[leps-talk] purple?

[Anne Kilmer]

Anne Kilmer wrote:

> Paul Cavalconte wrote:
> 
> 
>>Monet and Matisse would have definitely seen the "Limenitis sheen" as
>>purple.  Van Gogh would have seen only sunflower yellow and pea green.
>>Picasso would have seen blue (particularly in his blue period) , but with
>>oblique eye spots.  Norman Rockwell would have seen exactly what was there.
>>Jackson Pollack would have seen everything that wasn't there.  Mark Rothko's
>>RSP would have looked like a Promethea moth.  Andy Warhol's L. arthemis
>>would look much as it does, but with the Campbells Soup logo emblazoned
>>across the white bands.
>>
>>Now, is that Lih MEN ih tis, or Lih men EYE tis??????
>>
>>
> 
> My grandaddy, Frederick Frieseke, would have seen a bunch of pink and 
> green and white and yellow spots, which might somehow have admitted to 
> being a butterfly, if not actually a purple one, but oh, the Dutch 
> masters would have painted a butterfly that could take wing and fly, 
> after sipping the dew on that melon's voluptuous flank.
> Anne Kilmer
> 


Easter
Joyce Kilmer


The air is like a butterfly
  With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
  And sings.

So, Ok, it isn't purple. Spring Azure, you reckon? I always imaged a 
sort of Morpho ... but that can't be right. Think New Jersey, end of 
March or so, never on my father's birthday because that is the vernal 
equinox.
Joyce was my grandfather. I have (or had) his wife's butterfly book; a 
little pocket-sized handbook, brown, there was a wildflower book also 
and I think a bird book, I hope my daughter may know where they have 
gone. (Probably safely wrapped in foil, in a drawer.)
I noticed, some years back, that I recognized neither common nor 
scientific name of most of the butterflies ... of course I'm in Florida, 
but I did actually recognize some of the bugs in person.
Today we have a little blue-type butterfly of uncertain lineage, who 
usually hangs out high in the vine-hung Casuarinas where I can't get a 
good look. The ones I have seen up close were Cassius Blues. Leptotes 
cassius. Or, of course, not.
There are five Zebra longwings, the flock increased from the three that 
chained by my lawn chair day before yesterday. They are distinctly 
twitterpated. They take turns being the extra one. Two pas de deux, in 
other words, and one that cuts in.

The Giant Swallowtail also has picked up a mate. The extra Heliconius 
tries to join their dance as well.
That corner of Casuarinas would serve as a good trellis for a few more 
vines, I think, to slow their growth and speed their journey home. It is 
a politically incorrect tree by association, it being of the male, or 
suckering, sort.
It does support a native vine, Virginia creeper, but folks would be so 
happy to declare that vine an honorary non-native and expunge it, as 
they were doing with the Choice Native Balloon Vine and may still be doing.

Warblers, honorary butterflies in my opinion, are finding much buggage 
among the battered avocado leaves, where lace bugs have been having a 
wonderful time and will now, he he, come in very handy indeed. 
Presently, the dead leaves will finish falling, we will mow, and the 
lace bugs' cycle will thereby be further disrupted.
They will win, however, because the avocado's suckers fruit, and 
therefore leaf out, at a different season from the true tree. That gives 
them fresh leaves year round, and the natural control doesn't really work.

Thus nature and the gardener, with the best of intentions, disable each 
other at every turn.
I have not yet reached the stage where I can indulge myself in creating 
a little natural havoc, but by golly I can point pretty well.

What my brush-pile compost heap needs now, come to think of it, is a 
couple teens rooting through it snake-hunting. That would break up the 
dead wood and speed the crumbling and decomposition of the leaves.
Even if someone would stand there smiting it mightily with a machete for 
a bit, that would be splendid. But alas, there is none to smite.
Were they wildflowers, not Mexican sunflowers, I'd pile these crisp 
fragments on bare earth and flail them into mulch and seeds. But lordy, 
they get 25 feet high, and that's a mighty wildflower meadow. Exotic, too.

I would like to put some water hyacinth in the hot tub, which is at the 
moment functioning as lovely forest pool, along with some goldfish of 
course, but I am not allowed to walk down to the lakeshore, pick some 
up, carry them up and put them in my pool. There is a hefty fine, for 
this is a highly-undesirable exotic. But there they are, a stone's-throw 
away.
The frogs would like them, but ... oh well.
The garden where I live is planted randomly with exotics that were here 
when I bought the place, natives that I have planted and that have found 
me of their own accord, things I took a fancy to and that don't mind 
neglect, and things I really wish I hadn't planted.

Weeds here, all of us, I suppose, but we muddle along.
I'm off butterflying in the garden. Enjoy.
Anne Kilmer
South Florida









 
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