A Year of Gratitude – August 27, 2024

I found my gratitude in a garden visitor today. I was finishing a few garden chores when I noticed a shadow on the ground below. It was moving and caught my attention.

When I looked up, I saw a beautiful swallowtail butterfly. It was resting on the tithonia that has grown so tall that it towers above everything else in the garden. I watched as it fed on one bloom and then moved to another.

It left the sunflower and moved to the nearby zinnias. Then it returned to the sunflowers. I stood in the garden, under the trellis covered with vines and tomato leaves, staying put so as not to frighten it away.

I didn’t want it to leave. I wanted to stand there and watch it as it went about the business of having a delicious meal in our garden. I stayed long enough to enjoy watching it as it moved about, watching those delicate yet powerful wings open and close so smoothly.

I like to think that this butterfly might have come from the group of swallowtail caterpillars that fed on my dill earlier this year. They were abundant and made quick work of the dill before I had the chance to use much of it. I was fine with that in the hope that we might have butterflies to enjoy.

I’ll never know if this is one of those butterflies, but I like to think that it is. I’m happy to trade a bit of dill for the joy of watching this beautiful butterfly in our garden. It seems like a wonderful trade to me.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.