What If You Held a Butterfly Festival, and No Butterflies Came?

In the photo above, a Wood Nymph butterfly focuses intently on a delicious meal of autumn aster. Picture taken in October of 2005 at the Holden Arboretum in Northeast Ohio.

Well anyways, the burning question was answered this past Saturday, September 12th. The Monarch Butterfly tagging portion of the Butterfly Festival on Kelleys Island had to be cancelled due to lack of attendance on the part of the butterflies! Apparently they didn't receive their invitation. It was also being said that as a matter of fact, the butterflies weren't migrating normally in general. There were also no Monarchs in either Mexico or California. Maybe it's this crazy weather we've been having.

Having looked in on friends elsewhere in the blog world and the Flickr photography website, it seems the butterflies are hanging out in places like Indiana (hi Mary at Faith, Fabric, and Photos!) and Georgia (hi ruthalice43 on Flickr!)

Link to Mary's blog post:

http://faithfabricandphotos.blogspot.com/2009/09/henderson-slough-part-1.html

Link to ruthalice43's photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthalice43/3912376500/

Anyways, it was a beautiful day to sit out on the porch of the new Kelleys Island Historical Association building and sell landscape photos while right next to me sat an author who lives on Kelleys Island and just published a book on the island's colorful residents from earlier times in history.

A friendly slobbering Golden Retriever named Zeus who was very old and allegedly had a "delicate stomach" spent the day following around with big, sad, begging, hungry, puppy-dog eyes anyone who bought a hot dog. It's almost too bad we couldn't have tagged Zeus and sent him airmail on down to Mexico or California, but that pesky ole dog was just too doggone nice and provided a bit of entertainment.

In the Middle of Lake Erie Grows a Flower

Above is a photo called "Lake Erie Daisy" that I presented to the innkeeper of the House on Huntington Lane in gratitude for all her help with getting started in the art world.

A year ago today was the first time I ever participated in an art show. It happened kind of like the way things happened to Forrest Gump. You see, I had called up my friendly neighborhood innkeeper at the House on Huntington Lane Bed and Breakfast on Kelleys Island to ask whether she had a room available so I could stay overnight, take pictures, and look into selling some prints on the island. A link to the House on Huntington Lane appears below:

http://www.houseonhuntington.com/index.htm

Since I had stayed there before, the innkeeper knew me and suggested, “Why don’t you call up the Kelleys Island Historical Association? They’re having an art show. All you have to do is come set up a card table.” A link to the Kelleys Island Historical Association appears below:

http://www.kelleysislandhistorical.org/

Having absolutely no experience, I happily agreed. Long story short, I sold a decent amount of photos featuring Kelleys Island landscape and nature scenes last year. The most touching moment came when a six-year-old boy stepped forward and introduced himself to me because he wanted to meet a “real artist” and his mom had just bought him a picture I was selling of the glacial grooves so that he could hang up the famous Kelleys Island rock formation in his bedroom. A link to an earlier post on the glacial groove photo appears below:

http://countrydreaming-countrycorner.blogspot.com/2009/02/kelleys-island-photo-published-in.html

The event ended on a humorous note when my card table totally collapsed right at the end of the show. Some guy volunteered that he could fix up my table enough so that the Kelleys Island Historical Association might pay me $10 for it. At that point, I simply donated the table for free and was real happy they didn’t charge me anything to haul it away as junk that was messing up their beautiful island! You might say my art career began with a bang …

Anyway. This spring, the same innkeeper from the House on Huntington Lane gave me another good suggestion: The Lake Erie daisies were in bloom along the North Shore Loop trail. I was so grateful that I gave her a 5x7 copy of the daisy in an 8x10 mat as a gift at this year’s island art show.