Get Ready Now for the Monarch Butterfly

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The Monarch Butterfly is beautiful, and easy to attract to your garden. Milkweed is the Monarch’s favorite food. Our milk weed plants are finally recovering now that the Monarch butterfly season is over for us. This was our second year with the Monarchs, and right now  I am watering and feeding the plants in preparation for spring. Last year, as the caterpillars devoured our plants, and adult Monarchs continued to lay eggs, we purchased several additional milk week plants. We quickly realized that this was becoming an endless cycle, so eventually stopped buying plants and let the adult monarchs look elsewhere to lay their eggs. FullSizeRender (5)

Here you see the monarch caterpillars munching on Milk Weed in our garden. The caterpillar stage lasts anywhere from 9 to 14 days and eventually the plants will become bare stems with roots. It is remarkable how these plants recover once the Monarch butterflies have flown from our area.

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These photos were all taken in our back yard, and if you would like to know more about the Monarch butterfly, please go to Monarch-Butterfly.com . They do a wonderful job of telling the full story of the truly awesome Monarch Butterfly.

Election Day Walk

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Today is election day in the United States. Yesterday I posted that my doctor has encouraged me to take a half-hour walk at least five days a week, so I decided to walk to my voting location instead of driving the car, as I usually do. As I headed to our nearby high school to cast my ballot, I felt like Meg Ryan in the movie “You’ve Got Mail.” I love that movie and envy the way she and Tom Hanks go most places on foot, because they live in Manhattan and it is much easier to walk than drive. We also have just about everything we need within close walking distance. After voting, I continued on to the grocery store to do a little shopping. I had to remember that I would be carrying my purchases home, so did not want to buy too much.  By the time I arrived home, I had done something wonderful for my health, and had also saved on the cost of fuel. It was such a positive experience that I plan to leave my car at home more often. I wonder where my walk will take me tomorrow! Tonight, election results.

A Walk Under Blue Sky

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This photo and the one below were taken at the Sir Speedy corporate headquarters that sits across the road from my doctor’s office. I’ve always admired its clean architectural lines, and after our recent rain the blue sky and green grass accentuated the building more than ever.

Today I  went for my yearly physical, and my doctor encouraged me to get in a 30-minute walk at least five days a week. This has been my goal since last year’s physical, but it rarely fit into my schedule.  I’d often noticed the paths on the Sir Speedy grounds, so today I decided to walk up those paths. I say up, because the building sits on a hill and the paths are rather steep in places. I circled the building and enjoyed the grass and flowers for almost half an hour, and the walk back to my car completed the 30 minutes. I couldn’t help but wonder if employees inside the building could see me and wondered who it was walking on their company grounds. I followed doctor’s orders to do my half-hour walk, and also satisfied my curiosity about the paths surrounding Sir Speedy. I wonder where my walk tomorrow will take me.100_3536