Each morning when I rise, I immediately tend to the bunnies and clean up, taking the trash outside. And when I do, I spend some quiet, still moments watching the sunrise and looking at how my plants are doing that I’ve been growing from seed out front – sunflowers, moonflowers, malabar spinach, and wild flowers.

With the tropical weather we’ve been having the last couple of weeks I felt like I was somewhere else than I am, especially so when I saw all of these little ones gathered in the stillness of the morning on the milkweed flowers.

I was doing some research about them and found there to be different thoughts as to what to do or not about the presence of milkweed bugs. Since they do little damage and are only around for a short period of time (mid to late summer), living with them seems to be the most caring thing to do, realizing the natural life cycles of things and the bigger picture not for me to control. They’re considered more of a nuisance to some than a threat to the milkweed plants.

Since our milkweed plants have consistently been doing great, I see no harm in their presence. They are important in regulating populations of milkweed plants in the ecosystem and since they can tolerate the toxic compounds of the milkweed plant they have few predators. So unless you’re trying to raise a bunch of milkweed plants they don’t have a large, negative impact.

Their resiliency and ability to transmute toxic things into sustenance seems pretty potent symbolism to me.

Regardless of how others may see the milkweed bugs, I found myself sitting in stillness with them, listening to the music in the sunrise this morning.

Perhaps they were sharing their secrets of thriving, rather than merely surviving (a theme of late) and transmutation with someone who actually wanted to listen.