and was shocked to see 5 monarch amid the busy commuters. I checked the wings, but could not find my first special child. I turned to go back for my camera as one left his perch and fluttered a half dozen circles around my head. I held out an arm, laughing and twirling, hoping it would light upon me, imagining it was one of my babies saying farewell. They were gone when I returned, but the magic remained.

I will not post the pictures of the shop of horrors I've had to see this year - caterpillars curled the wrong way, only partially emerged from their skin, dangling from their silk; or bleeding emerald amber after a wasp bite, or just still and gone.

I await the emergence of 8 more chrysalis, 2 dented, their defects yet to be determined but likely wing malformations (oh my, there is a butterfly garden in Florida that is teaching me so very much about these things, but we know not why they occur, or if we are to blame with our chemicals) and the mystery cocoon has yet to budge, and I grow concerned as the days grow shorter and cooler and the plants turn brittle.

I am fully aware that I create these tiny worries for myself, manufacture drama that is not my own, that happens regardless of me, when there are bigger worries to worry. But it pleases me to notice these things; I give myself a pretend gold star from the earth for paying attention in class, even if her lessons are hard.

And it beats the heck out of paying attention to mankind's latest lessons. I grow jaded and cynical in the face of the ignorance, intolerance and fuckery (thank you Daily Show for the term) I see in the news. So I'm going into micro mode for a while, and take macro photos to share with my tens of followers so I don't go stark raving mad in the near future.

Happy Friday, my internet friends. May all your butterflies be fully formed and functional. And to all the rest, let's all say FuckIt in unison.


Here's Amy Krause-Rosenthal's homage to the anti bucket list, the fuckit list. Enjoy.



This music video version by the talented Nick Gage is perfect.



I'll be humming his song as I ignore the world and tend to my butterflies.