When monarch butterflies journey 3,000 miles to Mexico this fall, some of them will start their trip right here at Christ the King. They’ll develop from eggs laid in the “Wings of Heaven” butterfly garden installed near the south wall of the church. In 2008, parishioners Leta and Vito Boraggina, alongwith daughters Olivia and Hannah Withrow, planted the garden to help the migratory insects on their way. Since then, many generations of the familiar orange-and-black butterflies have dined and reproduced there.

The garden contains two kinds of milkweed, plus other flowering plants that attract butterflies. “It’s more of a naturalistic garden,” explains Leta. “The monarchs only lay eggs on the milkweed, and they fuel up on the nectar plants.” Birds like the flowers that have gone to seed. Leta and Vito weed the butterfly garden every week or two during the summer. This summer, they observed that a number of monarch eggs developed into caterpillars and chrysalises. They also found black swallowtail caterpillars munching on the parsley.

Christ the King students study the butterflies’ life cycle and observe their metamorphosis from egg to adult. As Leta points out, this “raises awareness of conservation for monarchs and other butterflies, bees, and pollinators.” The butterflies that will “Fly Southwest” this fall won’t be the ones who arrived here in spring. In fact, these long-distance travelers will be the fourth generation, which hatch in late summer or fall. They live much longer than their predecessors, but their powdery wings have to take them across the continent.

Stop by the “Wings of Heaven” garden sometime soon. The birds, butterflies, bees, and flowers proclaim the glory of God’s creation. For more information on monarchs and butterfly gardens, check out these links: