Some of my earliest fond memories from my childhood involve wading through chest-high milkweed in search of monarch caterpillars. I know it was in the house-by-the-lake so I was younger than nine. My mother was teaching an elementary school class and was using the hatching monarch butterflies as a science unit – I was lucky enough to get to tag along on the lesson.
The hardest part of the lesson, for tiny me, was having to say goodbye to my beautiful butterfly friend after I’d watched through its multi-bodied journey of transformation. No matter how I felt, I understood that butterflies belonged outside and now that my caterpillar had become a butterfly, we had to let him go back outside and learn to BE a butterfly.
Perhaps that is why I am who I am – somebody taught my protowitch self how to nurture the experience of transformation. I have never forgotten it.
I am forever drawn to it.
Today I was just sitting upstairs in my office editing photos completely inflow. I was grateful that the sun was shining, that the air was warm, that my cat is so happy about her new box, and that my partner is so happy about their new computer. Without thinking, I follow my instinct to grab my camera and head outside to check out my garden. There, snuggling every single flower, was a beautiful monarch.
In our journey towards reclaiming the derelict garden in my front yard, I have a two-pronged approach: is it native and/or do the pollinators want to eat it? The spiderwort is the earliest bee magnet to my garden, so it can stay in carefully controlled patches. I’ve added sea holly, rattlesnake master, hoary vervain, and foxglove beardtongue because they were recommended specifically for our native bees. But my gold standard will always be milkweed.
Milkweed is a beautiful native plant with amazing magical properties. Because it is the sole place where a monarch butterfly will lay its eggs, it has strong associations with the transformation – even my protowitch self was capable of understanding that! Moreover, the toxic leaves of the monarch plant are consumed by the caterpillar – giving the adult monarch butterfly its primary form of protection – poison! Most predators know to avoid the butterfly because of its orange markings which say “Watch out!” In that way, growing milkweed has a threefold benefit in your garden: it supports the very endangered butterfly, supports you during the many transformations throughout your life, and acts as a protective guardian to your garden and yard.
What more is there to love?
When I count my blessings, I consider my garden, the native milkweed growing wild there, and the monarchs that return every year unquestionably among them.