The Curious Butterfly

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I looked down at this bowl several weeks ago while I was washing groceries on the front porch. I thought, “Wow! That is really beautiful!” My hands were a soapy, wet mess, so I asked Ray to take a picture with his phone. I call it Pandemic Still Life.

It must be one of the first photos ever of cottage cheese, bananas, red bell peppers, and onions floating in soapy water, don’t you think?

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Maybe we’re silly, but since mid-March, Ray and I have been washing our washable groceries before we bring them into the house. It makes us feel safer.

I haven’t been inside a grocery store since March 15. I remember the date because it was a Sunday. We stopped by the store after church.

Now we order many non-perishables online. We are grateful that UPS and USPS put them on our back porch or in our mailbox.  Other things we order online from one of the grocery stores in nearby Cookeville. I’ve come to like this whole idea of sitting in the car in the pick-up area while nice folks put my groceries in the trunk. The employees who do my shopping now don’t always do a great job of picking out produce, but they do a great job at everything else.

When we get home, Ray takes the plastic bags from the trunk and brings them to the front yard. We line up three large metal bowls on the front porch. I know it seems weird to be washing on the front porch, but our front porch is waist high. It is a much more pleasant experience than our first grocery-washing, which we did beside our low back porch–on the ground.

I wash in one bowl and rinse in another and then lay clean items in the third. Ray takes a bowlful of clean items to the bath towel on the kitchen table and comes back for more. I put several items in the wash water at once. That’s how I ended up with that unplanned, random bowlful of cottage cheese, red bell peppers, bananas, and onions.

On Friday I enjoyed watching the little wonders on the porch. A large ant crawled across the floor. A firefly alighted on a window screen. The wind caught a plastic bag, puffed it up, and sent it somersaulting across the yard. As I chased it on foot, the poofed bag tumbled over and over just out of reach, acting very much like a West Texas tumbling tumbleweed.

On Friday I took vegetables out of three plastic bags and laid the white plastic tabs that had kept them closed on the porch temporarily. In no time, a pretty black butterfly with a prominent white spot on each wing landed on one of them. After examining that tab, it went to another one. It soon flew away, but then it came back for another look.

I don’t know what the butterfly “thought” it had found — a white flower, perhaps. I admire its curiosity. God created a world filled with wonder. Homeschooling gives your children time to wonder, time to be curious, time to find out about something new.

Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised,
And His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of Your majesty
And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate.
Psalm 145:3-5

 

 

 

 

 

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