BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE, BUT WHERE HAVE THEY GONE?

In past summers my flower border has always had one or more butterflies flitting about all day long, dipping their long straw of a tongue into the sweet nectar of the rudbeckia, the zinnias and most especially the phlox.

Although phlox comes in many colors, seemingly, they all eventually revert to the magenta color and are disdained by more formal gardeners. However, I have carefully kept them, cultivated them, encouraged them to spread for the sake of the beautiful zebra, tiger and black swallowtails.

These butterflies are such fragile gifts of nature; they didn't have to be pretty, but the Supplier must have wanted things beautiful for us while we are here.

For the last two years I have noticed a decline in the lovely creatures, at least around my place. My A-1 vegetable gardener neighbor, John, has noticed a similar decline in bees. Many of his cucumber and squash blossoms just remained blossoms, progressing to nothing more.

I wrote to the Missouri Conservationist to inquire about this butterfly decline, to learn whether or not it is a national trend. This is part of their comforting reply: "What you're noticing in your butterfly garden is indeed a statewide trend in butterfly populations. Department entomologist Rosalyn Johnson explained that the cold, wet spring prevented the emergence of many butterflies. It is not of alarming proportions, and experts expect populations to recover completely."

A few years ago there was a movement to catch fireflies in order for scientists to study their intermittent fluorescent lighting. There was a noticeable decrease in those "illuminating lanterns" dancing around the nighttime yard. Maybe the scientists completed their study. Anyway, this summer the fireflies seem to be back with all their waltzes, cotillions and minuets.

I'm glad to learn that the butterfly population has not decreased by a call from scientists to collect them.

In addition to admiring these beautiful additions to our summer air, I have long used the butterfly as a symbol of doing something good without knowing it for persons who complain that they feel so worthless and ineffective, having done nothing they can point to and say, "I made a difference there."

The graphic description of the parts of a butterfly show no brain. Therefore, the butterfly is totally unconscious of how it is bound up by its nectar feeding in the mystery of the creation of something beautiful. It uncurls that long tongue, more properly described as a proboscis, dips it down into the flower, sipping the nectar from one flower after another, all the while collecting a dusting of pollen on its feet, antennae and wings which it unknowingly (no brain) dusts off on another flower and immediately there is a beginning of a seed which may ultimately become another flower.

All this the butterfly doesn't know, and so we too may, by some lightly tossed off word, some unconscious gesture or almost routine deed, brush against someone at the exact right moment and become a turning point in someone's life, a turning point that results in something good and beautiful.

It would be nice to know, although knowing may puff one up with pride. Not knowing in down moments, you can think of the butterfly and say to yourself, "Hey, I might have left a trail behind me bright as the rays of the setting sun. Who knows?"

I never did tell Miss Tilly that the way she walked down the church aisle, Bible in hand, serene look on her face, made me feel that time was a continuum and she had given me a hold on it. I never did tell grandpa that our watching the sunrise from the barn loft window, and his triumphant utterance, "Day has followed night," has kept me watching sunrises all my life and saying, the moment the sun appears over the horizon, "Day has followed night," as if some miraculous thing has happened once more. I never did tell --- Oh, there are so many I can't enumerate them all.

REJOICE!