It’s monarch butterfly season, and things are really fluttering around Morning Pointe of Hixson.
The assisted living and memory care community has taken on a special project – raising monarch butterflies and offering a safe way station for the insects on their migration.
Community relations director Samantha Parker inspired and oversees the project at the center, which has grown from a fun pastime for residents and associates to being listed on the National Monarch Registry as a Monarch Waystation.
“The residents have really taken this on,” Parker says. “It’s been a very successful season for us.”
Parker and her family took up raising and sheltering monarch butterflies while living in Coconut Creek, Florida – the butterfly capital of the world. When she started working at Morning Pointe of Hixson, she saw how one of the courtyards was sheltered from wind and predators and offered water and room for butterfly-friendly plants, making it a perfect environment for monarchs.
“I brought some of my butterflies in one time and the residents went crazy,” Parker says.
The team at the community planted milkweed, the monarch’s only food. Parker works with the University of Kansas’ Monarch Watch to ship eggs to the Hixson community and has set up stations where the eggs can hatch, the caterpillars can grow and the chrysalises can prepare for hatching.
There’s always a lot of excitement throughout the community whenever butterflies emerge, Parker shares. Then they’re released into the courtyard.
“It’s amazing to watch them develop from a tiny egg to a caterpillar and then see them transform into a chrysalis before hanging for two weeks and emerging as a beautiful butterfly,” says resident Dot Hilliard. “It’s truly a miracle.”
So far, Morning Pointe of Hixson has raised and released more than 50 caterpillars from Monarch Watch. The community has also rescued more than 90 caterpillars found in the garden.
Several residents have embraced the monarch project in other ways. Eileen Beattie created butterfly artwork the community is using, for example, and Virginia Lee crocheted more than 65 monarchs to give away as gifts.
Source: Morning Pointe