Butterfly Garden, 1 month ago:



Butterfly Garden, this morning:



Wow! What growth! What beauty! What fertile country! A veritable butterfly and hummingbird airport! Okay, so here's a different angle:



See? There are actually things coming out of the earth. And there are many smaller buds, sprouts, and shoots, as well:



What are they? I haven't really a clue. It was this package, a gift from Holly, and then some Costco dahlia tubers from Lynne. The dahlias have poked through the ground and look very promising. The other seeds are a lavish combination of milkweed, lupines, snapdragons, verbena, cosmos, coreopsis, yarrow, and a hundred others, some with bold, brow-raising names like "sneezeweed" and "scablosa", but I guess that's what the butterflies like. The front of the pack declares "Bring Home the Butterflies" without punctuation and insinuating that the beauteous creatures of nature abandoned your estate last season when you failed to nourish them with a sufficient verdure.

I have some doubts about the whole endeavor, actually. My unreliable soil has produced conflicting results regardless of the ammendments. It doesn't help that Aaron, my pest control guy, comes every other month to spray for ants. (Something tells me the caterpillars will not appreciate this.) But the flowers should be nice all the same. Progress update in another month! Try not to expect a lush, stunning, vibrant display that will make your Internet browser swoon (but you never know!)

Today, during naptime, I shall aerate the compost heap with my new pitchfork spade and do some sprinkler repair. Water rationing began yesterday in San Diego County, and if the authorities see my sprinklers shooting into the street like they do for a half hour every morning, I'll get cited, though I'd prefer they begin by fixing those water spouts on the freeways -you know the ones? In the iceplant? Gushing into the slow lane every third mile?

And is topping off the aged, lime-caked City Hall fountains really necessary?


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