09/04/2026
Now that it's September...
We'd had such high hopes. Back in the late Spring a few years ago, we'd planted milkweed seeds in hopes of growing a little stand of milkweed plants because: BUTTERFLIES.
As you probably know, the monarch butterfly's sole source of nutrition, while it's in the caterpillar stage, is the milkweed plant. So we sowed our little seeds, imagining a cloud of the little winged miracles taking over our yard for one single magical week about a month later.
And by now you have figured out that our milkweed crop was, shall we say, somewhat less than. That is, we grew exactly one plant. Turns out, if you plant in the spring, the seeds need to have had a 'cold stratification,' where you mimic winter by putting them in your fridge for a month or two prior to planting. Thank you internet.
The good news: we did actually *finally* get a few caterpillars and were able to watch them go into chrysalis and wonderfully, magically, be transformed into the glorious monarch butterfly. Like a death and resurrection. It really is an astounding thing to witness.
The gossamer silk of the seeds, called, evidently, the coma, catches the wind so they may be dispersed by the wind. What a design.
www.beyondnaturephotographs.com
