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Our chapter celebrated its first birthday with milkweed and butterfly cookies. President Pat Thomas circulated an article on the endangered Miami Blue butterfly and another that addressed a low count of California monarchs. Vice-president Jim Larson posted news on the Miami Blues on our chapter's forum. VP Jim Larson spoke of the monarch larval monitoring project and passed a sign up sheet for people interested in participating this summer. Jim and Alice will attend a training session in Wisconsin in June. Anyone interested in helping, please contact Jim. Pat announced that we will do a butterfly garden planning session-the goal is to generate a plant list for each yard project and later get help in designing the gardens. The first meeting will be inJjanuary and a sign up sheet was passed around. Members are asked to check the web site for details. Our speaker Cathy Leece followed with a wonderful, informative talk on native milkweeds. She spoke of those she has grown in her garden in Eveleth and others that we could try in our gardens. These native plants are not only food sources for monarch caterpillars, but are very beautiful as garden plantings. Many of us left the meeting very excited about incorporating them into our flower beds. Although one must remember that common milkweed likes to take over a site so it should be planted in an area where it will have room to stretch and grow. Also, we will have common milkweed plants available through a local native nursery this spring. Meeting ended with butterfly cookies and coffee. Submitted by Pat Thomas
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