The evening I found her majesty I was 'en route' without camera. I asked my son to return to the house and bring my camera stuff and fortunately he did! In the meantime I was searching for other butterflies but I only found one Grizzled Skipper.

My son returned running with all my camera stuff and I started photographing her with a kind of wide angle lens. So the name of this blog must change into Le pouvoir de garcon! Merci mon chéri!

Four days in the Vosges felt like almost a week. My short holiday started with visiting two vide de greniers (without buying/finding anything), discovering a beautiful nature area with a lot of lakes and wild meadows and photographing a Wood White in my own garden. As the weather was wonderful I started with the front part of the garden to create some space for another three butterfly bushes. Working in the garden in the Vosges means 'killing' a lot of brambles and saying 'hello' to the snakes and slow worms between the stones.

Every evening I visited a wild meadow near the house which I discovered during my autumn stay. Unfortunately nature is running late in the Vosges and the meadow with wild flowers was almost empty. Almost......because the second evening something in front of me in the grass scared me when it started moving....it was a resting female Swallowtail which tried to chase me away by moving/opening her wings. Of course I returned the next morning as I wanted to catch her with  dewdrops....although her body was covered with dewdrops and although I approached her very carefully she opened her wings again.....what a girlpower....after a minute she closed her wings a little bit and I could take some photos before a big mosquito attacked her and she decided to change her position.