My Milkweed Treasure

Featured image: Milkweed Pods

Every fall my mom would go on a boat ride with my dad and I. Sometimes my sister would come along. She didn’t like looking for the dried weeds that my mom was searching for. My mom would spray the weeds with gold paint and make a beautiful fall arrangement for our dinner table. 90% of the time, if they were open when we went, we would end up with milkweed pods.

When we returned to the house, if they hadn’t shed all their feathered parachutes, we would sit outside and clean the shells out to make my mom’s beautiful arrangements. Then, we would spray the pods gold. We always put these arrangements in the silver aluminum pitcher that my grandmother used to have to be displayed as a beautiful arrangement on the table.

We did the same thing with dried hydrangea blossoms in the fall, always using the silver aluminum vase.
I was named after my mom’s mom. And I still have that vase along with the aluminum tray that my grandmother had. Back then, Aluminum was like a poor man's silver and my grandma and mom treasured it as I do today.

The milkweed pods and the hydrangeas are in my gardens. They are treasures for both me and the monarch butterflies. I don’t spray them gold, but still treasure them in their natural states.