Late August Dispatch from The Porch

 

I am grateful for the purple coneflowers that call to any monarch butterflies winding their way south each August. The numbers are dwindling. Even with the over-large tithonia near the porch screaming red-orange flowers at every insect and hummingbird, still, the monarchs are few and far between.

If you didn't know, these amazing beings may soon be on the Endangered Species list. Can you imagine that? Creatures this brilliant and complex, who have survived for probably thousands of years navigating changing terrains, storms at sea, human invasions to their ancestral lands are about to be placed on life support. At least that's how I look at anyone on the ESL. It means that we have failed to coexist with yet another beautiful being on this planet because we are foolish, intent on taking all that we can and sharing nothing--if it doesn't produce wealth for us or a few. 

In our zeal to grow more and more row crops for animal feed and for foods poisoned with glyphosate to limit plants like milkweed, we bring ourselves and the future of such beauty close to the end. Milkweeds are the only food that monarchs depend on as the location for their eggs and to feed the larvae as they grow and change and move through that amazing metamorphosis. What would a world look like absent butterflies, hummingbirds, bees? That's right. Dead. Unlivable. For all of us. 

It's incomprehensible to me that our leadership, politicians, wealthy humans gobbling up or destroying swathes of land for megafarms and cattle ranches, refuse to look further down the road at the world their children and grandchildren will be forced to live in.

I want my grandchildren to feel the softness of the wind as a butterfly chases by them while they stand in my meadow. Is that too much to ask? 

Wherever you live, you can plant milkweed and flowers. Both will support the monarchs and other insects that pollinate and nurture us. We need them. They need us to work and live WITH them once again. Somewhere we got disconnected from our true purpose on this amazing blue ball spinning in space: to be her guardian and protector and in return she would provide all we needed. But not all we greeded. Let's become guardians of the Earth as we were sent here to be. 

If you wish to be part of a solution, and we all must be part of the solution, I urge you to consider these.

Or create a monarch way station with your yard or school or club.