Apocalypse with butterflies

Elderberry on this cloudy morning

I wrote what follows yesterday when it was hot and dry. This morning it's cloudy and cool, and there are rumors of rain. And there you have it. Apocalyptic feelings melted by the thought of a rain cloud. I knew someone once who often advised me to view my feelings of dread like weather. 

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I’m finding it hard not to catastrophize the lack of rain here. In my lizard brain, I’m more Californian than Minnesotan since I spent more than 40 years fearing the Santa Ana winds. Seeing flames from my house during the Thomas fire and the one that came next whose name I can’t even remember was not an experience I want to have again. Masking to go outside was a thing, and this was months  before Covid was  even a mere gleam in some Chinese market creature’s eye. 

I moved here to Minnesota after those big fires and before Covid. 

I love the Midwest. I love that it rains here. I love rain and a book and something hot to drink. I love rain and the way growing things look afterwards. I love the clouds and the washing of everything, and how birds sing when it’s over. 

Red Admiral butterlfy.
So far this year, I've seen these and blue swallowtails and monarchs. Also some yellow ones I don't know the name of.

So right now, I’m sitting in my hot and  dry back yard, telepathically telling my new little transplanted peony that I will give it a good soak tomorrow. I’m envisioning where I will plant more plants that butterflies love, and how I will shrink my front lawn with a path for the mailman and his yard to yard shortcut, and how there will be plants for the butterflies there too, encircling him. In the end there will be very little grass. Mo’ grass mo’ problems, a neighbor says. 

I don’t want an apocalypse with butterflies. I just want the butterflies. I want world peace, a cure for cancer, and a regularly employed methodology to make it rain.