My Mother

I grew up with a mother who had a mind of her own and often spoke it, although sometimes quite cruelly.  She was complicated, as we all are with our lives.  I was not fond of her as a child.  She could be quite harsh with no patience for understanding. 

As an adult I began to accept her as she was, perhaps because I could escape from her space when things got too intense.  She was a product of her parent’s lives with all their good and bad, and a survivor of a relationship with my father that was not always kind to her.

Her thoughts in words could at times cut you to the bone, or bring a cloud of melancholy over the festivities; but then there were the times when she seemed genuinely lovely.  It wasn’t until her old age, or more precisely my mature age, that I thought I began to understand parts of the person she really was behind those walls she gradually built a mile high around her.

I never felt loved by her.  As I reminisce these days, I think she did love me in some fashion, although rarely connecting with me in my love language, I seldom felt it.  I had a somewhat closer relationship with her in her later years which softened her enough to cause me great grief when she passed away, but she will always remain an enigma that I never quite solved.

I’ll think of her till the cows come home, as she would fondly say, whenever I’m around flowers; she loved them so much. 

Wild Native Sunflower

Blue Lobelia

Green Sweat Bee on Marjoram 

Solomon's Seal

Senna

Male Sweat Bee in Pink Turtlehead Flower

White Beautyberry

Southern Beeblossom with Friend

Blooms at night and fades with the morning

Ironweed

Phlox Jenna with Rudbeckia

Blue Jay Feather

Blackberry Lily with Fly

Pearl Crescent Butterfly with Butterflyweed and Purple Coneflower

Joe-Pye Weed with Green Sweat Bee

female

Green Sweat Bee

male

Type of Skipper Butterfly

Green Lynx Spider ambushing passing insect

Challenger Spider Daylily 4' tall

Black Fly

Autumn Minaret Spider Daylily 4' tall 

Rudbeckia with Green Sweat Bee

American Snout Butterfly

about 1" in size

Carpenter Bee

Aaron's Skipper,

Silver-Spotted Skipper,

Cobweb Skipper Butterfly...?

I give up after looking at photos of hundreds of Skipper Butterflies.

End of Day