 Hi everyone, my name is Makayla Rogers. I am an environmental scientist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. And for this Wildflower Week, I'm gonna be talking about some wildflower pollinator plantings that we've been able to put in through our Kentucky Wild Program. So first I wanna start off by talking about what Kentucky Wild is. And this is a program hosted by Kentucky Fish and Wildlife where anyone can become a Kentucky Wild member if there's someone who's interested in contributing directly to non-game wildlife conservation projects that are currently being implemented by the department. And so through this program, we're able to keep members up to date with current conservation projects. And we also offer the chance to sign up for things like experiences such as this monarch tagging experience here where we have members come out, we tag migrating monarchs in the fall and also sample them for a protozoan parasite called OE. But what I really want to talk about is how extremely valuable this program has been for monarch and pollinator conservation really since its inception because the program allows us to gain assistance through these membership dollars and sponsorships with partners to create on-the-ground habitat improvement. And because of much of this improvement includes wildflower plantings, I felt that it would be a good topic to touch on for this Wildflower Week. So our purpose here is of course to create pollinator habitat, but within this to make sure that these are creating monarch waystations or areas of milkweed and nectar producing plants that provide all the resources that monarch butterflies need throughout their life cycle. So monarch caterpillars of course need milkweed leaves to eat and grow. And then monarch adults need nectar resources in the form of wildflowers. And so to learn more about the Monarch Waystation program, you can go to monarchwatch.org. So getting into one of our pollinator sites, this was a planting provided through a sponsorship with Columbia Gas. This is the pollinator planting in its first year of blooming. This is actually at our headquarters in Frankfurt. You can see choreopsis and black-eyed seasons popping up throughout the site. This site was over seven acres of planting and we were also able to plant common butterfly and world milkweed throughout. And so these will also provide wildflowers for pollinators. And of course the milkweed leaves for caterpillars. Some other examples of wildflowers in the site are the lance-leaved choreopsis visited by the bumblebee in this photo, as well as wild bergamot visited by the pipeline swallowtail and then the snowberry clearwing moth here. These are all plants that were planted in this field. We can also see lemon balm here that hopefully will start popping up sometime next month. And then again, the black-eyed seasons with flea bane in the background there. And so another one of our Kentucky Wild Partner Sites was on an East Kentucky Power Cooperative right-of-way that runs across one of our wildlife management areas, Grayson Lake. And so this is eventually gonna be 20 acres of powerline right-of-way. So pollinator habitat throughout this 20 acres, this is a really visible site on public land. It's right near a parking area. And it doesn't look like much in this photograph. There have been some flowers starting to come across throughout the site. We planted a couple different things here. Some examples of the wildflowers that will be coming up are spike-blazing star, mountain mint, purple coneflower, gray-headed coneflower, rattlesnake master plant. So we planted quite a variety of plants in here. I don't have good pictures of it yet, but it should start really flowering, especially this year and into fall. And this is a monarch tagging workshop that we were able to host at this pollinator planting site. And so this is a workshop day here where members came to Country Boy in Georgetown and helped us. They helped us host a monarch waystation planting day. And I specifically wanted to bring up this planting because one of the shrubs planted is called Virginia sweet spire. It's a spring blooming shrub that is a host of spring adherable butterflies. And just kind of thinking about, you know, it's spring, so people are wanting to start getting into putting pollinator plants into their own backyard. So a couple of examples here of some of these earlier blooming flowers that you can plant are pale purple coneflower, smooth beard tongue in the middle, and then wild columbine. All of these will kind of attract different pollinators and will be great resources in your garden if you have availability to plant those. And also for spring, you know, there's not as many wildflowers that you might be able to get a hold of in garden centers. So you can also consider planting something like a shrub, like a viburnum and white pictured here or woody species like the Eastern red buds that you can see blooming all over the state right now. I also wanted to mention that the Salado Wildlife Education Center has a great demonstration monarch way station and they also have pollinator habitat around the center. So if you are ever able to take the time to get over there and check it out, it's a great place to visit. The staff and volunteers have done a really great job taking care of the pollinator plantings and wildflowers that have been planted there. And with that, feel free to follow Kentucky Monarchs on Facebook. I've also listed the website for Kentucky Wild and Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. So you can check all of those out. I tried to post on our Kentucky Monarch page different things that are going on related to monarchs in the state. Thank you for tuning in today and I hope you are enjoying your Wildflower Week.