Look What Graced Us With Its Presence at the Resurrection Garden on All Saints Sunday, November 6!
Monarchs on Frostweed
While visiting the Resurrection Garden after church on All Saints Sunday, we noticed a monarch butterfly feeding on a flower right in front of us, just over the Garden wall above the TLLC woods. The timing was just perfect for this Sunday in which we at the “butterfly church” celebrate the saints in our
lives. The monarch continued to feed hungrily for many minutes, fueling up for its migration to Mexico, on a plant we identified as a frostweed. It turns out this is one of the Monarch’s favorite nectar plants and is actually considered a monitoring plant by Monarch watch. We are fortunate to have several of these plants along the ground on the woods side of the Resurrection Garden. If we get a hard freeze, these plants will give us another treat. Their stems will split and the sap that oozes out will freeze into beautiful mini-ice sculptures. Thus the name – frostweed. And as they are weeds they self-seed, increasing the likelihood that we will have more of them each year. Interestingly, this plant was also important to the indigenous people who lived here before us, having several medicinal uses. There is an abundance of things to learn as we step outdoors and appreciate our Resurrection Garden and the woods below!