One advantage of volunteering in the Roston Native Butterfly House is the opportunity to see caterpillars as various stages of development. Recently I was lucky that one of them was eating while there weren’t visitors in the house….so I was able to capture a short video. It was a medium sized cecropia moth caterpillar, and it appeared to only want to take little bites of the wild cherry leaf going in one direction!
As I thought about and then accepted the president’s role in my Missouri Master Naturalist chapter, I thought about the leadership styles I’ve learned over the years…and the ones I am applying in my post-career endeavors.
Probably the first, and most natural for me, is lead-by-example. It is the style I am least conscious about….and that I only notice when someone obviously emulates what I am doing…or volunteers to collaborate or help.
Organizational judo is a style I heard about in my career and realized that I could apply without being in ‘management’ and in situations where the structure of the organization was working against a project’s success. This type of leadership involves influencing actions of others not in the regular ‘chain of command’ either through timely prompts or providing key information that will encourage their action to achieve a desirable shared outcome. I have always been very organized and am very aware of what is critical for success both near and long term….and have found that my insights are often important in helping others take the actions required. Most people want their organization to be successful but are not always aware of what it will require of them – and sometimes the organization is not as overt of explaining either.
Servant leadership is easy for me to – it is the type of leadership that focuses on getting what the organization needs for everyone to contribute what is needed….realizing that long term success of an organization is built on the individuals in that organization being successful.
Coaching leadership is the type of leadership I often utilize when there is a problem. It is an overt type of ‘lead-by-example’ – pinpointing an issue and structuring conversation to help an individual or small group get through a difficult situation.
I often apply Situational leadership with students or people I don’t know well – assessing what they need from me to be successful in what we are doing. Sometimes they already know what is needed but sometimes I must provide a lot more information before they can proceed.
Transactional leadership is the type of leadership that is highly directive (i.e. I don’t like telling people exactly how to do things!) and I don’t follow it very often with experienced people…I generally want people to bring their experience to bear on whatever we are doing so we need wiggle room for that to happen.
All of these are styles I have used for years and I find myself slipping into different ones depending on what I think will be most effective in the organizations where I volunteer.
I was at the Master Naturalist table at the Insect-o-rama last Friday. It is an annual event held at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center, but this was my first year to volunteer there! It was an evening event on a heat advisory day, so I was very happy to be inside the air-conditioned building!
Our table had vases of trees with caterpillars. There was a sign for the Io moth caterpillars on sassafras leaves because they can sting.
There were several instars of cecropia moth caterpillars on black cherry and a goatweed leafwing caterpillar on goatweed (too large to role a leaf around itself).
My favorites of the evening were some young oakworm caterpillars (on oak leaves) that got agitated…and danced! They calmed down (or got tired) and were relatively still for the rest of the evening, so I showed visitors the short video I was lucky enough to capture.
There were several tables of insect collections. I remembered the one I made when I was in high school….and that the teacher asked to keep it! I didn’t think to take pictures of it at the time....over 55 years ago.
The families that attended were interested in everything and many went home with luna month caterpillars to raise (they eat sweet gum leaves). The event was well-attended but not overwhelming! Enjoyable for attendees and volunteers.
During my career – there were development plans that addressed ‘what do I want to be doing 5 years from now…and what can I do to prepare myself?” I am trying to apply the idea to my post-career life – which does not have salary as a motivating factor. My overarching goal is to become wiser every year…to care for my family…to contribute to the well-being of my community….to blend the things I do rather than trying to separate them.
In 5 years, I want to be much as I am now…but better prepared for whatever health/infirmity develops as I get older and take more action to leave the world a better place.
Here is my high level “what I can do to prepare myself:”
Continue doing what I am doing now with some changes
Consciously increase activities that sustain or improve my physical resilience (i.e. targeted exercise primarily)
Decrease my carbon footprint. Here are some things I have in mind:
Replace my plug-in hybrid car with an electric. This will probably happen in 2027.
Put solar panels with battery on my home. This will probably happen in the next 2 years.
Eat more from my own yard (I already eat seasonal greens from the yard….and am looking forward to elderberries and pawpaws in the coming years).
Gradually replace my wardrobe with clothes made from natural fibers.
Reduce the turf in my yard to 30% or less.
Allow an oak to grow in both the back and front yard (they as seedlings now).
(Maybe) Begin to skew from outreach/education type volunteering toward advocacy. This could mean that I would decide not to continue as a Missouri Master Naturalist.
Now that I have written this down, I realize that my trend is good….that the plan is simply tweaks that will take some disciple/energy to implement.
I’ve been volunteering for the weekly maintenance sessions at the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden this year. It’s been a learning experience. Recently the ‘taskmaster’ sent some pictures from 3 years ago – around the time I first visited the place.
