On a Frosty Day

Look up.

Look at the butterflies.

See how they hang in the winter sun.

I sought them in Victoria Park

one sunny day recently,

thinking I'd find them in the totara or the English oaks

as I had in other years.

But this time I found the monarch butterflies 

 clustering in the boughs of the blue cedar:

some of them releasing from their group

to drift and float in the bright air.

During a spell of frost in the Secret Garden, my heart sings. 

There is a smell of frozen grass and twig and earth that belongs to this garden.  I only know that on a frosty morning, when the smell takes me back to childhood mornings of discovery, and I marvel that there is this continuity of place in my life.

A frosty morning heralds sunshine and blue skies

encouraging star magnolias in street plantings, to unfurl their radiance...

Which brings me back to the butterflies.

Blue Atlas cedar  Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca'

Star magnolia  Magnolia stellata