Life is Laboring

Labor Day weekend and all wildlife is laboring, furiously eating up before the cold of autumn and winter comes. Plants are seeding, berries ripening.

Still no sign of a monarch butterfly…but was that one I spotted flitting over the circle garden in the front? I do not know because by the time I walked up the hill, it had disappeared into the forest. Usually the monarch butterflies like to alight on the Joe Pie weed.

The great gray heron swooped across beatitude pond and over the dam down towards the brook. “Will it be able to find a flight path out?” my husband asked.

We went to check – no sign of it. The canopy has grown more this summer, blocking the light from the carpet of dead leaves below. The weather is supposed to be brilliant all weekend.