Monarch Butterflies, we have to talk. You are eating yourself out of house and home.

I was happy with my little farm.  I was planting milkweed cuttings all over my property.  In existing pots, new pots, and in the garden.  I needed the seeds for bio-diversity.

I had some plants that were growing quite well.  One of the plants was waist high and I have a 35 inch inseam.  

Did you catch the "was" there?

My front window faces out to the porch and I have a recliner and rocker in that window.  It lets me see the world when I am not working out.  It is overstuffed and I can lounge around when I am in it, like now.

I need to rest frequently because I am an athlete.  You tell me if I am using the right word, three marathons on the bike per week.  First sprint is usually just over a half marathon at a 14 MPH average.  Then water stop and repeat.

So my sport watch yells at me that I am doing too much and PAI numbers are averaging in the high 200s.  It's a measure of activity, just like a resting heart rate of 52 is a measure of fitness.

Enough bragging, back to the butterflies.

I am about a block from a small park.  M.E. DePalma Park.  That is where I got the first seeds for the Mexican Milkweed that you little critters love so much.  I got them about 15 years ago and have been propagating them ever since.  I stuff some plants under other plants and take cuttings frequently.

Mrs Monarch, this is where you came into play.  You see I was just about ready to get some seeds when you found these plants.  Two days later I started seeing holes in the leaves, two more days and I had stumps in my pots. 

Yes, you.  You put your eggs on my plants left and right and center.  You and all your flutterby friends.  Swallowtail and Zebra Wing, all of you came by and visited my porch.  At one point there were enough of you on my porch that I thought I was looking at a holding pattern in a large airport.

Of course I know what that looks like, I bike at an airport in Pompano Beach, and I once rode a motorcycle up the New Jersey Turnpike past the Newark NJ Airport.  I know what a holding pattern looks like.

Then your children did what they do and ate my plants away.

Yes, I know, I grow them for that purpose and your children were hungry.  But every plant is now gone.

Now, don't apologize.  You did what you had to.  But I had about 50 plants and now they are all gone.  There are 12 in that one pot alone!

So I have to build a cage.  You won't get in this thing.  I have hardware cloth and I know how to use it.

Don't apologize, I am bound and determined to get something past the sticks!

Just keep your pretty orange and black wings and your eggs to yourself.   If I have to be a farmer I have to do it outside.  If I told you what the ants do to plants indoors here in South Florida, you would be deeply offended!

Zinnia In The Garden, Butterflies All Day

I think I have “embraced” never having Milkweed in the garden.  At least, never seeing the flowers.

The chair I sit in looks out the front window.  In fact I refuse to use my perfectly acceptable desk in the back of the house because I find sitting out front to be much more entertaining.  

I do know that I can propagate that same Milkweed if I really did want to.  It is very leggy right now, having grown between the Croton and Screw Palm out there and having been cropped back by successive squadrons of Monarch that float on the breezes.  Those squadrons are why the plants are where they are.  I had hoped I would be able to get some more leaves on the things before they were discovered but Milkweed is not exactly a beautiful plant.

So one day I was Online Shopping.  I needed an item to get the price over the free shipping barrier and I refuse to pay for shipping if I can actually get something that I want for the expense.  I flashed on my own childhood habit of growing flowers in the front garden.  Sunflowers were the first though but I have had bad luck with them here in South Florida.  Oh sure, I could grow dinner plate sized blooms in the back yard in Pennsylvania, but down here they’re the size of a Daisy.   I will try again when the weather is cooler, I think it could easily be something like the heat forcing them to rush to bloom so you end up with smaller flowers.

Having rejected the sunflowers, I hit upon another childhood favorite.  Zinnia.  Looking for a write up on the things, it turns out that Zinnia are a warm climate plant from the southwest US and Neighboring Mexico (¡Bienvenidos Vecinos!) even if I could grow them in New Jersey, and did.  Day glow colors would look great in the garden and, bonus, they drew butterflies.

