Last summer, my vegetable garden ran away and inspired me to do the same thing.

The garden ran away with weeds, no see ‘ums, and platter-sized squash leaves. In consideration of this and of the previous years’ invasions of cabbage moths, ground hog and poison ivy, I’ve given up. The plot is ready for something new and so am I — an all new plot.

For inspiration, I consulted Thomas Marent’s “Butterfly” and other such books and discovered the milkweed plant. Perhaps I should say re-discovered because I distinctly remember gluing the seeds with their gossamer threads onto blue paper in first grade. The milkweed plant, say the books, attracts and provides habitat for butterflies.

It turns out that milkweed grows thick on the hills of the Trexler Nature Preserve above the Lehigh Valley Zoo. They stand in willowy patches and fields, in amongst the coneflowers and black-eyed susans. I found them, you see, because I’d run away, but only for the day.

On returning, I brought with me all kinds of ideas for how the future could look and so this blog was born.

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