Marzo 31, 2025

The local pollinators are out in force, bees buzz about the spring bloom of lavender. Abundant lavender sprouts in a circle around me. There are giant bees, all black and hairy, plus littler bees with yellow bands. The dragonflies are not yet out, their hatch is yet to come.

The white butterflies with black trim and two black spots are in abundance. They dance and flitter, seemingly random, but not to them.

A crowd of these, a flock perhaps, a gaggle maybe, but eight to ten at least are bunched, seeming to chase a leader. Likely a she butterfly I think, for the others are not attending to flowers or nectar, but appear to be chasing her. She always in the lead, the others flitting and bouncing on the currents close behind. Those guys, likely, just cannot help themselves, chasing, hoping, following with a glimmer. So many of them chase, there are leaders and stragglers, like all creatures.

The ‘whites’ are in abundance this past week, I see them working all over town. Just how do they fly? No aerodynamic form and such large wings, they appear subject to the breeze, unable to direct their motion. But direct they do, as evidenced by the evading she-butter and chasing he-flys.

Perhaps not always a he/she thing, for when any two become proximate they appear to move together, for a spell, then break off, dancing in the winds. Perhaps that moment is about checking each other out, like a glance on the street, then abruptly walking on.

A big black hairy bee alights to lavender bloom. The size of a dime. The beast clings to the fragile lavender blossom with a springy young stem. Somehow he holds on, grabbing with tiny been feet as the blossom bends under his weight. Now upside-down the creature holds on, attentively addressing his chosen bloom, only to jump off to select another, a meter away. Selected by wind current? pheromones? random? why this one among the millions?

The yellow banded type just hover above the blossom, frantically buzzing their transparent wings, projecting a blurry haze above their jail-bird outfit.

The deciduous trees still leafless, while the ancient olive trees in their timeless year-round drab crowd the island. The early fragile blooms from cherry and plum already past, fading to that lifeless mottled brown that happens all too quickly.

The promise of warm spring day has been broken before midday. The gray lead sky now blankets the garden. The butterflies no longer flitting about, but hiding without sunshine to warm their hearts. Yet the lavender reaches high, higher, ‘me, me, me’ they cry out, ‘why not me?, I want your love too’.

The Botanical Garden now, two days later. My happy morning place to soak sun, listen to birds and the gush of fountains; yes, there are many. The ground littered with discarded hot-pink blossoms from ‘trash’ plum trees. Their brief weeks of eye-popping color soon to give way to a thorny summer season.

Amongst towering palm or bushy fan palm, ancient cacti and verdant paths, I park my folding chair in the pathway center and with computer lapped I contemplate the sublime moment. Pink petals adorn the keyboard.

There is funk in Cagliari. Here in the garden, a place described as ‘tired’ by the overrated Tripadvisor, one finds one-hundred year old specimens, limestone grottos and a cistern chiseled out by Romans. An absence of a perfectly contrived space for tourists, although there are many. My ‘secret garden’, although not a secret to anyone, is sparsely occupied. Here stroll old folks like myself, or young school groups and occasional families, there are otherwise few.

Here I sit, write and soak warm sunshine. (My concrete apartment faces NE) Monk Parakeet squabble in the tree above. Their cacophonous battle becomes urgent and loud, then abruptly falls off. They move on, somewhere else calling them to briefly roost.

Spider webs float by in the light air. A European Greenfinch twitters, finishing each trill with an up-note. First sighting of an alternate butterfly species, something brown and orange; I need to keep an eye.

My garden is adjacent to the Roman amphitheatre, which can safely be described as ‘tired’, being 2000 years old. Seats and corridors carved from a steep walled limestone gully, the site is Cagliari’s premier archeological attraction. Funky. Not preserved or made accessible, the site remains mesmerizing in structure and sheer scale of the slave work required to sculpt benches from the hillside. Like all theaters, there are close to action ‘orchestra’ seats and way-up-there balcony benches. Between, there are remnants of the ‘dress circle’ seating, where elite Romans and ministers no doubt observed the action. Rooms, tunnels and passageways still honeycomb the limestone edifice. There is news of making the site accessible with steel stairs and banisters; but this is Sardinia, Italy, where time moves glacially, so the modifications are more vision than plan.