Getting ready to the mow yard, I was walking about on P-Patrol with bucket and scooper in hand. A butterfly took notice, and flew around me and then the bucket. After a couple of turns around the stinky bucket including a brief in-and-out, it lighted on the toe of my boot and started tasting my boot with its proboscis.
It did this for about a minute, and I decided to see if I could get in to climb on my finger (remembering our visit to the butterfly garden at Callaway.) A gentle nudge from the front, and the butterfly climbed on my finger. It started tasting away. After another minute, I wondered if I could get a photo. So I put down the bucket and scooper, and carefully walked inside to get my BlackBerry and then back outside.
I wanted a photo with the wings open, which proved almost impossible to time given the random opening and the one second delay the BlackBerry has while taking a photo. I took about 30 photos trying to get it right. Most ended up being blurry, but the one here came out pretty good.
All of this took about 5 minutes with the butterfly probing away and slowly moving from my finger to my thumb. I then let it climb onto one of Kathy’s flowerpots where it did some tasting, then flew away. Flowers. “Blech.” Boots and thumbs. “Yum!”
I love that story. That’s amazing that the butterfly felt safe on your hand while you went inside and fooled around taking pictures. Nature is wonderful. It brings to mind the story behind the painting hanging in my foyer. It was done by a famous calligrapher, Jenny Groat and she actually painted the piece with brushes, not with metal pens. I bought if from her at a conference in Oregon. She said she was able to get the delicate lines in the painting because she was working on it late at night and a moth landed on her hand and climbed into the palm of the hand she was painting with. She did not want to disturb him, so she worked carefully until she completed the piece and he stayed with her the whole time. I think that, too, is amazing. Don’t you? I’m very proud of this piece. It was featured on the cover of a magazine called “Floriage” or something like that.