Summertime

It's beginning to get wet and steamy. The mosquitoes are enjoying a leisurely breakfast courtesy of my legs and arms. So I have to stay indoors for my morning journaling. They made the news last night...their very own little paparazzi chasing them down with a wide angle lens to prepare everyone for their forays.


Never mind, I love summer still. And, mosquitoes notwithstanding, I take it all in stride. There must be a strain of mosquitoes which don't bite. Many years ago, I walked along a bridge over a mangrove swamp I found by accident at Butterfly World in Broward County's Tradewinds Park. I was attacked instantly by millions of mosquitoes. My legs, arms and face were covered in a black society, but not one single mosquito bit me. I thought this might be a sign I was to become the first female Dalai Lama, so favored by the gods I was that day.


Being smitten by the natural world, I want to do all I can to make this lilliputian world greener for the tiny creatures whose own work is widely known but ignored.


I once lived at Boca Hill in Boca Raton, FL where we had an outbreak of termites. I knew that the carpenter ants who lived in the trellis close to the termites would finish off all the termites, and then the lizards would finish off the ants. Some birds could make a morsel of those lizards. So I never had to use a pest control company for that reason. We did have to hire someone to come in and kill the termites on the inside as the labyrinth of underground tunnels was by now under the house.


I don't like to kill insects as they are part of a much larger population than mine and ensure the cycle of life, mine included, continues. My job is to be a steward of the earth and to live in peaceful coexistence with my small neighbors.


There is nothing more beautiful than watching the caterpillar build his chrysallis for its longed for metamorphosis as a butterfly or moth. When the day comes that it breaks out, I not only feel it organically, but see it as a metaphor for my own breakthrough; living side by side with these creatures humbles one. They dare to stake their claim to my hibiscus and nearly devour it, only to come alive several weeks later and soar into the exquisite butterflies they will become.

Coexistence or no existence. Think about that.