Summer of the Ladybirds

Can we learn wisdom watching insects now, or just the art of quiet observation? Creatures from the world of leaf and flower marking weather’s variation. The huge dry summer of the ladybirds (we thought we’d never feel such heat again) started with white cabbage butterflies sipping at thin trickles in the drain. Then one by one the ladybirds appeared obeying some far purpose or design. We marvelled at their numbers in the garden, grouped together, shuffling in a line. Each day a few strays turned up at the table, the children laughed to see them near the jam exploring round the edges of a spoon. One tried to drink the moisture on my arm. How random and how frail seemed their lives, and yet how they persisted, refugees, saving energy by keeping still and hiding in the grass and in the trees. And then one day they vanished overnight. Clouds gathered, storm exploded, weather cleared. And all the wishes that we might have had in such abundance simply disappeared.