Today I went to Trinity Trail, twenty minutes from my home. I walked a bit over an hour. I saw myriad butterflies. Many were quite willing to land upon me and fly around me. Sometimes I would notice two or three on me at a time. One landed on my hand, and let me walk with her for fifteen minutes or so. Here are some pictures which give at best only a general idea of the fun.
Here is the one on my hand:
Here is a blurry one on my back:
Here is one on my wrist:
In the sky, I saw intermittent cotton tufts in mid-air. I thought at first it was a late cottonwood tree, but then I noticed that the thistles had gone from purple bloom to white tuft seed pods:
It was a wonderful hot north Texas day, filled with huge butterflies and friendly small ones. I listened to a CD of Franz Ferdinand, whose early Sparks influences amuse me, and picked up my bifocals. I looked kind of cool hooking my glasses to my shirt to read menus, but now I can see again. I bought at Big Lots a CD of Cheap Trick covers. Some guy from Warrant,of all odd bands, did an amazing "I Want You to Want Me", very electro-rocky, but too many other folks thought that Cheap Trick would make a really cool electronica dance band. Ground Control to Electronica mixers: that doesn't work. A tribute album of Genesis covers featured obscure songs done with deepest respect, very fascinating. Still, I wanted to hear "I Know What I Like" and "the Lamb lies down on Broadway", which were omitted. Then I figured out how to use an editor to crop these pictures a bit.
Much good happened this weekend, but I'll just mention how I wish I could have captured the huge swallowtail butterflies I saw in profusion on film.