The next time I volunteered, I took some similar pictures to document the way it looks in 2026. The plants are much more established now.
Of course I couldn’t resist taking some closer photos – cone flowers, button bush, cup plant, and some mushrooms that reminded me of roasted marshmallows.
I am learning to recognize weeds more easily as I’ve volunteered to help maintain the Lake Springfield Boathouse garden….and it is also a great way to observe the garden plants as they develop through the weeks. I walked around and took pictures last week before I started work.
The sloped garden has a wild look – but not as wild as a prairie. It becomes a background for special event pictures, and the Boathouse terrace looks over it to the lake. It needs to look good from every direction! There are rock paths through the slope to allow for easier maintenance.
It is a great place for some macro photography of native wildflowers.
Volunteering at the Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens is my favorite volunteer gig from May-September. Last week was the final training….in the butterfly house itself.
The late afternoon was breezy and a little chilly when I arrived at the park. I wore a sweater. The gardens on the way to the butterfly house were looking good – trees leafed out…past the spring bulb flowers and waiting for the summer bloomers.
Inside the house there were tiny caterpillars to discover. I didn’t have equipment to attempt to photograph them….but I did make a map of the trees in the house. The photos are of the largest ones: tulip poplar (for tiger swallowtail caterpillars) and pawpaw (for zebra swallowtail caterpillars). The others are wafer ash, spicebush, black willow, and false indigo bush.
Some butterflies were brought in but not released to the house while we were there. They were not very active because of the temperature. There are enough flowers blooming for nectar – butterfly food. There were even some milkweed plants with buds that will be fragrant and full of nectar when they bloom.
I missed the part of the training that was held in the Botanical Center (since I went straight to the butterfly house) but it was evidently the same as last year. The procedures for opening and closing were reviewed in the house…and tips for handling various situations. Even though the way we sign up for shifts is new…the skills I learned volunteering last season and in previous butterfly houses are still pertinent.
Volunteering to maintain the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden is a new type of volunteering for me! So far it has been all about pulling weeds and taking out debris from last season. The goal is to get the garden on the lake side of the boathouse iv prime shape for early summer pictures (the place is popular for weddings). The plants are mostly native, so they grow well if left alone. There are stone paths through the sloped garden to make it easier to reach weeds among the plants we want to thrive.
All the volunteers come with gloves and a bucket…maybe some hand tools. The bucket is for holding what we are taking away from the garden area that gets dumped in a natural area nearby to decay.
The crew of Master Naturalists meets on the same day every week and works for a couple of hours or more. At this point I am still new to the tasks but learning fast; hopefully part of the learning will be figuring out how to do it in a way that my back does not hurt!
I participated in a program about plastics and conservation for an after-school program at an area school. The grade range for the 43 participants was first through eighth grade. We did the program twice…to make the group size more management for the activities.
The gym was equipped with a projector for our short slide show to set the stage (featured a short video of animals in Missouri, a beautiful view of the Missouri river/a view of the river bank full of plastic waste), a little about how plastic is produced, and a picture of peanut the turtle (a turtle rescued with band of plastic around its middle deforming its shell).
There were two activities that the students rotated through: 1) a web game where a ball of yarn was thrown to participants in a circle representing parts of a Missouri ecosystem to help the students visualize what happens as plastic impacts a web of life– usually in negative way and 2) looking at a piece of synthetic fabric under a microscope and talking more how many things we use every day are plastic and are shedding tiny pieces as we wear them…and launder them.
The whole group was back together for the last activity. There was a bin of water to represent a river and a small empty bin to represent a landfill. Every 30 seconds another small bin of trash was dumped into the ‘river’….and there was an effort to scoop it up and put it in the ‘landfill.’ It didn’t take long before 1) the landfill was overflowing and 2) there were still some trash in the river that we didn’t get out fast enough!
As we summed up, we asked what kinds of things they could do to reduce plastics…lots of interesting ideas emerged. When we asked if they thought their school could try a plastic free lunch day next school year …they were enthusiastic. Some of them said they should try a week or a month plastic free. It might not be as hard for their school since the cafeteria has reusable items. They agreed that those that brought their lunch might need to rethink small plastic bags!
At the end we were handed Thank You notes the children had made!
My second Earth Day Festival for 2026 was Springfield’s Earth Day Music Festival - a plastic-free, leave-no-waste sustainability-driven live music festival. For Beyond Plastics Ozarks, it was our first tabling event. Our goal was to talk to festival goers about reducing plastics in tangible ways…hand out donated reusable bags to those willing to use them rather than taking the store-provided single use plastic bags…and develop a list of people willing to join our efforts.
