Nature’s Gifts

60: (July 2022)

I’ve never before seen so many butterflies and bees in my backyard garden. This makes me enormously happy, especially since monarch butterflies have been recently declared endangered. Although there are many monarchs in the garden, there are also a great many smaller butterflies, as well as swallowtails, bees, wasps, and other pollinators. There is such constant movement amidst the densely packed flowers that it looks like a blur unless I stop and study a small section at a time. I sit on a garden bench and choose a patch of flowers to focus my eyes upon in order to really see all the small creatures busily pollinating, buzzing, and flitting about.

I started creating this garden about 30 years ago, and it’s evolved and expanded each year. It literally started out as a giant hole in the ground surrounded by a cement patio — a drained, built-in swimming pool seeking a new purpose. We filled it in with dirt, then gradually filled it with flowers, eventually digging up sizable parts of the yard beyond the patio for further garden expansion. A few years ago we began removing the aged, cracked patio, and have been filling that area in with flowers as well.

The garden has had many phases, from neat rows of carefully planned ribbons of color, to its current phase of big patches of flowers all bumping up against each other, many which have self-seeded, transported by the wind. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about biodiversity, a prime motivation to continue planting more flowers to provide habitat for pollinators. There are so many flowers dancing about now that I feel like the garden has finally become a little nature sanctuary unto itself, where a great many butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds feel thoroughly at home.

To further round out our little wildlife haven, my husband — who particularly loves birds — has built and installed birdhouses and bird feeders all over the backyard. The birds have certainly appreciated his efforts, adding a parade of color to the sky and beautiful songs to the air. They also enjoy drinking water from our birdbath and nibbling on various flower heads for seeds. Then there are the deer, who make regular garden visits to consume their favorite flowers, most often the hostas and tall phlox. This year, they also sampled the sedum with apparent relish. I don’t mind (much!); there’s enough to go around.

But the garden doesn’t just feed the birds, bees, butterflies, and deer (chipmunks, squirrels, voles, etc.). It feeds me. It’s my favorite part of our home, by far. The garden feeds my soul the way a beautiful piece of music does. It has indeed, after years of tending, become a sanctuary: a safe place, a sacred place. A gift.

40: (July 2002)

I went on my first Girl Scout camping trip a few weeks ago with my younger daughter. The trip was a success for many reasons: various kinds of knots were tied, an oven was created out of a cardboard box in which we baked brownies, eggs were cooked in plastic zip-lock bags (a truly novel taste sensation), water balloon fights and relay races were enjoyed by all the children, soap was carved into works of art, and of course, s’mores were eaten, just to name a few highlights.

But the most memorable part of the trip for me came when we all went on a hike. It had begun to rain ever so slightly as one of the mothers led us to a pond. A veil of mist hung above the smooth surface of the water, and a stunning show of mountain laurel in full bloom graced the edges of the pond. All was still. Then the mother broke the silence by clapping her hands. She asked the rest of us to join in, as she explained to the girls that we were “calling the turtles.” This seemed a little far-fetched, yet she was the one person among us who had been at this campground before; she claimed that the turtles in the pond emerged when they heard people clapping. So we continued to clap, feeling a wee bit foolish in the thick, wet air.

“See?” she exclaimed after a few minutes, as she pointed to a spot far across the water. My eyes scanned the water’s surface until a small, rounded object was spotted moving toward us: the head of a painted turtle. We welcomed it with more applause, cheering the turtle on until it reached our shoreline, whereupon 12 sets of hands rushed to throw it bits of leftover breakfast toast that had been brought along. “Look!” someone shouted. At least eight more turtle heads were seen moving briskly toward us from across the pond. Bread, bread, and more bread bits were tossed eagerly into the water, as the turtles somersaulted around to snatch the offerings. Finally, they appeared to have had their fill, and the last crumb was thrown in.

I wondered how many generations of Girl Scouts had been part of this same scene at the camp. How many children had the turtles delighted? How many children had witnessed their first troop of well-trained, wild pond creatures? It was a sweet mingling of nature and tradition, a bridge between the wild turtles and the girls, handed down from one year to the next, one generation to the next.

I hope my daughter will always hold the memory of sighting the turtles swimming across the pond in her mind and heart. I know I will.

60-40:

It is deeply joyful to experience a meaningful connection to wildlife in some way. Whether it be turtles greeting a group of campers, or bees and butterflies feeding on flowers nurtured for that very purpose, the connection is primal, which makes it so satisfying.

As humans, we long to connect to each other, and that is a natural priority. But we’d be missing out on so much if we didn’t venture beyond our own species as well. Nature offers us so many opportunities to be struck by wonder, pierced with joy.

Such gifts. May we protect these connections, for in honoring what is wild, we experience what it is to be fully human.