Butterflies
Greetings to all.
This fall we have an unusual hatch of American Painted Lady butterflies. The past three weeks you see them everywhere across the city. Dozens of them flutter in and out of our gardens all day long.
I have not seen this many of this butterfly since the late seventies. Then we had a super hatch and hundreds filled yards all over the city. Not as thick this year, but still memorable.
Xavier and I played hide and seek this afternoon when I came home. I expected him to be napping (something now more rare than a large hatch of butterflies) as he woke up at 4:30 this morning. Instead of napping, we played hide and seek. After some time, we stopped to watch the twenty to thirty butterflies busy about one of the gardens.
Rebecca, for my first Father's Day (Xavier was still in the NICU), bought me two butterfly nets, a larger one for Daddy and a smaller one for Xavier (when he got older). I used to collect bugs as a child, and I had once told Rebecca of my hopes that one day I could collect bugs with my son. That inspired the idea for the gift.
Today, the gift given four and a half years ago—which had been hanging on a garage wall all this time—got taken off the hook.
Xavier and I spent a good thirty minutes catching butterflies and then letting them go. I showed Xavier how to be gentle with the net, and explained how delicate butterflies can be.
When he caught his first one, he smiled with delight. "I caught one!"
I showed him how to lift the net to let the butterfly have some room. We watched it flutter about, then we opened the net to let it go. Xavier ran all around the garden and porch area catching and releasing these creatures.
The number of butterflies diminished as the sun began to set. They sought to stay in the warmth of the sunlight. As the shade spread over our garden hunting area, we caught fewer and fewer. Now, the nets rest once more on their hooks in the garage, but tomorrow is another day!
Xavier Meets a Katydid
Greetings to all.
Last night, in the cold drizzle and wet grass, Xavier and I played hide and seek, a game he has come to like quite a lot.
As he hid in the hedge along the newly raised fence and I pretended not to see him, something dropped out of the tree near where I stood.
After seeing what fell, I called Xavier over, asking him if he wanted to see a katydid. Of course, he did. Some weeks ago, he and I spent quite some time outside with flashlights looking for chirping crickets and clicking katydids. Now, we had one!
We examined it for a while, but it was too cold for it to move around much. When it warmed up sitting on our hands, it moved and sometimes flew off, but always succumbed to cold air again. We decided to give it a home in a little sand bucket with some leaves from a cottonwood. Xavier made a little house out of Tinker Toys and set it over the bucket, then we went in for the night.
Today was a much nicer—and warmer—day. Xavier and I fixed a problem with the newly hung gate, then checked out the katydid.
I was gone!
We did find it soon enough, however, as it tried to find its way closer to the warmth of the house walls. More active today, the insect gave Xavier more than an hour of amusement.
He moved the katydid all over the yard, watched it climb over grass and up tree trunks. At first he did not like it climbing on his arm, but soon got used to it—so long as it stayed in sight and never went above his elbow. If it did, he got more than a little nervous.
We ended up putting the katydid back in its house, where it remained the rest of the day. Sometime in the night, it left, probably to find greener pastures and higher trees.
Fence Building
Greetings to all you Xavier fans!
We tore down a sagging fence in July and have over the course of several weekends built a sturdier one in its place. Xavier has been a part of this from tearing it down to digging holes and setting 4x4s to nailing up pickets.
His Grandpa Danny gave him a pair of leather gloves two years ago in his Christmas stocking. This year Xavier finally grew into them (though he has worn them on and off these past two years). These he wore most of the time we handled the lumber.
While Dad used his four foot level and pneumatic nailer, Xavier used his Home Depot toy level and toy hammer. He even used the drill his Aunt Kathy gave him this past Christmas. (that night, after cleaning up, we had to build a nailer and an air compressor out of Tinker Toys).
Indeed, he did help out quite a bit. He was not in the way most of the time, and he assisted in needed ways at times.
At a recent birthday party, themed as a mad scientist party, Xavier obtained a pair of safety glasses (though I do not think they are OSHA certified). Now he could wear his own glasses just like Daddy.
He no longer had to stand "way over there" and watch while the nailer was chugging along the fence pickets, or watch from a distance when the compound miter saw cut pickets to length.
At one point as we worked on shaving down the gate after it swelled from a recent downpour, I asked him to move out of the way (I needed to open the gate and he was blocking me from doing that).
"I don't need to go over there anymore, Daddy," he informed me. "I'm wearing my safety glasses."
I tried to explain the glasses might protect his eyes, but not his face if the opening gate smashed into it. I do not think he understood.