Monday, October 23, 2017

A Lovely Sight I Almost Missed...

I was surprised to find this splendid Monarch butterfly on Bradford Street.








Hurrying to beat the clock on Saturday afternoon, I was headed for the farmers market before they closed. On the way there I noticed there was someone ahead of me on the street, bent over with her cell phone out.
She was taking a picture, so as I walked by I looked to see what she had spotted. If I hadn't seen her stopped at the edge of Bradford Street, or had hurried by half a minute later, I would have walked right past this little flower bed, and missed this truly gorgeous butterfly.
Luckily, I didn't let being in a hurry stop me from observing what was there for me, and I took just the tiniest moment to enjoy the lovely sight the planet was offering to anyone paying attention.
It seemed a little odd to find this elegant butterfly in PTown just now, slurping up nectar from flowers freshly budding, just as the chill of this brilliant autumn weather has us all digging out our woolly socks and sweaters once again, but still not quite ready to pack away our shorts and sandals.
And whadda ya know? Amid these new flower buds there stood a daffodil (at this time of year!?!) that I almost missed, because it was exactly the same sunny yellow color as these mums that surrounded it.
Every day, Provincetown presents us with hundreds of jewels large and small, scattered all through the town by the fistfuls. Watch for them out on the beaches, or right on the streets. Stop and smell the roses, as it were. Listen for the sounds of hundreds of bird species stopping here on their migrations, bringing us new bird calls you may never have heard before. Taste a wild cranberry while you're biking/hiking/strolling through the low spots in the forests and dunes...
There are a couple of gazillion ways to find a little treat for yourself on any day spent in Provincetown, whether you come upon a stirring sight, have a little taste of something wild, catch a captivating scent wafting by, happen into an encounter with the myriad wildlife surrounding us... or stumble across a butterfly and a daffodil showing up way out of season.
Any or all of these can be yours any day here, simply for paying attention. 

2 comments:

  1. It was amazingly lucky that my cell phone managed to focus on the flitting wings of this gorgeous butterfly, and got the detail of the delicate, curvy, convex sections of those wings.
    Thanks for reading my blog!

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