When we moved in to our new house almost two years ago, we were one of the first houses on the street. It kind of looked like the Psycho house — nothing around, able to be seen from several streets in any direction, overlooking the neighbourhood with a kind of menace totally non-reflective of its happy, sunny, completely sane inhabitants.

Since then most of the lots on our street have filled in and now there are just three lots left, but one of those is the one right next door to us. It’s a large corner lot and although every time we are at Hazeldean mall we throw a penny in the fountain and wish for it to be sold, it remains empty except for like, one hundred million weeds.

With the lot remaining unsold we can’t finish our own backyard by building a fence on that side and putting in our planned patio and shed, but by far the greatest annoyance is the weeds. Our back lawn is doing okay but the front, although fighting a good fight, is slowly succumbing and looks like warmed-over elf barf. There’s always pollen blowing about which, due to various allergies, makes it hard to play outside or sleep with our windows open to take advantage of the cool night air. We’ve often thought about plowing down the weeds but we’re afraid of releasing hundreds of seed spores into the air where they will find nice homes in what is left of our front lawn, and we’re really hoping to keep that neighbourhood as exclusive as possible, thanks.

The one really good thing about the weeds, though, is that most of them are wildflowers. That means that they are a breeding ground for butterflies. Every day that we play in the back or front yard, we see probably 10 butterflies — mostly little yellow and white ones, but sometimes bigger orange, blue, and brown ones. We see so many that my kids are totally jaded — they hardly care anymore, and the sight of a caterpillar or ladybug gets them much more excited. They don’t realise that not everyone gets to see so many butterflies in their own backyard all the time. I’m still totally enchanted — I think they’re just the most delicately beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen.

This morning Sir Monkeypants asked me to call the builder and ask them to clean up the empty lot, but I couldn’t do it because I can’t handle the idea of all those lovely butterflies being homeless. If I didn’t have two purple thumbs I’d get out there and plant some butterfly-friendly plants in our actual backyard and try to transplant the population before they really do sell the lot. As it is I think I’ll just do nothing and enjoy the wilds for a little bit longer.