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Common Milkweed Growing in Happy Tonics Gardens
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Monarch Butterfly on Echinacea Flower in our Gardens
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Happy Tonics, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) environmental education and conservation organization and public charity. All eBay sales support the Monarch Butterfly Habitat in Shell Lake, Wisconsin, USA, and the Morph Your Mind Environmental Education Program. As an herbalist, master gardener, and food safety educator, I am concerned about monoculture and genetic engineering in the food supply and the impact upon the environment, health, and other species such as the pollinating monarch butterfly and food safety issues.
The Monarch Butterfly may be in trouble. The butterfly larva is totally dependent upon milkweed leaves because the insect doesn't eat anything else until it is fully grown and develops into an adult. The adult monarch butterfly nectars on the aromatic flowers also. Herbicides and pesticides, logging, global warming, drought, genetic engineering of crops, loss of agricultural land and urban development, roadside cutting, and eradication of milkweed from the home garden and landscape are some of the risks the butterfly faces.
Our organization is dedicated to providing Sanctuary for the Monarch. More can be learned about the risk factors to the butterfly on our environmental and educational Web site at www.happytonics.org
Read a newspaper article about Happy Tonics from The Chronotype, of Rice Lake, Wisconsin at http://www.happytonics.org/newsletter/04-29-09.pdf
Thank you for helping the monarch butterflies, Mary Ellen Ryall, Executive Director
Happy Tonics was created to promote organic gardening, and we raise herbs without pesticides and herbicides. Our gardens invite good insects, such as the butterflies, to come and nectar in our butterfly sanctuary. And visitors come to the Monarch Butterfly Habitat to learn about traditional gardening and restored tallgrass remnant prairies.
Happy Tonics lectures on the plight of the monarch butterfly, food safety issues, organic gardening, the importance of open pollinated seed, seed saving, and biodiversity.
As an herbalist, I dry all my own herbs for personal use during the winter and make my own herbal teas and tinctures. I gather wild edibles such as hazelnuts and dandelion greens and wild craft herbs such as rose hips and hawthorn berries. As a photographer, I enjoy photographing butterflies and plants in the garden and in the wild. And as a published author, I write about plants and the plight of the monarch butterfly.
I hope you will enjoy visiting Happy Tonics and in turn will plant a garden to bring health and the butterflies home to you.
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