I started the day early since I was bringing the materials for the table: tables, banner, camp chairs, umbrella with weighted base (and extra weights), info sheets from Show-me Less Plastic, and a mind map I created for what individuals can start doing at home. I had started adding rocks to make sure papers did not blow away but, once I looked at the forecast and saw it was going to be very breezy, I added decorative bookends to the bins….and there were 55 donated bags of various sizes/colors to hand out. The collapsible wagon I had recently purchased from Costco held everything which meant I didn’t have to carry anything more than a few steps. I was at the venue early enough to park in a nearby garage so I simply loaded my wagon after I parked and walked across the street with it rather than unload at the curb before I parked the car.
Our assigned space was under a tree! I had an umbrella that I set up for a few hours but took it down after the wind got too gusty; the tree provided plenty of shade. Other than the wind gusts, the weather was perfect for the festival.
The rocks and bookends worked great. After I got them arranged well, there were no papers blowing from our table. The indoor plants vendor next door was challenged to keep smaller plants on the shelves. They kept blowing off and landing in our booth! A booth further down that was doing a craft (nature stamps on cards) occasionally had cards flying.
I was at the table most of the time from about 9:30 to 6…setting up initially for the festival to open at 11…and packing up at 6 when the evening musicians were just setting up. I appreciated being able to leave before the crowds…just as I had arrived before the crowds.
It was a good first tabling – over 100 people stopped to talk and over 25 people indicated there were interested in learning more. Of course – this event being plastic free was probably a friendlier audience than we will find generally. I learned more about tabling on a windy day (bookends worked great…the umbrella did not)…and that the wagon was a great purchase for this type of event.
I did browse the other tables at mid-day…came home with a free smooth sumac to plant in a back corner of my yard. Lunch was 3 tacos in the compostable container from one of the food trucks. I refilled my water bottle at the water wagon a few times! Overall – a productive day for Beyond Plastics Ozarks…and enjoyable too with music and dancing just down the hill for our booth.
I volunteered for two Earth Day events last week. The first one was on the grounds of a church; several Master Naturalists and I volunteered at two tables contains skulls and pelts….and exploring rotten logs. That’s not my favorite tabling topics…because with skulls and pelts the question about where they came from always come up; my standard answer is that they are provided to us by Missouri Department of Conservation to use for public or school outreach events. I like to contrast skulls/teeth of carnivores and herbivores with omnivores in-between. I had a coyote and red fox representing carnivores, white-tailed deer and beaver representing herbivore….then racoon as an omnivore.
It was a cold morning so there were not many children at the celebration for the first few hours. The rotten logs did not get a lot of attention from the adults that braved the cold. Shortly afternoon, we had some children start to peel off layers of bark and rotting wood looking for critters --- finding some and having a good time looking at the textures of wood and fungi while they worked.
Our tables were under a large tree with a good view of a neighboring sweet gum tree with lots of last fall’s gumballs still on the ground. I was pleased to see that even the decoration of the bathroom inside the church was nature themed!
My shift lasted for 3 hours and it was just warming up enough to shed my coat when I left; I figure that the shift from 1-4 had a lot more traffic!
Stay tuned for a post on my second Earth Table tabling experience where the topic was plastics.
I volunteered with my local Friends of the Library (FOL) to set up 5 tables of used books/puzzles for an Indoor Garage Sale event at the local community center; the gymnasium floor was covered and taped for the event and there seemed to be plenty of other participants – no other used books though.
This year the Friends of the Library are adding more places the used books are getting sold although the annual sales associated with each library are also continuing. The prices are the same at all the events. Hopefully the net will be increased sales by getting the used books seen by a different audience….and more $$ for library programs!
I focused on the history and biography table. There were enough other volunteers to get the 5 tables fully loaded in less than an hour. It was so quick that my back didn’t bother me at all!
The tables and boxes of books were brought over on a truck…and we were hopeful that the load returning will be just the tables! Any books left after events are boxed to go to a book reseller…not saved for a future FOL event.
At the end of January, it seemed like my community level activities about plastics had started out at a bit faster than I anticipated….and I wondered if it would continue. February was a month of preparation for things that would happen in April and beyond; I didn’t anticipate that there would be plastic-related legislation to begin tracking too!
There currently are two plastic-related bills filed in the Missouri House. Neither is on the House calendar but they both had ‘read second time’ action in February:
HB 3193 - Phases out the use of single-use plastic products at Missouri State Parks and Historic Sites
HB 3357 - Prohibits the sale of intravenous solution containers and intravenous tubing products intentionally made with DEHP
I will be following both; it will be my first experience with tracking something through the Missouri legislative process. Beyond Plastics Ozarks will have to decide how we want to include information about these in upcoming outreach activities.
