Laureate Phi met in home of Virginia Starks for a regular business meeting and program. Minutes were read and approved. city Council minute highlights were reported with Preferential Tea at Eastern heights church on Nov. 7th. at 6:30 pm, attending members to bring potluck dishes. A speaker will be talking about “Supported Communities Lifestyles in Ponca City.”

Service committee reported items taken to Veterans Landing and Among Other Things as well as pop top lids to be donated to McDonald House.

Laureate Phi decided to move business meetings each month to Tuesday night as this works better for the members.

Traveling Basket was passed from Terri Buesing to Virginia Starks.

Donna Rubio - Ponca City’s Monarch Butterly Nurturer presented the program on Monarch Butterflies and Butterfly Gardens. donna has a large garden where she raised many monarchs to maturity. If you have seen monarchs lately there is a high chance they were flying to Central America from her garden. Donna said that the butterflies who hatched in our area are the super generation as they will fly up to 2500 miles to their winter home in Central America. She explained that it takes four generations of monarchs to fly from the north to winter home.

Donna realized as she was cleaning her garden of zinnias this fall that there were chrysalis attached to some of the leaves which she very carefully removed and placed on other leaves that she had not pulled up and stopped pulling her zinnias for a bit to allow these to hatch. She had many pictures from her garden that she shared so we could see the chrysalis in different stages of development. One wishes to have a monarch butterfly garden the first thing to do is to plant the milkweed seeds which is the plant monarchs love and have some zinnias also.

Donna also said that only 10% of the monarchs will make it to maturity due to pesticides. Donna does not use pesticides in her garden. Ponca City is one of the few places this far west that one sees the monarchs as west of here you will not see any of them. They fly down the I-35 corridor. donnna says she has seeds of milkweed plant (called asclepias) for all to plant in spring.

Meeting closed with Donna serving cupcakes to celebrate Carolyn Chanslor’s birthday this month and singing Happy Birthday. next meeting will be a luncheon the fourth week of October and place TBA.