This week’s weather has been like heaven. Heaven if I controlled the thermostat, anyhow. My zinnias are showing wild, and the roses bounced back from the heavy rains. They’ll give me an encore of a show beginning of autumn, but will most likely start to melt a bit when it turns summer for good. I keep thinking I’ll gather them for a bouquet but I am enjoying them as is. They give my haunted exterior a sweet contrast. 

Have you seen the fireflies? They’ve arrived, hovering like steam at sunset. I’ve got a feral girl who runs out each evening to catch and release. I picked raspberries with glowing green hovering all about. I think lightning bugs only serve to humor us. Why else have a glowing butt? 

I was thinking of the time I read a memoir about one man’s life in the garden. I did. I was captivated by an entire chapter on his potato harvest. I’m quite the nerd. I sometimes think I must be 80 years old the way I yearn for simpler times. Honestly, not sure where this all came from. The only vegetable garden I recall from childhood is the time my brothers and I planted a row of corn behind our shed in our trailer park. Interesting how life takes sharp turns and you find yourself immersed in something so foreign yet perfectly suited. Proof that it takes time before you find your groove. I never could have imagined I’d find it in Arkansas. 

I’m staving off being overwhelmed. So much life breaching the dam. I think it’s prudent to open the flood gates a bit when you hit capacity. This can look like fire pit night when I can’t stand the mess inside. Or day trips when my day is just too much. Whatever the impeding task, I am well versed in dodging it. I infer dodging but it’s really just partaking. Taking hold of the moment and riding it out. One can’t be so rigorous that they cannot abort mission for much needed reprieve. I think I am better about this in my latter years than I ever was in my younger. Much to do with energy and the lack thereof. Why does it take decades to be okay with just okay? Beats me. Just happy to arrive. 

I spotted butterflies the other day. A monarch and a yellow swallowtail. They were feasting on the zinnias. More are coming now. I’ll see painted ladies by the time the sunflowers bloom. They like to hover over the herbs, too. When I see a butterfly, it’s always magical. Most have a very short lifespan — some even a day or two. By summer’s end, I have a graveyard of butterfly wings. All this suggests is that the butterflies enjoyed the sanctuary of my garden until death. They were not destroyed by predators, but preserved in my little Eden. 

I’m learning how vital it is to have a safe place to put things to rest. God has sown some nourishing and nectar-rich blooms in my life to feast on, too. Provided me a soft landing below to rest in peace. I recognize it as providential provision. I understand how wealthy I am in this manner. It makes up for other deficiencies, I suppose.