More Than A Butterfly Garden

As a young boy, I can remember that I used to be able to see monarch butterflies all over the place. Before Interstate-10 was built, you had to travel the two lane Hwy-90 or Hwy-98 to go east and west in the Florida panhandle. Traveling from Pensacola to Destin and then perhaps farther to US 19/27 and into Perry, FL was fun. I can also remember the large amount of monarch butterflies trying to make it across the highway before getting hit. When we would get home, it was difficult getting all of the dead butterflies from the grill, wipers and hood of our 1966 Galaxy 500. Today, during that same trip, you would be lucky to see a butterfly. When you arrive home today, love bugs are the insects you wash off of your car. Even the field next to my boyhood home in Pensacola was covered in large leaf milkweed. Milkweed is the host plant for the monarch butterfly.

With this in mind, we had an area from the back of our new pool to a red brick wall at the outer edge of our property line. After our pool was built, we decided not to repair the irrigation system in this area. The system was destroyed in this area because of the pool going in. Central Florida lawns are expensive to maintain and the less lawn I have, the better.

We began looking on the web for native Florida and drought resistant plants. Late summer of 2009, I ordered 10 golden flowered live milkweed plants from online. I planted these and 6 survived the winter. With these and some other plants that my big brother gave me and some that Wesli and I grew from seed, we set out to establish a small but useful butterfly garden.

This spring was really our first chance to have butterflies. On June 24 we spotted our first monarch in the garden. By this time, we had blooms on most of our golden flowered milkweed and some on our red flowered milkweed plants. On July 9, we spotted a second monarch in the garden and they both stayed. Checking the milkweed daily, we soon discovered tiny caterpillars.

So love was in the air and at one point, my daughter Wesli and I counted 60 caterpillars. We began to worry as the caterpillars ate through most of the leaves and seed pods on the 18 plants that we have. I was not sure if there was going to be enough food for all of those ferocious appetites and the two butterflies continued to create life. But as nature intended, the monarch does have some predators. The amusing predator is the brown wasp. The wasp flies from plant to plant carefully looking under each leaf for eggs or pupae. Unfortunately, the wasp exerts a tremendous amount of energy because it looks under all of the plant leaves, not just the milkweed. While watching the wasp fly foolishly to all of the plants, I am trying to understand what it is thinking. The thoughts must be “No not this one...maybe this one..nope.. not this one maybe this one...nope not this one but maybe this one ...nope....” I guess the wasps remind me of a blooming idiot.

Then one day Wesli and I are in the garden and Wesli sees a chrysalis under the overhang of the red brick wall. As we began looking, we observed chrysalis on both sides of the brick wall and as far as 80 feet way from the milkweed. There were even chrysalises hanging from the underside of the Mexican Petunias we have growing in the same garden. We initially counted 43 chrysalises and there was a constant stream of caterpillars climbing the wall and forming chrysalises. But, we no longer saw the initial two butterflies, they had left. About 10 days later, we began watching as 8 or more monarchs a day began appearing from the chrysalis. As soon as the monarch’s wings were open and full, they took flight. The initial flight was very dangerous as the young monarchs had to veer and dive to keep waiting dragonflies from catching them.

So we survived our first butterfly season. At times, we were like worried parents as we tried to nurture the caterpillars and young monarchs. When we observed too many caterpillars devouring one plant, we would relocate some to other plants. If a young monarch tried to take flight but ended up in the street, Wesli would get it and put it safely back into the garden.

We have 7 butterflies that have decided to make our garden a temporary home. And the love process has started again. Yep, small caterpillars are on the milkweed once again; just when the milkweed is beginning to grow new leaves. So, we have started new plants from taking some of the seeds from the numerous seed pods. Unfortunately, we have hundreds of seeds that we collected and very few people have wanted them.....yes...even for free.

This experience has been educational, fun and interesting. And of course, it is helping to populate the ever dwindling monarch population. But most importantly, it has given me a venue that I can share with Wesli.

It is pretty natural and easy for my wife, Hollis, to do crafts and such with Wesli for their quality time. Well, I'm not a guy that likes mixing, cutting, molding, pasting, gluing, coloring and stitching. Whenever I go to Michaels to pick something up, I get lost. Shopping for something at Michaels is, well, like being asked to pick up a ladies personal item at Publix or Wal-mart. You know, a very uncomfortable feeling. Now, send me to Ace Hardware or Lowe's and I am fine.

My time with Wesli is playing a board game or practicing whatever sports she is in at the YMCA. We also enjoy watching a movie together sometimes on the weekend. But Wesli loves the outdoors. She loves a walk in the woods and to look for animals. Wesli loves to watch animal programs on Animal Planet or any other station that has an animal show. She and I watched all 12 episodes of Life recently.

So this butterfly garden is actually a dad and daughter project that the both of us have truly enjoyed. And the garden keeps on giving life as it keeps giving Wesli and I time together. So unlike the amusing brown wasp, at least for now, I have found the right leaf to feed us joy...

Godspeed...