05/22/2024
Is it a gift or a burden to notice the little things? To care this much? Blame it on the crush of peak-season busy-ness or the early heat wearing on everyone’s energy levels, but I missed one of these little things in the flower field last week when I told my team to cut down a row of ageratum that was being decimated by caterpillars. “The season is over; let’s just cut them to the ground and be done,” I said. But later that day, when I saw the row reduced to short, naked stalks, I realized what I had done. Left among the piles of withering leaves and stems were scores of fuzzy, rusty-red-and-black striped caterpillars. Metalmark butterflies in the making. I hadn’t known that ageratum is a host plant for them, and I felt a sense of sadness settle over me as I watched them wriggle across the now-empty row and over the dying piles of foliage. The caterpillars would die with the plants. Unless… Following a morning flower delivery the next day I decided to stop by Grimsell’s nursery in Harlingen and try to get my hands on some mistflower, which I already knew to be a host for metalmarks. George pointed me in the direction of the plants, and I felt halfway embarrassed explaining why I needed them. Who cares about a couple hundred caterpillars? He shook his head as we leaned over and collected half a dozen of the most heavily foliaged plants. “So many people don’t notice the little things,” he said. And as he did, I watched a metalmark caterpillar slip off of a leaf and catch itself on the side of the pot. George saw it too and asked, “Isn’t it amazing how they find the plants that they need?” It seemed the metalmarks had also found their way to Grimsell’s. I thanked George for his kindness and empathy and drove the plants back to the flower farm where I lined them up between the empty ageratum row and the withered stems we had piled up in the walkway against it. I collected as many caterpillars as I could find and dropped them into the new mistflowers’ leaves, grateful for the chance to make a wrong thing right and thankful again for the gift and the burden I carry for the little things. Even caterpillars.
