What's the point? Providing a rich place for my kids to explore, learn and appreciate the land.

My kids enjoying an evening paddle

When I was awarded the Slow the Flow grant I was asked 'what was the biggest reason for doing the project?' Besides the obvious reasons of improving river water quality and providing native habitat for wildlife the real answer is simple: I'm doing it for my children.

This week is national Take a Child Outside week. Luckily our family doesn't think about taking our kids outside. We just do it. A lot. Our two-year-old and four-year-old girls are outside at least two hours a day if not four or five. It saddens me when I meet kids who've never seen a snake, toad or butterfly in the wild or have never planted a seed or dug up a worm.

Adding over sixty varieties of native plants and shrubs, a vegetable garden and a fairy garden only enriches the time my little girls spend outside. They will grow up seeing beautiful butterflies visit their flowers, learning the species of birds that visit their yard and exploring the river that flows past their little sliver of the world. 

My older child already has a sense of stewardship over our property and gardens. She took this photo (left) of the signs that greet visitors along our front walk proclaiming that we're certified with the National Wildlife Federation as well as with Monarch Watch.  Clearly she's proud of what she's helped me plant all summer. Come and visit and she'll happily show off her fairy garden.

Lizzie releasing one of her raised monarchs

Over in our organic veggie garden my kids have eaten their way through an entire tower of green beans and a bed of carrots.  Barely one bean or carrot has made it into the house, most have been outdoor snacks. They're so used to eating in the garden that in the winter it's hard to get them to eat store-bought veggies.

From the Monarch Waystation we've raised eight caterpillars from eggs all the way to butterflies and let them go.  Now we're having fun sending the milkweed fluff off in the wind laden with swamp milkweed seeds. If there's a profusion of swamp milkweed in the neighborhood everyone will know why. And that would be great. More monarchs!

Our pictorial yard list

Unfortunately, since we've only been here a year, I can't compare our yard birds before and after the relandscaping. But we've seen over sixty species so far including hummingbirds that have been chasing goldfinches off the cardinal flower right in front of my kitchen window. The kids keep a pictorial yard list (left) and we just started one for butterflies so I can learn them too.

Our family is only passing through our one third of an acre along the Ipswich River. In a thousand years I doubt any evidence of us will be left. Yet I'll know that at least while we lived here we did our best to let nature live side by side with us, with only our observations (and occasional toad catching) getting in its way. And I guess, after all that work, that's the point.

the monarch waystation

Monarch on swamp milkweed

I hadn't planned on creating a monarch waystation. Last weekend I rescued a few daylilies from the backyard where our fence was going in and quickly stuck them in a sunny spot near our mailbox, and I hit more plastic. This is an area of the yard that I hadn't planned on landscaping this summer, it's a border of dense beach roses (Rosa rugosa) where the rest of the yard was just bare mulch. At least it had plants, so it could wait. And I assumed since it had plants there wasn't any plastic sheeting, I was wrong.

 Of course I couldn't leave the plastic in and in tearing it out I discovered all the plants in this area, including the four foot high beach roses, were growing on top of the plastic. In getting out the plastic I ended up taking out a lot of the beach roses and suddenly had a nice patch of empty, sunny dirt.

Monarch on butterflyweed

That night I read an article in the summer edition of Country Gardens entitled "Of Milkweeds and Monarchs" (if I could find it online I would include the link) and its message about declining monarchs really struck home. The article sites many facts from monarchwatch.org, and I instantly went online and poured over their website. Simply put, monarch butterflies are in crisis for the following reasons:

• Roundup resistant crops now dominate the midwest, meaning about 100 million acres of corn and beans are now sprayed with the glyphosate, creating milkweed-free fields. Monarchs making their way from the north to overwinter in Mexico now navigate a 1000 mile near-nectarless, flowerless, waterless landscape from Kansas through Oklahoma, Texas and into northern Mexico. 
• Development of subdivisions, shopping centers, etc. now tops 6,000 acres a day. That's 2.2 million acres a year where there was often milkweed and other butterfly supporting plants. 
• Roadside management practices of mowing and herbicides now often creates monocultures of grass, not native wildflowers. 
• Illegal logging in the monarch's wintering forest in Mexico has diminished their former 23 acre habitat to a mere 5. 

Monarch on blazing star (Liatris)

It was clear what I had to do.  That nice, newly-cleared and plastic-free sunny patch was destined to be a monarch waystation (places that provide resources necessary for monarchs to produce successive generations and sustain their migration). In fact, the whole yard could qualify. I already planted nectar plants like blanket flower, sedum, beesbalm, blazing star and black eyed susans. I started a milkweed strain called butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa) from seeds this winter and they're about 4 inches tall now and will be amazing in a few years. I just needed at least one more milkweed species to qualify as a certified "monarch waystation" with monarchwatch.org.

A few days ago I went out and purchased swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and tomorrow a friend with a farm in Rowley is letting me take a few common milkweed plants (A. syriaca) from his unmown fields and then I will have all three species of native milkweed. Where there was once a monoculture of introduced beach rose there will now be milkweed, blanket flower, blazing star, yarrow, echinacea, cardinalflower, and Joe-pye weed. My three-year-old is now eagerly awaiting the appearance of those stunning little yellow and black caterpillars. She's already learned all about monarchs in her preschool and told me one day last fall that she just couldn't eat lunch because she was a monarch and was busy migrating to Mexico. I thought for her sake I would certify our new monarch waystation with monarchwatch and she could proudly display this sign.

As far as I can tell from the International Monarch Waystation Registry our waystation is the first certified in Ipswich, MA. I sure hope it's not the last. Stay tuned for photos of the finished, and flowering, monarch waystation.