Garden Club: Monarchs

Boo-Hoo. As you know, for safety reasons your officers decided to cancel our January meeting where we hoped to discuss our proposed Garden Club activity, the Monarch Butterfly Project. Do not despair. We have shifted that presentation to our February 15 club meeting.
Just before I was preparing to write this article, I was checking my emails and saw this headline from my Science magazine: Are Monarchs endangered? Scientists debate as U.S mulls protection.
The article went on to state,” They face threats including habitat loss and pesticides, and there is broad consensus that the western population has suffered deep declines.”
So it appears that our club’s Monarch Butterfly Project can do its small part helping to preserve these beautiful garden visitors. I hope you all come to the February meeting to hear Tom O’Keefe’s talk.
I saved an important story to write about for last. As you know your club participates along with the California Garden Club in Penny Pines, a project administered by the U.S. Forest Service. At each of our meetings we encourage your donations to this program, sometimes with a raffle, and this enables your club to donate $68 for a tree seedling in memory of one of our deceased members.
I read that over the years more then one million dollars have been donated by many California organizations. You may have wondered if and where these trees have been planted. Well, here are photos taken by member Ann Strauss on a trip to Mt. Palomar with her husband Paul, where she saw those Penny
Pines planted trees. Thank you, Ann, for these photos.
—Karl Kuhn