The last of the monarch butterflies just packed its knapsack and headed down to southern Mexico.

These royal travelers usually fly in huge flocks and under the cloak of night this one must have missed the last call and thus has been left behind.

Once many years ago in one of my vagabond moments I came across a solitary tree standing in the center of a field of wild grass so covered by monarch butterflies was the trunk and the branches of this tree there was nothing else to be seen, Just thousands of orange monarchs clustered all together. Perhaps this was the place agreed upon to gather before embarking on their long flight south.

Now that the butterflies have undertaken their migration the garden seems somehow less colorful. It too seems resigned to the coming of the frost king’s touch of death.

This garden has become an extension of myself. Were it not so entwined with my very heart and soul, I would be much diminished and so I promise it that I will be here to great the first evidence of its resurrection come spring and, God willing, it will be so.