Desertbells (*Phacelia campanularia*) and Common Tidy Tips (*Layia platyglossa*) with a western honeybee.

I started this site a few months back, just in time to have to temporarily - and unexpectedly, set it aside for a while. Such is the nature of life with a chronic illness. Sometimes you (I) have to be patient.

However, because I had help from the amazing people at Holistic Gardening Company, the physical part of this project has been quietly progressing. In February, the Holistic Gardening team ripped out the lawn (if you can call a tangle of nut sedge and Bermuda grass a lawn) and replaced it with native seedlings, mulch, and wildflower seeds. After that came quiet care and patience.

The Trojan Monarch native garden has grown while I’ve recovered. As so often in life, most of that growth has happened out of sight. In this case it happened below ground as the seedlings establish the root systems they need to see them through the summer. At the same time, wildflowers emerged, vying with the ever resilient not-lawn I’ve been removing.

Two days ago I walked into my tiny garden to find a carpenter bee hard at work. Yesterday morning it was western honeybees covering the wildflower. By noon the bees had been replaced by butterflies, including a monarch which laid eggs on one of my narrowleaf milkweed plants. It will take more patience until the eggs are ready to hatch, but it seems as auspicious sign as any that it was time to start sharing the Trojan Monarch journey again.

Lifecycles

Where our journey begins