Oh boy did they ever.

I step onto the porch in the morning before the Furnace in the Sky ramped up from annoying to full on Hades and I am bombarded by butterflies.  Not just my favorite orange Monarchs but Swallowtails, Zebrawings, and others.  All day long they come by, land on the Zinnia for a meal, and seek the sad little Milkweed to leave an egg or ten.

As a good High School and College friend Jim would say with a shrug, “Well, that is what they are there for”!  I guess it took all these years for me to get the same kind of an attitude.

So as I do know how to propagate Milkweed, and I still have some Zinnia seeds left, I’m blessed with a task.  I will be planting some more seeds today.  I am enjoying the natural show.  

All I really do need to do is to wait for things to bloom because if I plant it, they do indeed come.   If they come, I will watch.

Planting Basil, Replenishing the Milkweed, and Sneaking In An Extra Dog Walk

 I'm still picking up the house from the interior remodel we had done over the fall.  

It's not the highest of priorities, we had the holidays and some other more pressing projects in between.  

I came back from an appointment today and rapidly got bored.  You can only watch so much news until it warps your brain.

There is a box that is camping out on my table.  Well, really, mom's table but that brown furniture has a habit of getting passed along.  Solid Maple drop leaf table in the dining room with a box on top.  It has strange items in it and the box exists because I ordered some things once and realized it was a great way to corral some home improvement items together.

White glue,
Sandpaper,
Shipping Tape,
Tiny Paint Brushes...

That sort of thing.  A Party in the Home Improvement Store's Aisle kind of stuff.

It also had an old worn plastic bag in it.  That bag has gold in it in the form of my collected seeds.

Flower seeds from a good friend's celebration of life.
Some Basil seeds, and trust me, you want fresh basil on your pizza.
Bell Pepper seeds from a particularly tasty orange bell pepper years back.
And my stash of Mexican Milkweed seeds.

I got a Bright Idea.  I get those.  Particularly in the arm pit of an afternoon when the weather is nice and I'm sitting around looking to do creative things.

I grabbed the Basil and the Milkweed and had a walk around the property.  The property has drip feed irrigation all around.  I use that because it can be depended upon to be legal to water plants with this even in a drought in the dry season.  Typically where I have a pot under irrigation, I have a second one lower so that it can catch the overflow.  The pots are a playground for me to dump cuttings and seeds.  The ones on the ground tend to be propagation and the higher ones are where the Orchids grow.

It makes for a nice display when the plants are in bloom, and an ecological display for when they are not.

I started walking around looking into pots and dropping seeds.  Since the Monarchs can't eat Basil, I was able to mix the Milkweed in with them.  Like the Corn-Beans-Squash three sisters, there are certain things that just work.

I get my beans and corn from the market anyway.

So among my weeds are some seeds.  I'll have Basil to go with the pizza and the Monarchs which are currently in chrysalis will have food for the future little wrigglies.

Since I was not able to use all my Milkweed, I'll pass some on to the nature preserve at M. E. DePalma park on the next dog walk.  There are a few little milkweed plants there and you never have milkweed for long!

And who knows.  The last time I found an "Air Plant", Tillandsia, it had a seed pod that was ripe.   That kept me entertained on a long walk around town and through the park setting rare species seeds back into an appropriate habitat.  I know that they survived because strangely there are some more air plants around here than there were before.

Bottom line is if you like air, plant a tree.
If you want to fight climate change, plant a tree.
Just plant a damn tree regardless!

Sixteen Monarch Caterpillars in One Pot

Luckily, I thought to harvest those Milkweed seeds a little while back. 

You see, I have a lot of pots strung along the side of the backyard near the swimming pool.  They're all on a handy drip feed irrigation system that runs 10 minutes a day and delivers gallon per sprinkler head per hour.

Not a lot of waste.

