Love the Butterfly? Embrace the Weeds!

As a former professional bean walker, I’m almost ashamed to admit that I have milkweed growing in my flower garden. On purpose. {GASP!}  Yes, I’m allowing that slippery, slimy weed that stinks and makes your hands sticky and a putrid color of green, is almost impossible to pull out by the root, and reproduces faster than rabbits, prime space in my garden.

Why? I like butterflies more that I hate milkweed. And lately, butterflies have been getting the short end of the stick.

Within my lifetime (I know that’s a long time, but still…) butterfly habitats and food sources, such as the sticky, stinky milkweed, essential to monarch caterpillar survival, have been disappearing at an alarming rate. This decline in resources is putting a big dent in the number of kaleidoscopes (the fancy word for a group of butterflies) flitting around our yards, pollinating flowers and food, eating aphids, and generally adding beauty and delight to our lives.

So last summer, when a volunteer milkweed plant nudged its way into my front-of-the-house flower garden, trying its best to hide among the well-spaced peonies and iris, I let it grow.

Do you remember when summer and butterflies were almost synonymous? I remember endless sunny days running around our yard, catching butterflies of every size and color, feeling their tiny feet clinging to my finger before waving my arm and watching them take flight. That isn’t the case anymore. It’s rare to see more than one butterfly at a time flitting about, and rarer to see the vast variety I used to take for granted.

That makes me sad. So last summer, I let the milkweed grow. Like a miracle, the distinctive monarch caterpillars soon appeared, munching away on tender milkweed leaves.  So I let additional milkweed volunteers grow.

Kyra and I kept an eye on the milkweed plants and the caterpillars all summer, surprised by the number of leaves the caterpillars ate in one day, fascinated when each chrysalis formed, and ecstatic when the butterflies emerged and flew away, off to create more colorful kaleidoscopes.

So this year, I have lots of milkweed in my garden. On purpose.

• To learn more about how you can help monarch butterflies, click here.

• To learn why Kyra has a butterfly on her head, and how the “Shit That I Knit” crew is making the world better for all sorts of people that are also getting the short end of the stick, give a click here.

Peace,

Sara