Flutterbys

I took a drive up to our Sandcastle cabin on Friday afternoon.  I was just about the only car on the road that was not pulling a boat.  Lots of Illinois, Indiana & Minnesota plates.  We are happy that they leave some of their vacation dollars in Wisconsin.

The grass at the cabin had not been cut for awhile, lots of rain up there.  I wasn't too pleased about that until I saw how many wild flowers there were.  It was really pretty, if only we could leave it that way, but it is too easy for ticks to hide in that tall stuff, so I put in a request for it to get cut soon.

But while I was there, the butterflies were really busy.  It was great fun to watch them.

The Canadian Tiger Swallowtail is so spectacular.

I had to research to find the name of this little butterfly, it is a Northern Crescent.

Some critter, I think this is the little criminal, has chewed into the outhouse and it's a mess in there.  I had it clean and painted white and now I can start over once we figure out how he got in and fix that.

On my way to the cabin, I took some back roads due to road construction and found a swallowtail on a nice clump of yellow wild flowers.

Wild honey suckle is so pretty right now.

I remember walking in fields as a kid and pulling off the flowers to suck the sweet nectar out of the bulbs at the base of the petals.  I would never do that now, it is too cruel to ruin the beauty of such a delicate bloom.

Also on my drive to the cabin, I happened to drive by a monument place to commemorate the large wildfire that nearly took our Sandcastle back in 2013.

It was a scary couple of days for everyone fighting the fire and we were on pins & needles waiting to hear if our cabin survived.  In the end, we were lucky as the fire fighters called in a slurry dumper to save our place.  The grass was burnt within about 5 feet of the cabin, so that's plenty close.

Nothing else near this marker, it is the site of what was a terrible wild fire.
But now, things are very green and lush where the fire was, only a few dead trees standing to mark the carnage.

Mother Nature knows how to heal a scar.