About Me

(Update 2022)

I would like to thank you for visiting and tell you a little bit about myself.

Photo: Ilja Masik

I'm and a few years back I became the beginner gardener.

Of all the kids, I was the only one in a position to move back home to help my aging parents. Becoming vulnerable, they had that one incident where my sister called me stating "we got to get you home.. fast".

Living out of state, it took working hard but I got back home within two months. My feelings were very mixed. Overall it was a huge pill to swallow to move back home but I am grateful that I did.

Like so many of us who shift our lives and become caregivers, we learn there are a lot of other duties that must be tended to. One of those other duties for me was to fix up an old house that needed attention, both on the inside and out. Outside the deer killed most of the shrubbery over the years leaving a drab house with no curb appeal.

I knew nothing about gardening. What I did know is that I like rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. I mean, how hard could it be? Stick a few plants and trees in the ground and I was done! Well, so I thought.

Throughout I have maintained working part-time outside of my care giving duties, but knew it important to do more. I would be out of the work force and needed to keep a competitive edge once I returned back in. I felt it key to maintain and grow my knowledge of computers. Many employers are starting telecommuting programs for employees while many individuals work remotely for themselves. Knowing I needed to be home, I felt this was a good time to learn more about computers - but what was I going to do?

In the mean time one of the plants a neighbor gave me for my new garden became invasive - Purple Loosestrife. It took over, crowding out and killing a lot of flowers I'd already planted. Unaware purple loosestrife was an exotic, I learned quickly what these can do to native vegetation. I became so desperate I poured boiling water on just about everything. It worked!

Now I could only think about all my energy and money down the drain. I questioned also why was this invasive weed taking over my garden and not my neighbors? My arrogance turned to fascination and determination to learn more.

Attempting to use native resources along with store bought plants now my garden, weed garden and lawn were beginning to take shape. I had so many butterflies coming around and even more surprising - hummingbirds. I had never seen this before. Not even as a kid growing up.

My paths began to merge. I had an insatiable appetite to learn both butterfly gardening and computers. What better way to learn both than to build an easy reference site? So Easy-Butterfly-Garden.com came to be.

Photo: Tanewpix

I write each page for you and me.

Although gardening for butterflies requires an understanding of plant types that appeal to them, without the proper understanding of other elements in gardening, there could be other problems that arise, as I personally learned.

I feel if I don't know it, I'm sure many others don't know about given subjects with gardening either.

I also believe those more familiar with gardening could learn from my site as well. For example, you may ask why so much about weeds?

A lot of weeds really have quite a visual value to us.
Butterflies know their value as host plants and food.
The key is control.

What's interesting, it's dumb-founding to learn the
gray area with flowering plants being sold. I was in
a store one day and saw the same native weed for
sale that I killed the day before!

Yup, when I started to notice this it came as a big surprise to me. As the world becomes smaller, creating an understanding the consequences of 'exotic' vs. native arms you with the knowledge of how to grow your perfect butterfly garden.

I've also learned with weeds - it seems easier to live more harmoniously with them rather than to fight them all of the time.

Again, thank You for visiting!

P.S.

I still have purple loosestrife popping up. Fortunately I know how to contain and eradicate it. I'd recommend any gardener who has this weed in their garden do the same.