Later Flowers for the Bees, and Butterflies: A Photoessay

By Vladimir Brezina

… to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease …

John Keats, To Autumn

This past weekend was beautiful: dry, calm, sunny and warm—Indian Summer weather. In New York City’s Central Park, still mostly a fall-denying green, a fresh crop of flowers was out. And the park’s bees and butterflies, like the city’s human inhabitants, were out in force.

Innumerable bees were at work, flitting from flower to flower

… gravity not an issue!

A Monarch, startlingly large

fiery encrustations of large milkweed bugs

and an impossibly beautiful Cloudless Sulphur with green eyes in the floral blue.

Butterfly and bee, each to his/her own.

I really must get a proper macro lens!