Taken for Granted

It looked like a festival: Black swallowtails in the ironweed! Five or six elegant Papilio polyxenes  flying around, alighting, three or four on the same flower head, raising and lowering their blue-tinged wings. I ran for my camera. Of the 60 photos I took, none captured the spirit. Determined to get a photo of not just one butterfly but a bunch, I marched back to the meadow and clicked and tweaked and refocused as butterflies flew out of the frame as if teasing me, or vanished, or landed on other plants. Darn! Well, I was just going to stand there until I got my picture! I wanted that picture!

And then God said to me, "You will get that picture when I grant it."

Oh, I said, and relaxed. And took 219 pictures. Here is the one I think does it.

I guess I will get what I want when God grants it.

Ironweed

This is the only Prairie Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) in the meadow. Vernonia  is the aster/daisy family, and Vernonias can be found all over the world. There's a kind that grows 7 feet tall but this isn't it; it's only about 2.5 feet high. Wikipedia says all Vernonias "have the same effective properties as a blood purifier and uterus toner, containing sesquiterpene lactone,which helps also to prevent atherosclerosis." I am therefore honored to have this native perennial in the meadow. Those dark little bud nubs are what caught my eye; they look like blackberries.