I Wish I Saw a Butterfly

By Lori Friesen

In the spring, the sun comes out.

Emma looked out her bedroom window, down into her apartment’s courtyard. The giant wooden flower box looked particularly bleak. Tall, dead flower stalks stood straight like soldiers that were somehow forgotten. Wet clumps of mud tumbled onto the unswept path surrounding it. Wishing she wasn’t looking at such an unsightly scene, she wished a butterfly would appear.

When Emma was shopping for groceries with her dad at their local market, she spotted a beautiful purple coneflower sitting in a pot. She walked over and pulled out the tag that was pushed into the soil.

It read, “If you want to enjoy butterflies in your garden, plant coneflowers! During the summer and fall, the blooms and seed heads of coneflowers will attract a multitude of these winged beauties creating a small ecosystem.”

The next day, Emma stood beside her dad wearing gardening gloves. They pulled the dead flowers out of the dirt and turned the soil with a rake. Then they carefully planted a coneflower plant and a new lavender plant.

Her dad said they would attract honeybees. There was so much she wanted to learn about the new mini ecosystem she was growing, but she really couldn’t wait until she saw a butterfly.