Muse Food – A Safe Place To Land
During the summer, I’d often find butterflies (like this Monarch) and bees resting on the zinnia flowers. Those flowers are fairly large, they have plenty of smaller petals to burrow into or hold onto, they are in the sun, they have a lot of pollen (i.e. snacks) and they feel…safe.
Does the main character in your story have a safe place? WHY is that their safe place? And what would happen if that safe place was taken away from them?
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If You Want The Butterflies…
(The chicken wire ‘domes’ over these marigolds stop the squirrels from happily digging up the plants. The Mafia Squirrels do that for ‘funsies’, taking out entire rows in one session and leaving the dying plants beside their trenches so I can see their handiwork. – eye roll)
I often repeat the saying, “If you want the butterflies, you have to feed the caterpillars.”
This is true for bees also, all types of bees, and other beneficial insects.
We have to create homes and supply food sources for them.
We do a few easy things in the Sax household to help facilitate this.
We leave some leaves on the ground for bees and other insects to overwinter in.
We have some perennial plants we try not to disturb very much. This allows bees to create safe homes around these plants.
(The yellow jackets, for example, build homes around the raspberry bushes.)
We also don’t plant or dig close to fences and other structures as these are great homes for bees also.
We don’t use herbicides or pesticides (these are outlawed in Toronto).
We plant extra vegetables and allow the caterpillars to eat some of those plants (or bits of the rose bushes).
We allow the dandelions to bloom. In our part of the universe, these are usually the first flowers to appear and the bumblebees LOVE them.
We also plant a lot of other bee and butterfly-friendly flowers like marigolds, zinnias and clover.
We’re having our best bee year ever in our neighborhood and I like to think all these actions contributed a little bit toward that.
(smiles)
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Butterflies At The Singapore Airport
Singapore Changi Airport is one of the most beautiful airports in the world. The Dear Wonderful Hubby and I always ensure we take some time to explore it when we’re passing through.
My favorite part is the massive butterfly garden. There are SO MANY BUTTERFLIES, in every stage of development.
(smiles)
And their home is gorgeous. There’s a multifloor-high waterfall.
And huge trees.
It even smells wonderful!
The butterfly garden is FREE and visitors can spend as long as they want there. It is a great place to destress before or after a flight.
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If You Want The Butterflies…
This massive caterpillar munched his way through half of a taller-than-me mini tomato plant. I hope to see more Laurel Sphinx moths this year due to our hosting of him.
(smiles)
One of the things I often say to fellow gardeners is “If you want the butterflies, you have to feed the caterpillars.”
Caterpillars nibble on the leaves of our plants. They make the roses in our front yard, for example, look a bit ragged. They don’t kill the rose plants (the birds and yellowjackets ensure their population doesn’t become large enough to do that) but the plants aren’t the prettiest.
And the Dear Wonderful Hubby and I are okay with that.
Because we love butterflies. And hosting caterpillars is the best way to ensure we have butterflies.
This is true of many things in life. To achieve a wonderful result, we have to deal with the ugly, the hard, the strenuous.
To have a published book, we need to write every single word. To have friends, we have to interact with people. Often. To be have a trash-free neighborhood, we have to pick up the trash.
Dream of the world you want.
Then do that hard work, the ugly work to make that dream a reality.
You can do this!
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Muse Food – Butterflies, Moths And Variations
When I find myself being…well… boring (grins) regarding alien worlds, I look to the vast variations of life here on Earth for inspiration.
Look at the variations of colors and shapes in this (dead) moth and butterfly display in the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Even with the tiniest moths/butterflies, there are exquisite details on the wings.
And the ranges of sizes are wonderful.
***
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Grin And Bare Him
This cyborg will be the warrior his female requires.
Cyborgs are designed to fight. That is their primary purpose and 98.2356 percent of the manufactured warriors enjoy battle. Tremendously.
Grin, a K model, is one of the rare exceptions. When he escaped his cruel creators, he set down his sword and allocated his processors to less violent pursuits. He projects he’s left his war-waging planet rotations behind him forever.
Then he meets his beautiful, beguiling female, the one being he’s destined to protect, to claim, to love for all eternity, and his plans for peace are completely decimated.
Mohini needs a ship.
She has a dangerous mission to complete and the first step in that assignment is arranging transport to an enemy-controlled planet. The vessel she has set her sights on is guarded by the sexiest cyborg she’s ever seen.
To gain access to his ship, Mohini is prepared to kiss, caress, seduce the muscular male. The mission is her focus. The pleasure she experiences will merely be a bonus.
A female has to do what a female has to do to save the universe.
Grin And Bare Him is a Cyborg SciFi Romance set in a dark, gritty, sometimes-violent universe.
It features a humanoid female undertaking a dangerous mission, a cyborg intent on keeping her alive, and an enemy with enough firepower to blow up an entire sector.
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