Nature

About five years ago, I would see Sulphur butterflies randomly in my garden, but not very often. A friend of mine also has a butterfly garden, and she started posting pictures of Sulfurs visiting hers. She had different plants than I did, which made me curious about what was attracting them to her garden but not mine. That curiosity is a big part of how my butterfly garden has grown over the years. I have learned that if you want to attract a certain butterfly, you have to un

There is a difference between planting a garden because you want something beautiful to look at and planting one because you want something to live in. It took me a while to understand that. When I first became interested in butterfly gardening, I was naturally drawn to the butterflies themselves. But the more I learned, the more I realized that attracting them was only part of the equation. If I wanted them to stay, lay eggs, reproduce, and return, I needed to think about wh

Certain moments in nature make you stop whatever you're doing. For me, it's watching a Monarch butterfly drift across the yard. They never seem to be in a hurry. They move differently than everything else around them, floating from flower to flower as if they already know exactly where they're going. Every time I see one, I stop for a minute just to watch. I've always loved butterflies, but about ten years ago, they started to mean something different. When we moved into our

Discovering the Beauty of Nature For most of my life, I appreciated nature without thinking much about how it all worked. Growing up along the New River in Fort Lauderdale, I was surrounded by it. Our yard was filled with tropical plants, fruit trees, and wildlife. We had avocados, grapefruit, lemons, limes, mangos, coconuts, tomatoes, and countless other plants growing around us. It was simply part of everyday life. At the time, I didn't realize how lucky I was. The Gardenin