I attended a very interesting seminar during my hometown Spring Festival this week. It was all about Monarch butterflies and how to attract them to flower gardens. For display purposes, several Painted Lady butterflies were contained in netted butterfly cages. A few Monarchs were in a box that had been shipped in for the seminar. We were told that it costs over $100 to order a box of a dozen Monarch butterflies in the mail. Painted Ladies are less expensive so she had more of them on hand.
The speaker told us that to attract Monarch butterflies to our gardens, we must plant milkweed plants.They can easily be planted by seed. She had both seeds and seedlings to give away. I brought home three tiny seedlings
of milkweed plants to try to grow in my garden.
The butterflies were released at the end of the seminar. Unfortunately, the weather was damp and cold so the butterflies were slow to move. They didn’t want to fly away but lingered a long time which made it easier to photograph them.
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