​Gardens are symbols of rebirth and beauty.  I have, at best, a very light green thumb but I love my garden and enjoy watching it grow and develop.  

We just returned from a trip over the Memorial weekend and, coming home, I was struck again with just how beautiful our garden is. We have a small yard of which only a very small portion is grass (and some weeds that I pretend are grass).  The rest is all flowers, succulents where the yard  is sunny and dry, fruit trees, palms, several types of ferns where it is shady and flowering bushes.  


Right before we left on our trip, I planted milkweed to be a home for the beautiful, but increasingly rare, Monarch butterfly.  In recent years, people have replaced the Monarch habitat and food source, the milkweed plant, with increasing development. When we arrived home, I was thrilled to find a monarch caterpillar on the milkweed and a beautiful adult Monarch resting on one of my bright red succulents close by.  I am so happy to now be helping in my small way with giving the Monarch a home.

The rest of the garden seems to be in full bloom now and I have flowers of all colors everywhere.  They make me happy and peaceful when I see them and I love to hear the birds chirping and see them darting among the flowers in the early morning and in the evening.

As seen here, there are many colors in our garden from the vivid multicolored Birds of Paradise to the yellow lilies and the brilliant red roses.  This is actually just a part of the rich beauty and  color that ranges from pink roses to pale purple lavender in the garden.  I also have a peach tree and a miniature lemon tree, strawberries and herbs such as rosemary, Italian oregano and pineapple mint...such a bounty  and something growing and blooming all year.  I enjoy and appreciate it all, 

At this time of the year, I usually look down on our community pool and it's full of families and small children, but this year the pool is quiet and empty (I do miss the happy children's laughter) - except for two ducks who seemed to be really enjoying themselves.  Although I would rather be seeing the ducks out hiking along the banks of the boundary waters as I did years ago, it was still fun to see them enjoy themselves in our pool. We are on the migratory path for the ducks as they head north and south and this time of the year they are everywhere throughout our community.  

We live in a rather rural area with not much city life (although we do have the congestion of the I-5) and we are a mile from the ocean and about the same distance from two lagoons.  It is a small city with a master plan to keep 40% open protected space and a maximum buildout plan to never get too large.  So we have many creatures living here, rabbits under our deck, lizards and toads in the gardens, possums and even a baby skunk who wandered through recently.  It's nice to know that we can all live peacefully together and, as I mentioned in my last blog, I just planted milkweed plants to draw the butterflies into the succulent garden out front .

I think how much enjoyment all of the critters, birds and flower gardens give to me and I am very thankful, that, even if I have to stay close to home except for infrequent wandering out with my protective gear on, that I have such a beautiful place to enjoy.  Hopefully our pandemic will be over sooner rather than later, but, until then, it is nice to focus on the quieter beauties of life.  Take care and stay well.

I love butterflies and I found a beautiful butterfly puzzle to complete during the stay at home directives.  We had fun taking turns working on it.  As it is a circle and only 14" in diameter (the brown background is the table that it was laying on, not the puzzle itself).  But as we got down to putting in the last few pieces, there was one piece missing.  After looking all over for it we had to decide that it had accidentally been thrown away and I "made" a fill in and we called the puzzle finished. It was so beautiful that I couldn't bear to tear it down so I varnished it onto a backing and hung it in my office.  It hangs there to brighten my day.  Can you see the space where the missing piece should be?

​Butterflies are beautiful and so endangered by the pesticides that we use today and the way that we are destroying their habitat. I want to encourage them to visit us and be healthy.  The Monarch butterfly thrives only on one plant, the Milkweed, so, after talking to my daughter who has a butterfly garden, I decided to get one big healthy Milkweed plant and give it a try.  I will plant it now that "spring has sprung" and hopefully we will provide a Monarch stopping point as they flutter through the area.  Hopefully they will lay their eggs on the Milkweed and the caterpillars that hatch will have a nice food to munch on as they begin their lives and their metamorphosis into beautiful butterflies.

The milkweed is a tall rangy upright perennial that grows in
​full sun and provides the food that the Monarch butterfly caterpillars thrive on.