Saturday Photo: Monarchs...

If you look closely, the purple cone flower to the left is the launching pad for a Monarch butterfly.  I think it must have been freshly hatched, as it slowly flapped its wings in the morning sun, and made no move to fly.

This comes as the Monarch is being declared an endangered species, in large part because of wholesale destruction of its breeding fields in North America.    Glad to see that some people are still planting those species that Monarchs like. Very unhappy to see that sometimes the fields of milk weed and cone flowers get mowed by public agencies who don't seem to know what they'e doing.