Over the Garden Fence

Blue has been my favorite color since first grade. That is when, as we started school, all the girls would choose a crayon during art time, and whisper “red is my favorite color,” or “yellow is my favorite color,” behind Mrs. Francis’ back. In those days you could get into trouble for talking or whispering.

Reaching into my Crayolas, I simply held out a blue crayon, to answer back.

Through the years, the fixation for blue has led to interesting experiences.

In nature, and especially with gardening, I seek flowering plants that sport blue, true blue, not violet-blue. This year at the county fair, the junior gardeners were to make a mostly blue floral design. Hunting through the yard and flower beds brought gentian, delphinium “Summer Skies” and “Butterfly,” a pale blue flax, anchusa — a wee vibrant version of forget-me-not, globe thistle known as echinops, perennial bachelor’s button, and annual salvia and lobelia. Plumbago, a blue ground cover began to bloom as the fair ended.

Anyway, as wildlife goes, the eastern bluebird has brought much joy as our family moved around Ohio, watching for opportunities to “bring back the bluebirds.”

Then, I discovered that a butterfly, no larger than a quarter, an Ohio native, had been extirpated. That just means that something we once had was now gone.

Karner blue butterflies had lived in the oak openings in sandy dune areas of northern Ohio, where native lupine plants grew. The work at Kitty Todd preserve unfolded.

Ohioans like Candee Ellsworth, have spent years leaving the state, mainly to Michigan, in an effort to capture these butterflies. Candee served then as the conservation coordinator in the Department of Research at the Toledo Zoological Gardens.

For several years the zoo-sponsored effort to raise Karners meant that host plants first had to be grown; this had to happen to feed the larval stage. The wild, or native lupines growing in pots were offered to butterflies which had been rounded up. The zoo's horticulture department became involved. Candee documented several years of control work in researching, managing, and evaluating before finally reintroducing adult Karners to the Kitty Todd Preserve location. Kitty Todd was sowing lupine seed ambitiously. The disappearance of these plants, so necessary for the caterpillar stage, brought its demise. The Karners are back now.

You would not believe the stretches of lupines which embellish the location, sustaining Karner blue populations. Volunteers helped in the beginning and continue the work. When Cheryl Corney and I attended Kitty Todd’s Blue Weekend a few years ago, we hiked on a hot June day, took pictures, had a picnic lunch, bought native plants but never saw a Karner.

Smile today as butterflies sachet through your life, reminding you of the delicacy and beauty of natives and all living things.

The delicate ecosystems that support our natives are upset when we humans insist on “cleaning up” and “moving in.”

Mary Lee Minor is a member of the Earth, Wind and Flowers Garden Club, an accredited flower show judge for the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs and a former sixth-grade teacher.