Reid Lewis, horticulturist with Temple College, watches Wednesday as monarch and queen butterflies feed on Gregg’s mist flower. Monarch butterflies fly as far as 3,000 miles on a journey that can take them from as far north as Canada to Central Mexico for the winter. Lewis has applied to the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project to include Temple College as a monarch way station where students will assist in counting eggs during the spring and tagging butterflies in the fall during their southern migration. “I’m just fascinated by the way they can return to the same spot each year,” Lewis said. “Each butterfly only makes the trip once in their life so they are going off on directions they inherit from their parents - and I mean the same exact branch on the same tree as their parents. All this with a brain the size of a pin. It’s just amazing.” If you want to attract butterflies to your garden, Lewis recommends planting Gregg’s mist flower for adults and Mexican milkweed for larva. “It’s the milkweed that makes monarchs toxic to their predators. The butterflies always look for both, so they have a place to lay eggs.”