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Like many children, I heard the nursery rhyme "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!" often, maybe even every time my mother and I saw a ladybug. I confess that I never understood it, and I still don't.

Poking around on the Internet for the source of the rhyme has been enlightening and frustrating. For sure, I discovered that the rhyme dates from the 18th-century (Wikipedia says 1744; index number 16215 in the Roud Folk Song Index). I learned about superstitions and luck, and I even read about a reference to the Virgin Mary in the word "ladybird" and the Gunpowder Plot (neither of which appears in what I would consider a necessarily reliable resource).

None of this applies to what I see in this photograph: a fragrant bed-like, pillowed blossom on which a ladybug and even tinier light green insect (like a small jellybean to the left and toward the viewer) rest.

This ladybug need not fly away. Indeed, if I were he or she, I would be happy right where I am.

As I am myself.