Be still my heart! The New England Asters are starting to bloom. Native and mostly volunteer 🙂

@gemswinc Definitely favourites here too! Finally saw a monarch on one today! No picture, but a happy moment. My husband and l went on different walks today. He estimates he saw a little less than forty monarchs at the park he went too. Many were visiting NE asters there too

@KarenSohne He saw that many! Hopeful! I think Monarchs have moved on, here.

@gemswinc they do tend to gather for migration. But in our old neighbourhood, we’d see more frequent monarchs than here. Don’t know if it’s just 3 years of decline or if this neighbourhood just has less. So many folks here use pesticides and herbicides on their lawns
Sometimes l feel like a sad gramma on Halloween, no trick or treaters/ few butterflies on our native plants. I’ll persist, one thing l’m good at!

@KarenSohne @gemswinc

Years ago as we were first starting our gardens at our MN home, we found a nursery that dealt in all native plants. My wife was looking at things and I took a seat. There was a pallet of Blazing Star plants in from of me with about 20 monarchs swooping about. I convinced her to get a couple and we planted them when we got home.. It wasn't 40 minutes before the monarchs found them. Ad the gardens grew we had other things that attracted them but that was the start

#flowers