oh to be a butterfly!

It seems that the butterflies in my mum's garden like nothing more on a sunny afternoon than to flutter along to a certain purple plant and spend the day sun-bathing and lazily flapping their wings as they teeter on wobbly petal platforms which sway in the breeze. They spend hours sampling the pollen and hanging out with the giant bumble bees who also like to congregate there. When it was really sunny this last weekend, there was barely a flower un-occupied with a wingéd visitor. I snapped this red admiral showing off her glorious wings...

Up close you can see that the butterflies have really furry backs. Like a luxurious rug for the fairies and pixies that hop on their backs and get taken for rides amongst the flowers and trees giggling to themselves and clinging desparately on as they whizz around the extremely unpredicatable (and rather loopy) flightpaths that the butterflies so love to follow.

Here she is again seen from another angle...

Look how long and graceful her tiny thin legs and long twiddly antennae are :)

Nearby a small tortoiseshell came in to land/show off her beautiful wings. The markings were so colourful and intricate, ranging from tiger stripes (she's fierce!) to opulent blue splodges around a deep golden amber back...

And here's one of their bumble bee friends, feasting away. Making honey is a hungry business...

He's sat on a different flower - but it's still a purple one. They really seem drawn to all shades of lavendar and lilac and violet and plum. I think these insects must all be royalty of some kind. I wonder if there's a butterfly palace somewhere underground where they all head off to when the sun goes down. Each of them gets a throne and a little crown studded with teeny tiny diamonds and they sit around looking haughty and important, discussing world affairs and how much things have changed since the good old days when they were all wee young caterpillars without a care in the world. They don't need robes, what with their wings being so exquisite, but they probably all wear fancy princess shoes around the palace. Clip clop clip clop go their little royal feet as they parade for one another in the grand palace hall where once a week they host a glamorous butterfly ball, inviting moths and the bumblebees and sometimes the centipedes (but never the mean angry wasps). Every morning when they wake up in the beds made out of their old silken cocoons their ladies-in-waiting (ladybirds of course!) wake them up and fuss over them for a good hour, paying them compliments and catching them up on the local garden news. They bring them acorn cups of fresh dew and rainwater to splash over their faces and they comb their furry backs until they glisten and gleam. Then all the butterflies fly off to spend another day on the purple flowers back in the garden....

You never know, it might happen.

Anyway, yes, I think it would be rather grand to be a butterfly.
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