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FOBVP work, summer fall 2023

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In September 2023 FOBVP planted about a dozen replacement plants in the perennial garden. Among the newbies were four milkweed plants intended as sustenance for the two monarch butterflies that live in the park.  One positive development came almost immediately. The milkweeds attracted thousands of aphids. Why is this a good thing? Because aphids lure beneficial insects to the site (to feed on the aphids). I took this photo on November 3rd 2023. Thus we now have at least one happy ladybird beetle. One plant that has survived from the 2021 plantings was this sage. Butterflies love it as you can see.  Our monarchs disappeared the last week in October when the flowers on our butterfly bushes faded. I trust that the monarchs will return next spring. Or maybe, if we are lucky, they will come back and plant their eggs on the milkweeds.  One of the things that FOBVP has been doing is nuturing this lemon tree (a remnant from the original Keller, Mitchell design. It looks like we will have doze
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Fall 2023

I was unable to add this post to my previous blog (www.bellavistapark.blogspot.com) so this will be my attempt to add more information about the park. I hope to do a scientific survey like the one I did twelve years ago to update the condition of the park. My involvement with the park has waxed and waned over the years. I made sporadic attempts to control weeds in the park from about 2012 to 2020 but never with any consistency. In 2020 I retired from teaching, which coincided with the COVID epidemic. Since the park was not being used very much, and I had ample time, I began working in earnest to repair some of the damage that time had done to the (mostly neglected by the city) park. Most of the people who had formed the Friends of Bella Vista Park had moved away from the neighborhood. I had (and still have) the original landscape plans from Keller, Mitchell, the landscape architects who designed the park (with help from our committee). I knew that FOBVP had a written 'memorandum o
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