🦋 Planting With a Purpose

Our guest speaker, Margaret Ferguson, took us beyond the beauty of the Monarch butterfly and showed us just how important these remarkable creatures are to our environment.

Monarchs are unique among butterflies, traveling thousands of miles during their migration across North America. Their journey brings many of them right through Texas along the I-35 “Monarch Highway.”

Margaret explained that Monarchs depend on milkweed to survive. Adult Monarchs may feed on many flowers, but they lay their eggs only on milkweed, and their caterpillars rely on it as their food source.

She also reminded us that butterflies, bees, and other pollinators play an important role in producing many of the fruits, vegetables, nuts, and crops we enjoy every day.

Through Rotary’s Operation Pollination, Margaret is working with Rotary clubs, schools, communities, and the Chickasaw Nation to establish pollinator gardens and restore Monarch habitat.

Her challenge to us was wonderfully simple:

“Let’s plant for the bees. Let’s plant for the Monarch. Let’s plant for us.”

Sometimes creating lasting impact can begin with something as small as planting a seed.