Winter Blues ~ Eastern-tailed Blue, Summer Azure and Silvery Blue

Dreaming of Blues fluttering around the garden can shake off the mantle-of-melancholy winter sometimes weaves about our spirits. Today, I gather some delightful, inspiring and tender butterfly encounters, from this past sizzling summer, and toss them on this page of white, that they may bring a ray of light, to warm the inner gardeners folded inside our longing souls. 

Eastern Tailed-Blue Butterflies of 2013

The progeny of these gossamer-wings are now chrysalises, or caterpillars in the Eastern Tailed-Blue's case, tucked away in crevices within mossy mounds, pods of vetches and clover, or along the frozen winter ground. Little fragile beings within their sleepy pupa or larva state, without realizing their fate, without questioning, without knowing, without hoping to survive the onslaught of freeze and thaw, human flaws and sharp bird beaks, simply, sweetly sleep, waiting for transformation. 

Summer Azure Butterflies of 2013

Holding on throughout the bleak winter months, many new Blues will emerge, along with our gladdened hearts, into the warm breath of spring. I hope and imagine hundreds of butterflies surviving the numerous perils that come between them and their completed metamorphosis. Such gossamery treasures tickle emotions and call the caring mind to action in thoughtful ways towards their wellbeing. An added appreciation for subtleties in shades of blues and grays awakens this slothful painter, when gazing upon the pastel Blues.

Silvery Blue Butterflies of 2013

Without snow cover, butterfly chrysalises and caterpillars are more vulnerable. Just beneath the old apple tree, gray birch and blueberry bushes, precious life is quietly in hiding.

I love birds too and they enjoy all the stages of butterflies equally, especially at this lean time of year.  No snow coverage is good news for this little Carolina Wren, who has decided to move in and live year round.

Wren and other bird beaks are perfect for lifting up the leaves and digging for larva nuggets below. Too bad for the butterflies being of the lower food chain, but then, butterflies fasten hundreds and hundreds of eggs to various host plants assuring there will always be trembling gossamer-wings to pollinate and touch our hearts. I say, always, but heedless humans do have a hand in the decline of butterflies of all kinds.

Foggy, frosty, winter morning sunrises are wondrous to behold just outside the windows and doors. I feel blessed to start the day in this inspiring way. A branch of the Mill River runs between the hill where Flower Hill Farm is situated and Carey Hill just due east, making for a great show of mist most every dawn. I am less excited about the sheet of wood smoke that is always more gray.

Millions of unique snowflakes fall, thickening a fleecy snow-blanket, sheltering tiny life. It is heart-warming to know of all the diverse, quiescent wildlife sleeping beneath the surface of snow in layers of detritus deeper below. In the dance of life, all is in limbo, uncertainties abound upon a blanketed earth.

Winter can be beautiful in its frozen snow-blossom way. Creating an ever changing wonderland with a great deal to explore, to ponder and exclaim about. It can soften the mind and loosen binding thoughts of gloom. If its beauty fails to lift our spirits, it may help to remember that the little Blues are placidly waiting too. 

A Winter Focus ~ Cedar Waxwing Ornaments and Long Nights Moon

The nakedness of winter's landscape can sometimes seem cold and lonely, when suddenly, whoosh, all together in flight, a flash of fluttering life lifts the spirit high towards outermost tips of a beloved Black Cherry tree. Offering light and enchantment to the lucky viewer, a flock, an 'ear-full', a 'museum' of over sixty Cedar Waxwings alight, sprinkled along the top of the skeletal cherry canopy, resembling delicate ornaments bedecking leafless limbs. 

A closer focus reveals hints of waxwing antics, patterns and forms. A group that may rest and then be off together, a burst of beaks, trebles and feathers, winging through the crisp air down to our crabapple orchard.

Surrounded by colors of autumn and captured through glass, so as not to frighten the timorous Cedar Waxwing, I cannot quite focus the bright yellow tip of its tail or the yellow wash covering its downy belly. Tiny apples are hanging temptations, little-bitty baubles, winter apples waiting to be plucked. Only these are nourishing . . . vital winter food for the waxwings, robins and wild turkeys too.

Every inch of branch, twig and dried stalk, wearing icy snow-coats all across the fields, groan of winter's beauty. 

During a storm . . .

After a partly sunny day . . . snowy mantles melt away.

Into wonder of long black nights, native cherry, charcoal raven touching crumbling cerulean sky, tickling the 'Full Cold Moon'. A joyous interlude between dark and light.

Rising up from swirling surf of clouds, following the setting sun, the 'Long Nights Moon' sails across the painted pastel sky.

Night folds us into our dreams until daybreak, shattering the dark, while scattering light and soft puffs of rosy pink, awakens a new day. An old, softened mountain slumbers still beneath a mantle of lavender smog, as days, nights and solstices dissolve one into the other.

Dreamy underwater illusions, a world of sediments worn down over millenniums, torrents of lava flows from time and crust torn apart. A deep plentiful supply filling an ancient tectonic rift . . . pressure forced up molding forms Native American-like silhouette looking up longingly, for millions of year, towards the sky. A segment of the Metacomet Ridge, of the Mount Holyoke Range dreaming since days of dinosaurs, within my view.

