Yay!

I have cool butterfly pictures!! To prove to you that I'm not making it up, about the butterflies following me around like a Disney princess.
Tehe
The light was awesome; around 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon, the strong shine from the sun moving ever so slightly to the winter position landed most dramatically on these zinnias, where three different butterflies were sipping daintily.

:)

The whole circle of life.

I realize this is not a butterfly. But it is, in fact, an insect, so it works. This is one of Megan's awesome sunflowers, which the deer do not get to since they're in Mom's fenced-in veggie garden.

Cool, no? I didn't edit any of these but this collage below, where I took out some color;

Put together with Picnik. The captions are just kind of random. Obviously.

I love how the detail turned out--I was quite surprised, seeing as my camera's been a little. . . not-so-good lately.

. . . plus, it was a lil' windy. But this lil' dude was completely calm. It didn't spread its wings out very much, but it made up for that with its stillness. I shot about five thousand pictures of it.
It was the black swallowtail that was flitting around like crazy. I find it incredible I got some good pictures of that one.

See how one foot is reaching out, barely touching one of the. . . is that a stamen?? . . . things-on-the-middle-of-the-flower. Oh so dainty. . .  :)
And I'm pretty sure this one is my favorite:

The other day I wandered outside, and a butter-yellow swallowtail caught my eye from where it was flying around in the driveway. It fluttered around the car, then suddenly swirled up, way above the trees and went on to twirl around in the gentle breeze, catching the air-currents in slow circles. I've never seen a butterfly do that before. It was pretty darn inspiring, watching the fragile little guy (or girl) with feather-light wings swirl high against the bluest sky.
*sigh*
So very lovely.