The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect, originally uploaded by Paul-G.

Yet another fantastic north Florida spring weekend. No obligations to speak of, we planned to continue the hard work of recovering our back yard after the hard winter. Twenty-eight freezes is a lot of cold for semi-tropical flora to handle, and we lost much -- but are relishing the opportunity provided to replace the frost-vulnerable plants with more hardy north-Florida varieties. So Saturday was was "visit the nursery" day -- then more clean-up and planting, fertilizing, watering and patching. And Sunday was our day of "rest".

Some of our lantana have started to bloom, but not enough yet to attract the butterflies back to the yard -- so we set off to Alpine Groves Park -- a restored citrus farm on a bluff overlooking the east bank of the Saint Johns River. There I found the monarch in the photo above. I was moving in with my macro (close-up) lens for one last eye-to-eye shot when he bolted at the same instant that I depressed the shutter. I thought I'd lost him, but found this left behind in the camera. Fantastic luck! Then it was lunch (crab) at Six Mile Creek and back to the house for more yard work and a two mile walk as the sun headed west. Now a couple of chapters from the books I'm currently reading (Lincoln's Virtues, and Shakespear's Two Gentlemen of Verona). Weekends don't get much better than this... simple.