It was a great day at the Garden Club of Norfolk table at Stony Brook Fall Fair, with lots of excitement and fun! Jessica Watson loaned us her Monarch chrysalis, which proceeded to emerge and expand while we watched over the course of a couple of hours, causing excited oohs and aaahs from the kids and parents gathered around to watch! Madeline Champagne answered innumerable butterfly questions for visitors, including explaining the whole process as the newly emerged Monarch unfurled, pumped up her wings and got ready to take off. After a couple of hours of drying off and getting ready, our little Monarch was released into the butterfly garden and floated away, hopefully well away on her trip to Mexico!  

Michelle Noonan’s Black Swallowtail caterpillars were a big hit too, especially when one of them made a chrysalis right in front of our eyes over the course of about a minute!

My friend Lucy, visiting from New Jersey, wore Madeline’s infamous butterfly wings to promote our table. She also helped the kids out making butterfly masks, wands and caterpillars.

Even though there wasn’t much blooming in the butterfly garden this late, plenty of people went in to explore, and we gave away almost all of the hundreds of seed packets Emily Nicodemus made up – lots of people will be growing milkweeds, anise hyssop, boneset, cosmos, columbine, and hollyhocks in their gardens. Liz Davey and I handed out a good number of GCN bookmarks and flyers about the November fundraiser; hopefully we’ll see some new folks coming to future meetings. 

Thanks, everyone, for making it such a fun occasion! We were pretty tired at the end of the day, but I think a good time was had by all! Submitted by Stephanie Markham