Emerge

What began as an innocent pot of Italian flat-leaf parsley for my culinary uses turned into a lesson about life and death in the garden for me and my family and friends. Watering one morning I find three rather beefy looking caterpillars looking up at me. Good grief - there goes the parsley, I thought. Lucky for them I'm smart enough to know they will one day become butterflies, so they received their first gift of Life. Even better, a run down to the fabric store secured netting and twine so that their little nursery will be protected from spiders and preying mantis and wasps and birds.

Day 2 I find the first caterpillar has secured himself to a stick, wrapped a slender thread of silk around himself, and is ready for the inevitable metamorphosis process. I vow to record it all digitally, and spent the rest of summer watching the process of metamorphosis and emergence.

Months later I put two and two together and realize it wasn't just the butterflies who emerged from my front porch this summer but I, too, am undergoing an metamorphosis of my own. We all do of course, but we're not always clued into that fact. This blog is only one small indication of my own changing process. Like that thin rope of silk, I'm seemingly precariously perched waiting for the next indicating twitch within.