From The Green Corner: Do You Enjoy Butterflies? & More

Lewis Ginter Gardens in Richmond have the wonderful “Butterflies Live” exhibit open until Oct. 10. https://www.lewisginter.org/visit/events/butterflies-live/

If you enjoy reading, BICYCLING WITH BUTTERFLIES by Sara Dykman (2021) provides a great armchair adventure. Dykman follows the annual monarch migration from Mexico to Canada and back adding her observations of people, landscape, and butterflies on the journey. Loss of habitat and milkweed, use of pesticides  are endangering the monarchs. Every gardener, landscaper, and farmer can help by creating butterfly-friendly gardens that provide the monarchs nourishment on their migrations. Check Monarch Joint Venture https://monarchjointventure.org  for ways to help and to register your own garden as butterfly-friendly.  

Besides planting pollinator-friendly gardens, KNOW BEFORE YOU MOW. Leave milkweed for the monarchs standing in your yard and fields. The milkweed is their only food source and provides a place for laying eggs. Moreover, the monarch caterpillar and butterfly is a bitter emetic to predators because of the processing of cardenoliodes from the milkweed.  A clueless predator will often release a monarch after one bite and quickly learns that anything orange is a danger. Viceroy butterflies mimic the monarch and are thus protected,

Don’t use neonic pesticides. Neonics are neurotoxic insecticides applied to seeds and roots of many nursery plants and crops. These neonics dissolve in water and the plants absorb them into their leaves, nectar, pollen, and fruit. …The toxins persist for years in the plants. Bees that pollinate nemonic crops are killed by the nectar. Birds are affected. Humans, too, are exposed.

Other resources:

https://farmersformonarchs.org/

#MonarchMonday #monarchbutterfly #pollinators #farmland

There are some grants available for solar batteries.

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Learn more about creation work in our diocese Here.

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