Overboard by Chip Dunham for April 10, 2021

Native milkweed, not the imported tropical variety, which is actually more commonly available in nurseries, and has more spectacular flowers, but is not as good for butterflies.

Thanks for not eating them Louie??

I’m not on the flight path, so I don’t think it’ll help.

Strawberries, Butterflies & Louie a recipe for happy days X

We have a prairie meadow with three kinds of native milkweed. Unfortunately we are surrounded by over-insecticided farms and tracts of homes sitting in stands of sterile monocultures of lawn grass. The Monarchs really need the continuous miles of wild plants that used to grow along roads and between fields but are now ‘weed’ killer sprayed and mowed out of existence. Over the decades we have seen fewer and fewer butterflies and as well as all other pollinators. Last summer I saw a total of three Monarchs. Sad, very sad.

on it

I have tried almost every year to get milkweed seeds to sprout. So far no success.

Several in the yard!!!!

they are as important to our food sources as are bees

If you have the room and the $, it’s best to plant a variety of plants to furnish nectar and host plants on which eggs are laid and catepillars eat after hatching. A small mud bath is good, butterflies use it to get salts. A rock on which they can perch and warm up helps.

The city cited me for having “noxious weeds” and made me mow down my pollinator garden.

We have just shy of 15 acres. I mow a big chunk around the house and have trails through the woods on the rest of it.

There is a large section that I leave unmowed every year where the milkweed grows ferociously.

Louie! Milkweed is a poisonous plant, so don’t plant it where dogs, cats, etc. or herbivores might munch on it.

Instead of banning pipelines from Canada (which after all are the safest way to transport oil), Biden should approve them on condition that the pipeline corridor be planted with milkweed. Win-win!

I wonder what happened to the butterflies Nate saved. Did he get them from the toad or was it too late??

Good advice. Let’s help them out.

and leave your dandelions for the bees

Good evening Crew!

A nice public service announcement about planting. Thanks, Chip.

Good Evening, Crew.