August isn't the most colorful month in the gardening calendar.
Almost everything looks a bit frayed, overgrown, or yellowed at the edges. (You can just glimpse the dried brown heads of the once brilliantly purple allium. Their former glory exists only in my blog sidebar now.)
For some reason, though, there are great clouds of butterflies everywhere.
On Thursday, I had to take my youngest daughter to the Jane Austen House with me. For several patient hours, she sat on a wooden bench and knitted in the garden. There was one magical moment in which a swirl of white butterflies looked like a moveable crown upon her head. Sadly, it was captured only in my memory.
Why are butterflies such an irresistible subject for the photographer? Is it because they are the very essence of what is ephemeral?
My youngest daughter, still impervious to the charms of cell phones and the like, spent hours fashioning a sari from her big sister's old duvet cover. She still likes to play dress-up -- not for any alluring reasons, but just for fun. I wonder if this will be her last childish summer?
A few weeks ago, a dear blog-friend sent me a card with the following quotation from Edith Wharton: If only we could stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
Happiness is so hard to pin down, but I do try to recognize it when I see it.
