Butterfly and daisy on the chest in watercolour style

You'll laugh at me, but the butterfly has been sitting on the daisy since Tuesday. I went up to the top field with my box of paints meaning to do the hay meadow properly, the way Dad used to, all lines and no nonsense, and instead I spent two hours in the grass watching a monarch work its way along a single flower as if it had paid for the whole row. Every time I lifted the brush it stayed put. I think it knew I was drawing it.

I tried the careful way first. Black pen for the veins, a thin wash for the orange, a little red dabbed where the wing goes dark. It looked like a page from Mum's old seed catalogue, which was not what I wanted. Mr Ashworth came up from the next farm with the dog and said I'd gone soft. He was half right. On the third morning I gave up on the outline, wet the paper with the sponge, and let the yellow and green run out past the edges until the whole meadow seemed to be leaking into the picture.

The butterfly was still there when the paint dried. I'd half expected it to leave once I stopped being precise, but it sat on the white petals with its wings open, as if the splashes were the only honest part of the drawing. I left the black stem running down the page the way I'd first sketched it, thin and unfinished at the bottom, and signed the corner where the green had pooled.

Come up at the weekend and see it. Bring the good scissors, the ones you hide from me. I'm not doing the hay field again without you.

Love, Nell