November is a weird time to be thinking about pollinators, but the subject fell in my lap today at lunch, and it was the best part of a bad day. It's more fun to write about butterflies than pain and fatigue, and so that's where I'm turning.
I've known about the existence of the Butterfly Pavilion down off the highway between Boulder and Denver for many years. I've never gone to it. I only started thinking it would be cool to visit since we moved back in 2015. A few months ago, I saw something online that said admission could be free with a library card through my local library. Again, I failed to follow up on that. Then today, the CEO of the Butterfly Pavilion came to talk to our Rotary group, and now I know I must go. I think I was one of only half a dozen people at lunch today who hadn't visited it before.
It will be moving next year to a space twice as large, but I want to see it now, and then again when the new facility opens. I feel like that will help me appreciate the expansion more. The hook that really pulled me in was learning that it's not just going to a new bigger building. It's going in the middle of a purpose-built community that includes a dedication to preserving and promoting pollinators. This development, called Baseline, will have habitats for birds and bees and butterflies, and use them to pollinate food crops that will be used in local farm-to-table restaurants. It's a high concept community, emphasizing biking and pedestrian traffic, mixed use zoning, and a STEM school that will partner with the Butterfly Pavilion and give students a chance to learn directly with research scientists, and have hands-on science opportunities.
Our Rotarians asked a lot of questions today about monarch butterfly preservation efforts, and we learned that I-76 is becoming a "pollinator highway." One of our members said she was on a bike rally in Iowa or Nebraska (I forget which), where they gave the cyclists packets of milkweed seeds to broadcast as they rode, to encourage monarchs to feed and reproduce as they migrate north. The speaker suggested that would be a good idea to add to their plans for I-76 as well. And finally one of our group asked about the huge swarms of butterflies we had last year. Alas, they were not monarchs, but painted ladies, but that was pretty cool too. The conditions were just right, with temperature and precipitation timed perfectly according to when the painted ladies' favorite plants bloomed. Now if I can just dig through hundreds of photos to figure out when they were thick on the ground, to illustrate for tonight.
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