I’m sitting on the back porch on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. I’m sipping a gin fizz. Toto is perched on the railing, surveying the yard. Kris is at work in the garden.

In the back hedge, a swallowtail butterfly alights upon the pale purple rhododendron, the rhododendron that towers nearly twenty feet above the ground. The scene is gorgeous — butterfly and blossom make perfect complements, framed by a forest of green. The swallowtail flutters from flower to flower. I’d like to take a picture, but it is only there for ten or twenty seconds before it breezes away.