The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

I suppose I should rephrase the title to "The Good and Beautiful and the Bad and Ugly! The good and beautiful part refers to the many, many Monarch Butterflies that are migrating through the yard this year. I have never seen so many here. The yard is literally full of them. I know I lightly touched upon this in an earlier post, but..my goodness!..there are butterflies everywhere! At first, they seemed to prefer only the wild ageratums as a dining hall. And I do believe this would be the cafe of choice if I just had more ageratums! But now the marigolds, goldenrod, petunias and cosmos are covered. My yard has been turned into an orange and black Monarch World! Today as I went to the garden, there were butterflies on just about every flower but the garden was in desperate need of a good watering. As I watered I had to be so careful as to not spray them for fear of damaging their wings. I slipped the hose down low beneath the ageratums, up came a virtual cloud of orange and black fluttering wings. The swirling mass of Monarch engulfed me..what a thrill! I had butterflies all around me! It is strange the feeling that can overcome you when you are in the midst of something that is pure happenstance. This was one of those times. Nature performs magic that no magician could ever pull from his hat. The wonder of it all, the awe from witnessing an occurrence such as this is amazing. I truly wish that instead of a water hose, I had been holding my camera. Not that I could have ever captured the effect of a hundred or so fluttering butterflies, but it would have been fun to try!

Now for the bad and the ugly. Since Katrina, we have been inundated with Black Widow Spiders. I have even endured the bite from one of these nasties and I can honestly tell you that it is not fun. I thought we were about to eradicate them by simply smashing the adults and egg sacs. Well, today I discovered that not only do we have the Black Widow, we also have her evil sister, the Brown Widow. Oh, great! Just what I needed. There is some argument as to the potency of the Brown Widow's bite. Some say that it is not as potent as the Black Widow while others claim it is just as bad if not worse. All I know is that I do not like either. They have to go and I will fight them if I find them. This one was living under an unused flower pot. Looking for a nice pot to use as a home for some more basil plants, I turned the pot over and UHOH! The battle began! War was waged and after tirelessly fighting, I emerged as the victor! Spider and egg sacs were demolished! I know that for the next few days I will be extremely leery of where I put my hands simply because I saw this one. Then after the newness wears off, I will go right back to my careless ways. I will say that one time being bit is quite enough. I really have no inclination to try that again!