Dear Reader:

Last year I was so excited about this time of the spring season (It’s officially spring right now!) with my “Passion Vine” blooming away during Holy Week.

I read all kinds of ideas and suggestions how the vine got its name from the “crown of thorns” appearance in the bloom to the leaning tendrils morphing like the whips used on Christ at the crucifixion.

Some writers really embellished and stretched the truth quite a bit to make more connections than plausible or even possible, but overall  they were all interesting stories.

Little did I know that the real story would have to wait a year.

After sharing many exotic blooms (“Oh no! Not another photo of the passion plant”!)  one day in late summer….I went over and was smiling at the vine, now climbing over the tall side fence, and suddenly my expression turned to one of pure horror.

Hundred of these yucky-looking wormy catepillars were gobbling the vine, with all its blooms, as fast as they could. I tried spraying some bug spray but the next morning…the vine that once was… no longer was ….I mean those catepillars had eaten it to the core.

I told Anne my horror story and a couple of days later she called to let me know that the same thing had happened to her passion plant. We decided it must be one of those years when certain bugs or insects emerge and destroy everything. Just our luck, we planted it the wrong year.

So I yanked the pitiful looking bare vine out of the ground…it was too painful to watch. Smart Anne….left hers alone to see what Mother Nature might do to intervene at some point.

What would I do without my magazine articles in the waiting room at my oncologist’s office? There was an article on the Passion Flower on my last visit…nothing much said about the Biblical connection….but warning potential buyers about a certain strange phenomenon.

Butterflies adore the Passion Flower Vine….so much so…that they lay their larvae in it (after getting all the nectar) ….It takes a little while but one day the larvae turn into lots and lots of wormy catepillars. Which (if left alone to do what nature intends it to do)….eat all the blooms along the vine. They then turn into butterflies and the cycle of life continues….their own “Resurrection.”

The article warned not to yank the vine up by its roots….because the next year it would grow back from its roots. Anne-1; Becky-0.

The title photo today is my neighbor Jane’s passion plant….Ace Hardware sold the last one to her while I was in Mt. Pleasant Thursday….but if any of you readers would like to have one of these beautifully blooming plants….ACE Hardware is expecting more this Thursday! I will be there!

I did get another type of butterfly plant that Vickie (across the street neighbor) told me about when I bumped into her at the hardware store last Friday. This one won’t eat itself but just provides a snack and a place to rest for butterflies.

I am going to sign off now…..Have you ever gotten cramps in your hand where it distorts and twists your fingers and thumb….very painful. I over-did it yesterday cleaning out my garage…and I am paying the price this evening while typing.

I pulled all this junk out plus I filled up two other garbage cans full of “stuff”….some of it was very heavy stuff!

Ernie is coming tomorrow to haul everything in the pictures off and Larry and Webb Bailey are coming Monday morning to haul off some stuff left over from the renovations last summer….and then…and then…the nasty old garage will become a butterfly...Boo’s Potting Shed!  Yeah! Yeah! Ouch! My thumb just disappeared again.

So until tomorrow…When in doubt….Leave Mother Nature time to do her thing…she does know what she is doing!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Anne…you will be very proud of me…I did not throw this pitiful rabbit away…one ear keeps falling off and one eye has disappeared…but from a distance my Easter Bunny looks pretty good. I can empathize, after all I look better from a distance too!