I blogged about our garden meadows three years ago, to coincide with National Meadows Day on the first Saturday of July. I’m not sure how much has changed in our collective attitude to nature in that time: I still get panic attacks when I hear lawnmowers, especially if it’s the council wasting my taxes cutting the verges. |
Maybe that’s why I went for the cli-fi angle in response to this week’s flash fiction challenge, regretting how, over the years, swarms of butterflies have declined to one or two. But I can’t account for how I mixed it with a previous prompt water falls. |
I remember Iguazu, the roaring cataract where three countries collide, water sheeting down the Devil’s throat, in Spanish or in Portuguese it was heavenly. The butterflies that thronged around us as we strolled between viewpoints, a dancing honour guard of brightest blue.
Our English garden was designed as a feast for insects, but we dispatched the invitations forty years too late. The thirsty soil thinks waterfalls pure fantasy, yet still we persevere and count our purple orchids, thrilled to spot a pair of ringlets or a solitary common blue. Will these too desert us or will the swarms return?