The past year was full of ups and downs at Butterfly Ridge.

Among the ups was our attendance and revenue, each increasing by about five percent over 2021. And while these trends are a good thing, the increases were not strong enough to help us achieve financial independence. More on plans as to how we hope to achieve this indepedence in my 2023 Preview episode in a week or so.

Another up was the number of interns we worked with this year. We hired an extra intern early in the season to help pick up the slack for our Director (your’s truly) who had knee replacement surgery at the beginning of the season. Madison, Kyle, Elm, and Cayla all did a wonderful job for us, each bringing a unique set of skills, experiences, and connections that benefitted Butterfly Ridge. Midway through the season we hired Ilya who helped specifically with the Mothing Zone. She picked up the set up and tear down routines quickly and was a great benefit.

The up that our visitors noticed the most was the opening of our Secret Garden, a project we had been working on since 2020.

The secret garden, while it may be organized into beds, is still intended as a habitat creation project. For that reason, you will find ‘weeds’ and a generally unkept look to the beds, because that is how nature works. Our two thistle beds this year were spectacular, with the plants reaching eight feet in height.

The final up I would like to mention was attendance at our Mothing Zone events. The Mothing Zone average twenty visitors each week which we were very pleased about. Most of these attendees had never been mothing and a majority seemed to genuinely enjoy the experience.

Among the downs was our butterfly population. Our monthly transect walks yielded about fifteen percent fewer butterflies than in 2020 and 2021. We believe our especially wet April and May was partly responsible for this. Our April/May transect numbers were off by seventy-five percent.

Another down was our bergamot population. In a normal July, our prairie is a sea of pale purple. That was not the case in 2022, and unfortunately we do not have a good understanding as to why. We are hopeful that our bergamot will rebound in 2023. Our cup plant population in 2022 also took a considerable hit. In this case we do know the cause; the countless Bambi’s that call Butterfly Ridge home. We are hopeful that some companion planting of distasteful things near the cup plant will reverse this trend in the coming year.

The final down I will mention was our moth population. While we still had a nice diversity of moths each night of the Mothing Zone, the sheets totally covered with moths did not materialize like it had in the past. I would imagine this drop was weather related in large part, as there had not been any large habitat disturbances of the Butterfly Ridge property or adjacent properties during the year. Weather plays a very large role in butterfly and moth numbers we have learned over the years.

Stay tuned for my next post in about a week which will be a preview of the year to come and some of our hopes and dreams for 2023.