Presently, with placid anticipation, life moves through a calendar of months making what it can of each. Filling the hours minute by minute, spilling seconds by the spoonfuls. It is all over in a wink.

Winter Solstice 2013 is marked on our calendars for tomorrow December 21st, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the exact moment is never certain, when the shortest day will give birth to the longest night of the year. After a few days, we will note the lengthening of light, as a rebirth, a celebration of our sun, leads us deeper into winter. Peace and Goodwill and Good Day to All.

Flower Hill Farm Butterflies of 2012 ~ American Copper

The teeny tiny American Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) packs a sizable palette for one so small.   I was happy to find this little butterfly sunning in the south field back in May of 2012. Its wingspan is only 7/8 x 1 1/8 . . . a delicate, miniature, ephemeral painting belonging to the Gossamer-wings family . . . offering distinctive marks and textures that one can identify but never own. However, photos and happy memories are filed, of a late may day, walking in the south field along side a fragile, yet plentiful living jewel. 

We might pause before pulling out all of the invasive Sheep Sorrels or Curly Dock of the Rumex family growing in our gardens and meadows. I am sure to examine plants carefully before composting them in hopes of finding eggs or caterpillars of this lively and vibrant butterfly. Stands of sorrel are left to grow along the south field paths . . .  in honor of American Coppers.

The American Copper butterflies are on the wing or in varying stages of metamorphosis from mid May through the middle of September. They overwinter here in their chrysalis stage or as the Massachusetts Butterfly Club's great website mentions ~ in half grown Larva state.

It stimulates the imagination, to consider life waiting beneath heavy blankets of snow now filling our Western Massachusetts gardens, fields and forest . . . and as far as the eye can see, lightly coating every twig and tree. Hemerocallis sleep within a deep frost . . . waiting to feel alive again.
Color will run riot in just a couple of months, but for now, just outside our windows and doors the dawning sun paints the sky, clouds and mist ethereal hues of lavender and pink.

March continues to hold fast to winter's quiet and cold beauty. 

Bluebirds are patiently guarding their house, while the Mount Holyoke Range sits shrouded in pink mist. 

Spring seems content to stay away for now . . . I shall have to visit 'early spring' at the Lyman Conservatory on the Smith College campus just fifteen minutes away down in the neighboring town of Northampton, where visitors can inhale an elixir of hyacinths and other flowering bulbs of their Spring Bulb Show.

More Wintry Wonders: Fern Frost

Winter can be a remarkable painter and engraver too. 

January's frigid temperatures merging with just the right amount of moisture and 'surface texture' . . . I would not dare refer to smudged glass here . . .  often creates crystalline forms on our simple farmhouse windowpanes, inspiring joy and awe for winter's icy mysteries. When outdoor degrees dip into the teens, single digits and minuses, these 'fern frost' etchings are more likely to be viewed from within a warm but not overly warm environment. Vibrant sunrises offer a lovely back-lighting effect for observing and photographing tiny water droplets frozen into frosty leaf-like forms. 

Surely a frozen link to nature's ancient, green, fern frond formations. 

During winter's freezing days and nights many of us dream of verdant landscapes, yet only this time of year produces such delicate and ephemeral wonders. Rather like the sand and wave engravings created along the ocean's edge . . . it is an art form of nature most impermanent. Perhaps another lesson in learning how to live and let go.

Gazing Into A Wintry Landscape of Wonder

Though the wintry landscape palette is not as colorful as other seasons,

 the raw sky does spread out a bright cloth with vivid rose and lavender hues 

each early morning and just before night.

Winter's beauty can be mesmerizing, though wind chills of -13 F do challenge the spirit.

Somehow we all adapt.

We are all creatures of habit. 

Late afternoons and early mornings, I often find our resident Red-tailed Hawk perching 

on the same branch, in more or less exactly the same location, within a stately Oak, 

which solidly stands in a clearing dotted with native blueberries not far from the forest's edge.

The Red-tailed Hawk stands out in a striking way within a foggy, snowy landscape.
Its underwing white mirroring that of the powdered coating etched upon the Oak's limbs
and shrouding a forest of Hemlocks and White Pines.

Winter's white and light can be beautiful and we acclimate to its frigid ways sometimes longing for warmer days.

Flower Hill Farm BUTTERFLIES OF 2011 ~ Eastern Tiger Swallowtail ~ Three Years Blog Anniversary

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails Papilio glaucus in threes flitting above and about Miss Canada Lilac this past June. 

It seems most appropriate to mark my third blog anniversary with these endearing creatures. For years I had tried to capture Tiger Swallowtails flitting about in groups . . .  and finally, after waiting in just the right place, for just the right amount of time ~ voila! 

If you are lucky, you might find the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars munching on the leaves of black cherry, pin cherry, ash, apple and magnolia . . . to name a few trees that might be growing in your gardens and landscape. The butterflies may be sighted in flight beginning the middle of April and through October from one of their two broods. Overwintering occurs here in the chrysalis stage. 

Back into now time . . . today and yesterday . . . three years pile up with sunrises and sunsets, waxing and waning moons, our gardens awake and falling into seasonal slumber, wildlife filling pages. 

February Full Moon 2012

This February is quite different from February of three years past. The winter landscape is remarkably different in my first post. 

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR KIND SUPPORT OVER THESE THREE YEARS!