Our family was blessed with lots of milkweed when we bought our house but I didn’t understand the plants’ significance initially.
Working on my front garden during my first summer, my neighbors stopped their daily dog walk to tell me that our house had been part of a groups of homes that were trying to be a Monarch butterfly haven. They asked me to preserve the milkweed and other flowers that were already there.
I loved the idea of being a butterfly haven. I studied what a butterfly garden should look like, what plants to add. How to make my yard more inviting to butterflies (and bees too). And it worked. Every summer we have monarchs. Their return to the garden is a summer highlight.
Flash forward. While we have preserved the flowers that were present when we moved into the house, we have added and added. We have put in new flower and vegetable beds. Last year and this spring, we put in significant time digging up spaces.
When I didn’t see any milkweed coming up this spring, I said to my partner:
“I am worried that we won’t have any milkweed this year”.
“We will have plenty of that stuff. That seed blew everywhere.”
“We have dug up so much. What if we dug up all the seed?”
“Don’t worry. We will have too much like always.”
I recognized that I was going to go no where so I didn’t say anything more. I did worry and worry.
Daffodils came up and bloomed. Hyacinth came up and bloomed. Tulips came up and bloomed. The peonies and other perennials started to poke their stems through the ground. Still no milkweed.
By now I had purchased milkweed from a nursery. But it was just one plant. Would that be enough to attract the butterflies?
The first week of June, I noticed the stiff stem and large, up right leaves of the milkweed. There was milk week in the front yard. One, two, three – no four plants and all in great places. Not close to the sidewalk where it would get beat up but close to the house. I looked in the back of the house. The milkweed was back surrounding the air conditioner like it does every year. The fill that was added. All the digging done by us didn’t stop it from returning.
I was overjoyed.
“It’s back!” I said.
“What’s back?” said my partner.
‘The milkweed.”
“Of course. That stuff is tough.”
I think of plants as fragile, delicate. Milkweed with it’s flower crown is pretty. I think of pretty as fleeting.
Where did that prejudice come from? I am not sure. Society has brainwashed me into thinking that beautiful women were weak. Beautiful women needed protection. Beautiful woman like Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary were beautiful but fragile.
I transfer this thought to plants. Burdock is sturdy. Milkweed is fragile.
All of this is just so much crap. I consider Desiree Linden and Megan Rapinoe to be beautiful but they are also strong, talented athletes. Serena Williams is attractive. She is also a great tennis player.
Jacinda Ardern is amazing. Yes she is attractive but she is also a great prime minister.
Helen Mirren was and continues to be beautiful and sexy just like my peony bushes. Pretty doesn’t have to be fleeting. It is necessarily weak or in need of protection. It can take care of itself.
I need to chill and trust it to be what it is. I need to stop impose my view of what it is on it. Instead I need to clear away my misconceptions and see my plants (and other people too) for what and who they are. Not what I think they should be.
Lesson learned.
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