I have a lot of plants there.  All those Milkweed plants that I thought myself lucky to get the seeds from, and I still have a lot of around the house.  Two pots each of Mangos and Bananas.  My "cuttings" pot that I am propagating a lot of strange things like Onions and more Milkweed.

Nothing bothered them until the yard got invaded by Monarch Caterpillars.  You guessed it, Momma Monarch finally found the plants.

All of them.  All at once.

All except the one on the Mango pot.  The leaves are similar to the Mango leaves, and I had that one plant growing against the Mango tree's trunk as a support.

One by one, the eggs hatched.
One by one, the Milkweed plants got stripped bare of their leaves.
One by one, the Monarch Caterpillars got larger.

Then they ran out of food.  This one plant was the only one left. 

This sole pot had sixteen monarch caterpillars in it.  For something that was endangered, I was shocked to see this concentration of caterpillars in one spot.

Then the next day it was only one or two.  They started to move on. 

That same evening I found one caterpillar on our windchimes hanging out on the shed. 

The next day I found myself presented with a little jewel.  A jade teardrop where that caterpillar had stopped by in that improbable place.

It chose that spot to pupate. 

Monarch Butterfly Pupas are a beautiful thing in the light.  They are a translucent jade green.  There are two shimmering iridescent gold spots and a line of iridescent gold specks on the outside.  If you are in full sunlight you may be able to make out the internal form of the just pupated creature, there are structures inside that your mind translates into future wings. 

Later when the creature is to take flight in Orange and Black, the pupa becomes clear, and cracks open.  It will expand its wings and fly off perhaps to find more milkweed flowers, if its cousins have not stripped it all bare in the yard.

For now, I'm presented with the little jade jewels.  Shimmering in the strong Florida Sun.

Monarchs in the Ruellia Rescue Pot

The easiest plant I have found to propagate is the Ruellia.

Mexican Petunia.

They are also considered invasive weeds by some. 

One of those things I guess, the butterflies and bees love the flowers, but the plants get out of control and will grow just about anywhere in the South.  Zone 8 to 11 if you're taking notes.

I guess I shouldn't propagate them, but since my entire property line on the East side is covered with them, they aren't going anywhere.  I get an almost 100 percent propagation rate from cuttings stuck in damp soil, and they make for a rather nice display in a pot.

Like I said, the butterflies like them and I'm all about making the butterflies happy.

I had this pot, one of my Rescue Pots where I was planting all sorts of stuff to see if it takes.   When I got a care package of some Mexican Milkweeds, I tossed the seeds into this pot and waited.

Nothing.  Nothing took.  That was back in March. 

Shrugging, since I needed to trim back the Mexican Petunia a couple of lawn mowings ago, I simply saved the cuttings and stuck them into the soil of that pot, densely.  Now the pot has this giant tuft of purple flowers and green leaves.

In the middle of that pot there was one odd ball Mexican Milkweed.  I could tell it was that because the leaves were not as dark as the Ruellia.  The leaves are almost identical, but it looked faded.

With my puttering in the garden each day, I thought it odd that my Milkweed had grown back healthy after being eaten back to sticks by all the Monarch Butterflies we have here.

Then it happened.

Momma Butterfly found my lone plant in the strawberry pot.  She missed the one in the Ruellia.

I shortly had three little baby Monarch caterpillars munching my plant to sticks.  "Oh Well, That Is What It's There For!" I said, promising myself to watch after my tiger striped pets.

A couple days later, they grew so big that they ate themselves low on food.  One of the caterpillars got hungry enough to try to escape the strawberry pot.  I saw it on the outside of the pot looking lost.  It immediately climbed onto an offered Sea Grape leaf that I picked up from the ground.

You guessed it, it went into the pot with the Ruellia.

So now I have caterpillar number 3 getting fat and happy with the Ruellia, which it seems to have a taste for too, as well as the other two back on the lone Mexican Milkweed that now is almost leafless.  

Good luck creatures, long may you fly!