This One Goes Out to the Ones I Love

We were in the gamelands on the closed road by shooting range, and I was walking around, taking pictures of flowers - chicory, daisy, Queen Anne's lace, pink thistle, daisy fleabane - and trying to keep to the shade. My husband was jogging. Given the summery weather, I was certain I would see some butterflies. And I did. Not as many as in prior years, but some.

I had brought my monopod along just in case of butterflies. Sometimes it helps to have something to steady the camera when you're zooming and even super-zooming. The monopod was a back-up plan: something in case I needed an assist.

Suddenly, one of my favorite songs came on my tunes box, just as a huge female Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) showed up on the pink thistle blooms less than 10 feet away. (The extensive blue markings on the very back part of the hind-wings are an indicator that it's a female.)

Oddly enough, the butterfly visit took JUST AS LONG AS THE SONG. The song began. The butterfly landed. It danced among the purple-pink flowers for me for a bit more than 3 minutes, as I watched in wonder (and kept on snapping!). The song ended. The butterfly left. I walked away with 32 pictures in my camera. I never even thought of my monopod, which was hanging from my shoulder!

And what was the song? you might ask me. Well, it was this one: a gorgeous cover of R.E.M.'s The One I Love, performed by Sugarland. This one's for my big sister Barb, our butterfly girl, who passed away in mid-July a few years ago. The hottest summer days remind me of her dying day, which is hard on a whole bunch of levels. But I am so grateful for the butterflies she sends me!

Possibly related: a precious Christmas edition of This One Goes Out to the One I Love.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to get some pictures of a butterfly I spotted. I didn't have much luck, but I laughed when I got the pictures downloaded from the camera. There was one shot of the butterfly, flying upside-down at the very bottom edge of the photo. It wasn't my best butterfly photo ever; in fact, quite the opposite. But it made me laugh. What a wily cuss! I wrote myself a note. It said, "This is a picture of a butterfly making its escape from this story."