If you have followed me on Instagram, you know the love affair that I have had with the monarch

butterfly over the last couple of years. I was literally a monarch butterfly for Halloween this year.

That's how much I love them. Since I moved to Florida, I got really into planting milkweed and

watching them hatch and just seeing this incredible life cycle up close.

And it was so interesting because monarchs are something that we learn about early in school.

But as an adult, as a, you know, 35 or 36 year old when I was watching this life cycle happen up in front of my eyes, I found myself really needing to refresh on the miraculous thing that the monarch life cycle is.

And how important our role as gardeners is for supporting the monarch population as it is slowly on the

decline. So I welcome back naturalist David Mizajuski today, who is a fellow monarch nerd.

And we talk about why the butterflies are disappearing, but more importantly, how we can help

restore their habitat and also just like how magical monarchs are.

Like this episode is just so fun.

I highly recommend growing milkweed in your garden this year just to be blown away

the way I was. If you have kids in your life, it's great, but I don't have kids plant friends.

I was just loving, watching these monarchs grow and watching the chrysalis and watching the

transformation. It was so joyful and awe filled. And as we

try and explore awe and ease and whimsy in our gardens this year, monarchs are a great way to do so.

So I am so excited to bring this conversation to you today. Let's dive in.

Welcome to the Growing Joy with Plants podcast, where we not only learn how to care for

plants successfully, but how to simply and affordably use our plant babies to cultivate

more joy in our lives by doing so.

I'm Maria, former plant killer turned happy plant lady, author of

Growing Joy, The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness, speaker, podcaster, and most importantly,

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