Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014 - 8

F

from the
farm

Text and photo by elizabeth hunter

For the Wild World
The challenges facing The monarchs and The wild bees bring
illuminaTion and duTy To proTecT whaT we puT in peril.
in mid-august, I was restocking
terrariums in the Orchard at Altapass's
nature corner with monarch
caterpillars. After two miserable
summers with almost no monarchs
around, I'd found quite a few
monarch eggs on milkweed in my
backyard and in fields up the road. I
reared the caterpillars until they got
big, then handed them off to my
friend Judy Carson so Orchard visitors
could watch them transform from
caterpillar to chrysalis, chrysalis to
butterfly, before Judy let them go.
As is often the case, my restocking
work attracted some attention.
Among those who stopped to see
what I was doing was a woman who
looked at the luxuriant milkweed I was
putting in the terrariums, and
remarked that milkweed, once
abundant on their property, seemed
to have died out. I didn't need to tell
her, as I had just told someone else,
that milkweed is essential to monarchs
because it's the only green stuff their
caterpillars recognize as food.
She asked if we had milkweed
plants for sale. We didn't. But
common milkweed along roadsides
was already producing pods. Once
they ripened and began bursting
open, she ought to collect some, I
said. Take them home and empty their
contents into a grocery bag. Close the
bag around your wrist, rub the seeds
and fluff together, shake the bag so
the seeds fall to the bottom, then cut
an opening in one corner and pour the
seeds out. Take them outside. Scatter
them where you want milkweed to
germinate next spring. Don't keep
them in the house over the winter.
The seeds need what nature provides
- periods of cold and moisture - to
germinate. You can find directions
online for mimicking those conditions
in your fridge, but why bother? Follow
nature's lead.

8 | BlueRidgeCountry.com

BRC

Solitary wild bees like this bumblebee
nectaring on torch tithonia (Mexican
sunflower) provide essential
pollinating services to wild and
garden plants.

That made sense to her. She
already knew about the perils that
monarchs face and wanted to help.
As we continued our conversation, I
found she knew a lot more: for one
thing, about alarming declines in wild
bee populations. Honeybee declines
are getting lots of press these days,
but wild bees are as important and
are in similar dire straits. The woman
said her husband had been making
artificial nesting sites for solitary wild
bees and setting them out on their
property. Those he'd put behind their
barn were, for reasons the bees knew
but she didn't, receiving the most use.
Just then, her husband wandered up.
She told him what I'd said about
reintroducing milkweed. Come fall,

For a look back at dozens of
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he agreed, that's what they'd do.
A few days before I met this
couple, I told someone that the main
thing I seemed to be doing this
summer was taking care of monarch
caterpillars. When he'd looked blank,
I'd said, "It's what I do for the world."
The couple at the Orchard was
similarly engaged. They'd established
and were tending plots of native
wildflowers. They gardened
organically. Now they would
reintroduce milkweed.
They could not know how
important our brief conversation was
to me. Day after dispiriting day, I'd
been listening to horrific news of war
and pestilence: from Gaza and
eastern Ukraine; Syria and northern
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014

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