"Yesterday," Tony begins, " I saw the biggest yellow butterfly on your milkweed." He holds both hands together, to show how enormous it was. He laments not having his phone to take a photo.
I had to fight for that milkweed plant to stay in the front yard landscaping. It was big and bulky and resembled an unwanted weed. I knew how important a milkweed plant is to butterflies. It is the only plant on which butterfly eggs are laid and which the larva eats.
Butterflies and other pollinators are critical to the environment.
Last September, a neighbor who had a volunteer-milkweed growing in his yard, harvested seeds. He gave me a bag which I planted on the hillside. Years before, after reading Jaroldeen Edwards short experience of her daughter taking her to a mountain filled daffodil range, I'd planted daffodils on my hillside. For twenty-five springs, the hillside has become a beautiful carpet of yellow. Daffodil bouquets beautify the kitchen counter, the desk whereI write. I now imagine the other hillside filled with milkweed plants, flowers, and the added bonus of hundreds of butterflies feasting and laying eggs.
There is another yellow flower I have to fight for: the lowly dandelion. Each spring, I feel my neighbor's wrath. They never say anything, but the GREEN LAWN commercial sprayers arrive on schedule with that big drum of herbicide on the back of a truck. "Keeping your lawn green," the commercial reads on the side, and we're persuaded to believe that a green lawn is the answer to all beauty, in the same way, the perfectly sculpted human body is commercialized to bring the ultimate happiness.
It's a false narrative we need to rethink.
Feeling guilty if I see a dandelion sprout on a neighbor's yard, I'm careful to go out and pick every stem that transitions from delicate flower to an orb of wind or child-blowing, seed spreader. The dandelions change so rapidly, I have to go out at least three times a day. And sometimes I feel very foolish, sitting among my dandelions. A neighbors, hollers, "You'll never get them all," or "Aren't you presistent."
Indeed I am. And this past spring, I fully understood why. One afternoon, walking out to get the mail, there were dozens of butterflies drinking dandelion nectar from my pure un-poisoned dandelion weeds.
The fight, the neighborhood disdain, the embarrassment at my weed filled lawn was worth it. I had a higher purpose than neighborhood conformity. I was standing up and fighting for mother earth on my own little patch. It is the only place where we will have such an impact.
My experience as a beekeeper reinforces my defense of the milkweed and dandelions. After a noble attempt of many years, and many lost hives, I stopped keeping bees. "Pesticide kill," the bee inspector reported after examining my hives. Ten thousand bees with a proboscis hanging from their tiny bodies--the sign for pesticide poisoning. Possibly from a neighbor defending their turf.
In the Bernese Oberland, one of the most beautiful places on earth, the fields, next to and in front of homes are filled with grasses, wildflowers, and dandelions. They are unmowed, un-poisoned. They are beautiful.
Switzerland has some of the earth's purest water and cleanest air. They have a clear understanding of what's at stake.
When Tony tells me about the giant butterfly on the milkweed, I understand too, what is at stake.
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