My Secret Garden

Town Musician

It is a little late this year worrying about the butterflies. But I am planning ahead for next spring. I won't prune my passion-vine so that the viceroys can pretend to be monarchs, and I'll leave the fennel standing for the swallow tails. My butterfly bush is there waiting for next year. I still have some kohlrabi in a pot hoping that cabbage white caterpillars eat the leaves. The hummingbirds are still dipping into the honeysuckle and the fuchsias and the blue jay is picking at the pumpkin on the porch. My yard is overgrown, and gardeners throw messages tied to stones on the driveway advertising about how my front yard could be improved. But I like it the way it is. I still remember the time without birds and butterflies during the 1980s after the fruitfly eradication. In those days squadrons of helicopters passed straight over our house night after night and pelted our landscape with malathion. All the little bugs died, and there were no more wasps, and no birds because there was no food for them. That was ten years without birds and butterflies. The fruit flies were gone, too. But at what price?