The Tomatoe’s Teaching

I find it fun to play lightly with the notion that all of us walk softly on this planet and our interactions with each other are always full of meaning and potential.  So when my husband spotted a palm sized moth next to our wooden folding laundry rack in the back yard I instantly felt its presence as sacred.  With cell phone cameras in hand we all dashed to the site to see our backyard guest.

It is usually the odd yellow swallowtail butterfly that catches my eye in the grace of my backyard ,or the bounty of hummers that feed on our wildflowers.  Upon seeing a creature that was at once so strange and unfamiliar I was also overwhelmed with a sense of karmic connection to this special sprite.

So this morning I downloaded the sim card on our digital camera and looked closely at the fuzzy body, the detailed head and the shape of the wings, ready to face Google in my search for the name of the mystery moth.  Turns out there are a lot of big moths flying our skys and pinpointing this mammoth was not a trivial matter, especially since I have no vocabulary of a lepidopterist.  However with determination and the luck of Grace I found a match.  And when I read the description of this nachtfalter I felt a sting in my nose as the tears welled up in my eyes.

My guest was a Hawk Moth.  Previously known as my old friend the Horn Worm.  (See Three Tomatoes and Vivien Leigh and the Horn Worm)  A metaphorically speaking old friend of long standing indeed.  Our tomato pot of the last two years was over run with an unusually long strawberry season, so the small residual tomato sprout from our original plant in 2008 has been dwarfed by its strawberry fields forever neighbors.  No tomatoes, no horn worms, right?

But Grace has always performed miricals in my garden.  And for me this palm sized papillon who showed up with the serendipity of September which has been when the tomato dharma has come for three consecutive years, is yet one more not so subtle reminder of the transformation that is possible even when the tomatoes seem absent in our lives.  A palm sized (moth) pointer that we are each of us, always, held in the hand of Grace.  Is it any wonder that she came to us next to the wooden laundry rack?  (After Ecstasy The Laundry)  Yes, Grace is not subtle in my garden.