Flower for the Day Butterfly Bush 8-17-26

The butterfly bush (Budddleja davidii) has been a faithful perennial for over half a century. My experience has been that it draws more hummingbirds than butterflies, and an occasional beauty.

We have both purple and white flowers.

Here is a poem that addresses both dreams and reality nicely.

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

Ramona Elson