Hope springs

A few days ago, a butterfly fluttered past my ninth floor balcony. At least, I think it was a butterfly. It could have been a moth. Do moths fly around in the middle of the day? I’m not sure. This one was mostly deep brown, rather different from the sunshiny yellow and orange visitors I’d yearned for, ever since I’d moved into this apartment and started to fill the bright, sunlit balcony with an assortment of colorful  planters from the local garden shop. The bright pink petunia was in full bloom, swaying gently in the summer breeze, the Chinese honeysuckle - though its buds were regularly chewed up by a pigeon on the eighth floor window ledge- was lush and green, the tiny bluebells – well, there were six of those. I know. I counted.

The man at the nursery was quite tickled when I asked him what plants I’d need for my little garden to become a butterfly magnet. “Look around”, he said, as I stood there clutching the tiny pot of pink petunias I’d just selected. Hybiscus (hybiscii?), petunias, roses, dahlias, pentas- flowers of all shapes and colours, were all neatly arranged, row after meticulous row. But he was right. There was’nt a single butterfly. Not one. “I’ll just try with this one“I said, now feeling a little forlorn, but hopeful nevertheless.

And the petunia did its best. Every single day, the Mediterranean blue basket  would spill over with pink striped blooms. They reminded me of my favorite ice cream- raspberry ripple. Surely a butterfly would pass by and be lured? So the days passed and I kept hoping.

But on that sunny day in March, the butterfly, (I prefer to believe it was one), moved on by.  It perched for a few moments on my house proud neighbor’s balcony rail, next to the extensive collection of buckets, brooms and mops, impervious to my silent and frantic willing. When I looked again, it had gone.

Was it my shattered heart that brought about the thunder and lightning yesterday? I think it must have been. It rained until I went to bed, and this morning I woke to blue skies- raindrops sparkling on the petunias, the very first honeysuckle blossom- the pigeon seemed to have taken a rain holiday- and ten bluebells. A rainbow portal unfolded within me and my heart flooded with hope. A butterfly will visit my garden one day. Of that I’m sure.