Dear Reader:

The first thing we all noticed this time at Edisto (as we got settled into each of our “prescribed” porch chairs) was the appearance of lots of lovely, delicate-looking yellow butterflies. Since the skies were so blue their fluttering yellow wings against the azure firmament delighted us all.

We wondered if they were monarchs but they didn’t look like pictures of the ones we see every year heading to Mexico, still they did look like they were on an odyssey of sorts among their own species.

The fun thing was seeing a yellow butterfly along the shoreline…nature at its best. In the afternoons their flutterings made my own eyes flutter closed. I would day dream about the possibility of riding one of those fragile and delicate butterflies high into the azure.What a sense of beauty, peace, and freedom would surely prevail!

Actually this specific butterfly emerges in May when the soil grows warm and again in September for one last “romp” before the air grows cooler. They are called: “Cloudless Sulphur Butterflies.”  Here are a few interesting tidbits about them:

*Cloudless sulphur butterflies are common along the Coastal Plain from Florida to Canada. They actually stay here, and reproduce here, during the spring and summer, but they are most apparent now because they’re migrating — “just like the monarch,” Stickney said, “but not as far and not in such big numbers.”

*These sulphurs migrate a few at a time, Stickney said, and unlike the monarchs (who fly all the way to Mexico and Central America), they’ll only journey as far as Florida and the upper Caribbean area. They take their time; Stickney has seen cloudless sulphurs in eastern North Carolina as late as December.

Upon leaving Edisto Saturday afternoon I stopped at King’s Market to pick up tomatoes for my neighbor mail-picker-upper and family members. They were not low-country but vine-grown mountain tomatoes….delicious!

While I was checking out the clerk asked me if I had a good visit and I replied that it had been “one of the best.” In the conversation I mentioned how beautiful the yellow butterflies were but that the love bugs were pretty annoying on the porch this time.

Another case of the rose and the thorn she responded. When she saw my puzzled face she said that the “black flies” follow the migration of the yellow butterflies…they appear at the same time this time of year.

She asked if the house I was staying in had a white porch. I told her it did….she said that made it worse because  “love bugs” (alias “black flies”) were attracted to white…and to cars. She was right on both accounts. By the time I got back in my car swarms of love bugs covered my side and front windshield. Some of them didn’t even blow off until I got back on Highway 17 and could pick up speed.

After reading the information on both the yellow butterfly and love bug it was evident that the black flies weren’t following the migratory path of the butterfly…they just hatched this time of year and it coincided with the migratory cloudless sulphur butterflies.

(But it is true that for everything beautiful and good on Earth….come life forms that are not so beautiful; just downright annoying.)

I revealed a deep secret I had been harboring for several months  to the Ya’s (amid much laughter) during the “Porch Party” Wednesday night. Last winter or early spring Anne and I got our courage up and met with our pastor, Jeff,  picked out a place in our church Memorial Garden, and then went together to Parks Funeral Home to fill out papers revealing wishes for funeral arrangements.

One of the questions asked for the age at death...since I was hurrying to get through the paperwork and leave (funeral homes give me the heebie jeebies)….I wrote down my present age and then finished filling out the rest.

We left and went to Oscars to celebrate our courage in getting this done and talked about how nice it was to have a friend accompany us and not have to go by ourselves. Anne casually mentioned the question about the age at the time of death and she said she almost blew it by writing her present age down.

At first I chuckled at Anne’s mistake and then suddenly stopped laughing. I could visually see myself writing my present age down for the blank…without a second glance. Immediately I felt like I had put a curse on myself or something.

So Wednesday evening, while they were all laughing and saying ‘On no…you didn’t” I told them I would be so happy on the 24th for the numbers to change to get the “self-inflicted” curse off my back.

So until tomorrow…Please let us remember that diversity, not similarities, make us stronger and more tolerant.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*My garden is slowly starting to shut down for the summer but a few summer flowers are still singing their “swan song” quite beautifully! Can hardly wait to fill it now with beautiful mums!