9.19.15 I came to learn

More than ten years ago, I bought some fall chrysanthemums, including one purple aster. I had no idea asters would grow, over the years, to be a plant 5' wide and 6' tall, that the blossoms would close upon sleeping bees at night,and open to feed them and let them dry from the dew and then be on their way.

I came to learn that Praying Mantis would come stay on them in the fall, wander about day and night chowing down on dew-grounded bees, be approached by a smaller, very tentative male, somehow driven to to go her; give birth to an amazing egg sack, and then slowly lose color and die.

So much life is held in a Milkweed, a thistle, a mullein or an aster. Like the child's story Horton Hears a Who, it is so easy to underestimate the importance of all these lives.