Tag Archives: Eggs

857. If you want to know God, watch a monarch butterfly from a thousand miles away return to a place where it has never been before. ~Author Unknown

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Butterflies…not quite birds,
as they are not quite flowers,
mysterious and fascinating
as are all indeterminate creatures.
~Elizabeth Goudge

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From inside my house today, I’m pretty sure I saw a monarch butterfly fluttering about my yard. This is an occurrence that I look forward to twice a year. For you see from April through June monarchs leave their habitats in groves of fir trees deep in Mexico or in the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque to begin a journey as far north as southern Canada and in so doing fly over our area. Sadly the monarch’s numbers have decreased tremendously because of the ongoing shrinking of their habitats and the poisoning by farmers of milkweeds (Asclepias) along their flyway. However, I’m still seeing a measure of them every year, and finding these colorful nomadic wanderers in my garden has always been a delightful rite of passage in their dramatic migrations. Monarchs with their burnt-orange and black-veined wings edged in black margins which are sprinkled with white dots are remarkably stunning. That’s why it’s easy in the spring to spot the 5 or 6 generations of them as they go along the way to their northernmost destinations. Since milkweeds are their host plants (the ones on which they lay their eggs), monarchs pause to breed whenever and wherever they find them which is why I purposefully plant some in my yard each year. As though heeding some kind of primordial cosmic call or the birthing scents of autumn at this time of year, the last brood of summer begins the long journey back to Mexico. Though it takes 5 or 6 generations of them to make it northward in the spring, as summer ebbs away a “Methuselah generation” is born, and that unique breed of monarchs makes the journey all the way from Canada deep into Mexico where they’ll cluster in colonies the rest of the year. The fact that this generation of monarchs returns to these places where they have never been speaks of knowledge beyond the grasp of the human mind.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! ~Romans 11:33  ✝

**Image via Pinterest

321. Hurt no living thing: ladybird, nor butterfly, nor moth with dusty wing. ~Christina Georgina Rossetti

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Winged insect feeding
for eons on nectar or
pollen and aphids

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Wake you at twilight
In the greening of the year
To hunt and lay eggs

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In gardens galore
and parks, meadows, or elsewhere
rid you plants from harm

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Found you I at dusk
sheltered in magnolia’s bloom
resting from a feast

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before the nations. ~Isaiah 61:11 ✝

Thank you, Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us!

259. If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. ~From THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.  ~Excerpted from THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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My first move of the day is from the bed to my recliner so I can sit a while and enjoy whatever is going on out in the yard.  I’ve still not seen any robins, but as I kept watching the Cardinals come today to my feeders, their flashes of red were enough to bring thoughts of Burnett’s novel, The SECRET GARDEN. Her inspirational tale of transformation and empowerment for two children with very dim outlooks and prospects touches my heart on several different levels.  When Mary finds the key to the secret garden, the “magical” powers of transformation come within her reach, and eventually she and Colin are “saved” and offered the prospects of present and future goodness and happiness.  I didn’t begin gardening until much later in life than they, but my discovery of the healing power inherent in all living things and God’s abiding presence in Creation was a pivotal moment of transformation in my life as well.  So I decided to post some lines from the novel tonight along with photographs (via Pinterest) in hopes of relaying the Divine’s “magic” that captured Mary, Colin, and me.

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

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“…the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs.”

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“Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it – and call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into t’ garden.”

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“There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em.”

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“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”

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“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.”

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The Lord is my strength and my might, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.  ~Exodus 15:2  ✝