Mandala Monday ~ Spring Bouquet

Finally, a bit of creative inspiration!  Leave it to the blooming things to help that arise within me.

My soul has been craving fresh flowers for months and nothing is blooming here yet.  With everything shut down since mid-March, I haven’t been able to go to the usual places to get my flower-fix this spring, so it’s been a bit of a struggle for me.  Winters here are LONG and things are only just now starting to green up a little.  My brother came to my rescue when he sent my mom and I a lovely spring bouquet for Easter.  And I don’t use the word ‘rescue’ lightly.  Oh, I tell ya… much, much needed.  Especially with everything else going on in the world right now.  I was so grateful to have something blooming and full of life!

The bouquet lasted a nice long time and we’ve enjoyed it immensely.  When I noticed the flowers fading, I decided to take them outside to try to extend that enjoyment a bit further by creating a mandala with them.  I can’t even tell you how good it felt to sit out on the ground and play with flowers, making them into a whole new type of arrangement. 🌸

Here is another variation of the mandala I made…

After playing around with them for a while, their petals began dropping fast, so I plucked off the rest of them and am in the process of drying them out for some future possible use.

My daughter creates stunning jewelry and has a few designs where she makes cabachons, encasing various plants, pieces of nature, and other things in resin, and then wire wraps around them.  So maybe she can use some of the petals to extend the beauty of the bouquet even longer.  Here is a pendant she created for me for my birthday last year using a butterfly wing I found while out on a nature walk with my granddaughter, some Hawthorn blossoms we picked together, and a lock of my granddaughter’s hair. These photos are used with permission and taken from her Instagram account…

How meaningful (and beautiful) is that?! 💕

While I’m at it, I think I’ll just post the link to her Etsy shop too.  She does beautiful work and takes custom orders.  Now, more than ever is the perfect time to support artists and small businesses.  😉

https://www.etsy.com/shop/RachaelsWireGarden

 

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I hope you are all doing okay and staying well.  May you have a beautiful and blessed week.  Wishing you joy and inspiration, and as always…

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Monarch Monday

My daughter has been fostering monarch butterflies this summer and I’ve been privileged to be able to experience it in part with her.  It’s been a truly moving, enriching and “transforming” experience.  Here are two of the beauties I got to watch emerge just the other day…

It was absolutely magical, you guys!  Like, I know that we have all heard the inspiring and philosophical sayings about caterpillars transforming into butterflies, but witnessing first hand, the complete life cycle of these unique and amazing creatures that my daughter has fostered has brought me to tears on more than one occasion.  I’m truly in awe…

She hadn’t intended on fostering Monarchs, it just sort of happened.  You can read more about her journey on her Instagram account at  https://www.instagram.com/wolfehartwoods/ where she has captured beautiful photos and amazing videos throughout the process – starting with the mother butterfly laying the eggs on the milkweed right outside her front door.  If you do plan to take a look, I would recommend scrolling to the very first post and going from there.  Her videos of them hatching from their eggs, munching on milkweed, crawling around, and then pupating and emerging are really amazing!

(As a bit of a side note and a proud mom’s shameless plug: Wolfehartwoods is her secondary Instagram account, she also has https://www.instagram.com/rachaelswiregarden/ for her business where she shares the exquisite and unique wire wrapped tree of life pendants she creates.)

But back to the butterflies…

Interestingly, the most moving and meaningful part of the process for me personally, was watching the caterpillars transition into a pupa.  It looked extremely uncomfortable and difficult, and on some strange level – I related and resonated, and empathized.   Here are a few photos of one of them I witnessed…

Eventually the chrysalis hardens and then becomes transparent as the butterfly gets closer to emerging.  Here are two next to each other that are at different stages…

The chrysalis’ are absolutely beautiful!  You can’t really tell from the poor quality of the above image, but there are gold metallic dots and a gold line on the outside, it’s super cool!  It’s also super cool to realize what is happening inside those little pods.  Just wow.

Just a few moments after I snapped the photo above, it started to emerge…!

It happened so fast!  I tried to take a video of it, but it didn’t really turn out.

And here she is unfurling her new wings…

A few hours later we took her and the other lovely girl (who emerged at the exact same moment!) outside, where I took billions of photos.  Many of which turned out blurry in all of the excitement oops! 🙃

But it was completely and utterly delightful!  Especially because it was experienced with my daughter and my precious grandchildren.  Sorry, not sorry, for sharing all of these…

As you can see, my sweet granddaughter fully enjoyed the butterflies!  😍

At 9 months, my grandson was only mildly interested in the butterflies, and seemed mostly intent on examining the grass and the Creeping Charlie (as you can see in the background in one of the photos above), but here he seemed a bit more interested…

So much more interested, that five seconds after I snapped that photo, he made a grab for it.  Thankfully my daughter was alert and her hand was quicker than his.

But he was barely aware when one of them was exploring his head.  But just in case, my daughter was ready if his hands happened to reach at his head…

Such an adorable little head…

💙

Neither butterfly was in a hurry to leave and even when they finally took flight, they came back to where we were in the yard and one of them landed on my hand for a little while before she took to the air and eventually disappeared from view…

Such an amazing creature.  I appreciated her special little goodbye.  ❤

And I appreciate my beautiful daughter.  I love her so much…

She’s always had sort of an affinity for butterflies and I feel like the universe wanted her to have this experience. She’s been a wonderful foster mom and hopefully with her assistance 13 little monarchs will have a better chance.

🦋

 

Happy Monarch Monday! Wishing you all a beautiful week ahead!

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