Butterfly Garden

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”       Dalai Lama

I push open the French doors in my bedroom.  Barefoot I step into the cool August dusk holding small pruning shears.  The evening air feels light and refreshing on my bare arms. I don’t usually garden at night but there is just enough light to see. I head towards the space where milkweed plants and geraniums nestle together making what I call my butterfly garden. Monarch butterflies rely on milkweed to survive. Climate change, pesticides and deforestation have caused them to now be endangered. Here in my backyard, however, they are flourishing. They are family.

I gently begin clipping the dry, brown flower heads of the geraniums and can it be? Do I see a new milkweed shoot?  Yes, it is! This is the first growth that is spreading out into the garden from the plants I put in the ground weeks ago. I slowly reach over and fondle the leaves with my fingertips. I feel something soft. I turn the leaf over and there wiggling her antae is she. 

 I spend moments during the day and eve next to the plants and watch the caterpillars dangling under leaves devouring leaf after leaf. I remember reading the book The Hungry Caterpillar to my kids when they were little and yep. They are hungry. Before I left on a week’s vacation I ran out and got more plants just to be sure they had plenty of food to last them until I returned.

As I sit with the caterpillars my body relaxes. My mind relaxes. It brings me momentary peace. I get lost in those black and yellow stripes. I count how many of them I see and do a check in the morning to be sure they are all still accounted for. When the really big ones are gone, well I know why. They are forming a chrysalis somewhere nearby.     

As I sit orange, yellow and golden Monarchs dance with the wind coming oh so close to me as if to say, come dance with me. I know you.

When I am inside my house taking care of grandchildren, planning, cleaning, concerned about the presidential election, getting ready for something that will happen next, outside the garden unfolds without anticipating or judging.  The caterpillar helps me remember that I can choose that way of life also. (Daily meditation helps! I recommend it. I really love Tara Brach’s guided meditations.  https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/)

The caterpillar is teaching me how to be felt presence, how to be okay just where I am because that is where I am, right here now in this moment.