The Butterfly Effect

I have spent some quality summer hours sitting with butterflies. I've occasionally been told I'm for the birds, but I've always loved the butterflies. What's not to like?

As a Master Gardener (now lapsed) I was "helping" Claire Herzog in her horticulture classes at Laurel Nokomis School. Unfortunately, I discovered the butterfly box in her classroom and I was a goner. While lessons went on over the weeks, I lingered near the box, watching as Monarch caterpillars munched on milkweed, climbed to the top of the box, spelled the letter "J" and eventually became chrysalises. (The word should be chrysalides, but lets let it die its awkward death.)

I've learned recently that the various stages of those creepy/too-beautiful caterpillars are called instars. How fabulous a word is that? Not awkward at all.
I was present at various "releases" of newly-hatched and properly- warmed butterflies as they were sent off (sometimes reluctantly) into the world.

One summer I was able to bear witness to a chrysalis being spun and a butterfly being born. The chrysalis - (I'd've called it a cocoon when I was a kid) - was a shimmering light green. The really magical markings were a tiny golden chain of metallic-seeming dots at its neck. The tiniest of Crown Jewels. (Grandbabe Taylor has provided me with the information that this is the "zipper".)(Forget about jewels, please!)

Weeks went by but the time came when the tiny green pouch gradually darkened, and somehow became transparent, the dark wings visible, but not quite. I was filled with awe at the IMMENSE struggle it seemed to take at either end of this cycle. Let me use the words "convulsing" and "great exertion." Being "in labor" might apply here. And it wasn't easy for the butterfly either!

I was surprised to see M. Butterfly emerge HEAD FIRST, doing some kind of Chubby - Checker-Twist, hanging-dangling on while the rest of her damp self kind of slipped out - followed by more hanging around and uncrumpling and eventual soaring into the day.

On a more recent summer day, I had a butterfly land on my knee. Another day, one flew by so closely that I could feel the "wind" and the warmth of its flight. Would it be too much of a leap to wonder if this was my same observed hatchling - or her heir?


So moving! How much more could I take? Rapture and passion are fine, but I'm exhausted. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to stop the weeping and sighing.

Johnny "Papaya" and the Lovely Natividad

originally in Florida Gardening Magazine. October/November 2000


Getting out of my car in John Bums' driveway, I had to squeeze past a grapefruit tree, heavy with fruit. I can always tell when I'm approaching John's house, his being the only garden on the block that comes out to the road to meet me. John is also there to meet me, a friendly welcome, and we're off on a tour of a little wedge of rain forest cut out of...NO!...restored or retrieved from the middle of an otherwise ordinary Florida neighborhood.

You might be familiar with Johnny "Papaya" Bums, a contributor to Florida Gardening magazine and other periodicals, and a celebrated character in the Sarasota gardening scene. Originally from Alabama, John utilizes some colorful phrasing. At one point he tells me about a taste so good "your tongue will slap your brains out." Seriously into good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, he says that sickness comes from malnutrition and mal- nutrition is a result of ignorance. John and Natividad have lived on this property for 23 years. A disabled WWII Navy veteran, John was a teacher of science and 6th grade. He has been in the Master Gardener program since 1989.

John and Naddie grow most of what they eat on this half-acre, wedge-shaped city lot. They boost the fertility of their part of the earth as well as the quality of their own health by growing with Fertrell, compost, and other organic additives. John is rightfully proud that they have no mower, no grass. He says he waits to be sued for nonsupport by his doctors.




We cut through the house before checking out the "papaya plantation" that wraps itself around the house: the beautiful to the pond, new bedroom John and Natividad recently added, the kitchen (2 or 3 juicing machines, bread maker, might as well be the rain forest. bowls of home-grown persimmons...), back to the enclosed pond, also a new addition. Fish glimmer by. John and Natividad raise everything for food, (eating the fish she doesn't name). These fish eat sweet potato leaves, bok choi, and just about anything else thrown to them. John tells me about his pair of foot-long Basilisk lizards, native to Costa Rica, that walk on their hind legs. This is not your typical ol' fishin' hole. During our tour, I keep finding my way to the pond, on the lookout for these miraculous critters.



Outside, we step into what might as well be the rain forest. There must be 100 papaya trees and dozens of varieties of banana trees in this rain forest. John sells the organically grown produce and soil amendments to neighbors, making his reputation over the years by word of mouth. Always concerned with the quality of the fruit he sells, John has "decorated" the papayas with rat traps baited with prunes to guard against those unsightly random bites.

There are winged beans and avocados. There is garlic growing in pots and shallots growing in a small plot, started from a grocery buy years ago. Bitter melon (Momordica charantia) twirls around a fence.


As I was getting into the car to leave, the grapefruit tree bid me farewell, letting loose a grapefruit -a little like the hurling apple trees in the Wizard of Oz, but more congenial, not so much telling me to be on my way, but to remember to eat what is here for the taking, unprocessed, ready to go. So I took the projectile home, ate it, and the bump on my head healed so much the faster.

Walking around this little bit of Eden, where most everything is grown in recognition that life can only be as good as the food we consume, I'm filled with reverence for the knowledge and concern of my fellow gardeners. There is so much to learn from you all, and I'm so much the better for knowing you. Thanks John and Naddie!

Rose Apples June 2, 2009

Rose Apples.

A nice stage name. And delicious. I've had the tree, bought from Kevin, the Master Gardener years ago as a babe. (Me AND the seedling). The plant which didn't do a whole lot of anything for YEARS, had occasional near-death experiences as I considered what else I could do with it's allotted plot. A decade went by and it finally grew to a tree. And it bloomed. Glorious mysterious fancy, fancy white blooms

Then the fruits. Indescribable. Let me describe them to you: (I know…) But here's what they're like: Apricot-sized. A bigger than you'd think hard round seed in the middle. At first, just to get familiar with this strange new fruit, cut it gingerly around the equator. Take out the seed. Sit down and rest from the ROSEY ROSEY smell. Taste it. Go ON. It's kind of appley in texture, or like honeydew melon when it's not quite ready. But, believe me, whether the fruit is a little greenish, or yellow, or blushing pinkish yellowish - it IS ready. If you could bite a rose without getting a mouthful of petals (or worse), it would taste like this. Your brain, nose and heart say you've eaten a rose. They must share some chemicals, these fruits and roses. Okay. I've revealed enough of my ignorance. But it's so other/this-wordly! It's so different but familiar.

I've announced my engagement to this tree. It's a perfect love. Start shopping for a dress. Gather them by the arm-full. (Better yet, carry a basket…) They can be sliced and eaten just plain, put in salads… I've had them cut up in my oatmeal. A gentleman came by the other day and recognized the tree, also called a Rose Apple in Jamaica. He said they make jelly out of it, or just eat them out of hand while playing by the rivers where the trees grow wild.

The Rose Apple seems to have been fruiting for about a month now. I'll try to notice when it stops. (I wrote this yesterday, went to get some today to bring to the vegetable stand, and there were only about 5 within reach. The season is over!) But next year, if you come by, and Rose Apple has fruit, you WILL be force-fed a piece of heaven.