Flower Hill Farm Butterflies of 2012 ~ Mating Pearl Crescents

As with last winter, it is fun to look back over the vibrant colors and fragile beauties of the past season's flora and fauna. I have shared a bit of the gardens and now for a bit of romance amongst butterflies just a day after Valentine's Day. 

I begin 'Butterflies of 2012' with the strikingly patterned Pearl Crescent, Phyciodes tharos, and share a warm summer afternoon of observing these tiny butterflies as they flit about the north field mating.

 This particular sighting was interesting as a third Pearl Crescent would tag along with the mating couple. . . I suppose wishful thinking is at play . . . a standby . . . but rather voyeuristic, much like the way I feel. I would love to know what is going on in that minuscule brain for the pair seem quite attached.

Last year in my Butterfly Review I wrote a bit extensively about these small butterflies in a piece here and also here. The second link takes us back to a day in 2010 when I was enchanted by hundreds of Pearl Crescents darting about the middle meadow garden.

There is a good deal of love about and I feel acres of it for my new fifteen day old grandson that I held for the first time tonight . . . after a nine hour drive from Massachusetts. What a joy and miracle life is.

Wishing you all flowering fields of love. 

The rose is red, the violet's blue.
The honey's sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love, and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast, and then I drew,
And fortune said it should be you.

 Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus
A Choice Collection of Pretty Songs and Verses for
the Amusement of all Little Good Children
who can neither read nor run.

London, 1810