Beyond Plastics Ozarks’ first tabling - outreach event will be in April – associated with an Earth Day music festival. I’ve requested copies of information sheets from Show-me Less Plastic and have ideas for additional handouts that are more locally focused. We’ll probably make a sign to advertise our ‘bring your own bag (BYOB)’ initiative that we’ll start at local farmer’s markets. I’m collecting rocks to keep handout pages secure on the table even if it is breezy.
I’ve been asked to do a presentation at the state conference for Master Gardeners on microplastics in June. I’ve gathered some presentation materials from others and will facilitate a brainstorming session that will develop some gardener specific ideas on reducing microplastics.
Having a plastics movie showing and lining up tabling at farmer’s markets is still on the Beyond Plastics Ozarks ‘to do’ list. It looks like the first 6 months of 2026 are going to be busy!
With 2025 winding down, I am thinking about what will stay the same…what will be different in 2026.
On the ‘different’ list are:
Ramping up activity with Beyond Plastics Ozarks
Organizing Winter Wellness field trips in January and February for the chapter of Missouri Master Naturalistis in Springfield and making sure training/field trips that are offered by other organizations but relevant to the membership are communicated throughout the year
Reducing plastics in my life/home
Planting a front yard native plant garden in the spring and maintaining/adding to it during its first year
Remembering to use violets from my yard as greens in season (rather than buying greens)
On the ‘same’ list are:
Traveling to Lewisville every month to see my Dad
Arranging programs for the chapter of Missouri Master Naturalists in Springfield
Staffing shifts at the Roston Butterfly House
Sorting donated used books at my county library and setting up for books sales
Posting daily to my blog
Browsing/reading at least 4 books per day
Walking on the treadmill if I am not otherwise active each day
And there are bound to be things that will occur and force me to change that I am not anticipating!
October was a lull in regular Missouri Master Naturalist volunteer gigs; the Butterfly House closing at the beginning of the month and Project FeederWatch not yet begun. Project FeederWatch starts in November and will continue until the spring. My husband I enjoy our view of the birds at our feeders through a window…accumulating our count for each week. I looked back at my FeederWatch pictures from last year and created the slideshow below…savoring the images before we really get going on FeederWatch volunteering this year.
The fall festival volunteering bridged September and October and is over until the spring festivals start. The hours to support the MMN chapter continue throughout the year.
I attended the Beyond Plastics Grassroots Advocacy Training so I am ready for that volunteering in the coming months; it will probably be the most significant change in the type of volunteering I do…and I am still exploring the form it will take.
I am still volunteering as a Friends of the Library in the county where I live. It takes the form of sorting used books and then setting up for used book sales. This month there will be a general meeting of the group that I plan to attend.
Overall – the cool season volunteering is beginning and I am looking forward to the change.
The season for the Roston Butterfly House at the Springfield (MO) Botanical gardens ended the first weekend in October. I continued my weekly shifts.
On some of the cooler mornings in September, the caterpillars were the big show. Sometimes the skippers and hummingbird moths outside the house were more active. As the morning warmed, the butterflies in the house became more active and some seemed to enjoy sitting on people (including me)!
The large silkworm moths (cecropia, polyphemus, and luna) were not as available for display as during the summer months.
There was a very hungry tiger swallowtail caterpillar on a tulip poplar leaf; I made a short video.
My last shift was the Monday before the last weekend. The ‘stars’ of the shift were the Monarch butterflies (looking health and ready to migrate south), a black swallowtail caterpillar, and a luna moth (the last of the large species of silk moths we had to display).
I enjoy this type of volunteering…plant to do it again in 2026 and maybe do even more shifts!
I volunteered in the Master Naturalist booth at the Native American Heritage Celebration at Wonders of Wildlife in late September. It was a Friday-Sunday event with school groups coming on the Friday. We had two tables – one for bison (things that were made from bison parts) and trees of Missouri.
The students seemed to enjoy both topics – some spending quite a lot of time touching items and interacting with us. I usually did the tree table…linked trees to Native American heritage with the hedge apple/osage orange wood being used for bows and eastern redcedar (medicine, flavoring, ritual/ceremony). The first year maple-in-a-bottle sparked their interest too…particularly the variety of roots (some hairlike, some stubby, the thick central root).
They looked at different kinds of cones (the egg shaped/sized shortleaf cone being the only one native to Missouri) and talked about things children might do with pine cones – now and before Europeans came.
I was glad that I could put tree related Missouri Department of Conservation publications on a nearby table…they were available but not taking any space away from my tree samples.
I have three areas of volunteering going on this summer: Friends of the Library, Master Naturalist chapter, and Butterfly House (that counts as Master Naturalist hours too).
I volunteer once a month to sort used books at my local library that will be sold in the sales that happen once a year at each branch. Setting up or helping during the sale itself is another volunteer opportunity (I prefer the set up!). This month the sale will be at the branch closest to where I live but I have used the sales as an opportunity to explore other the parts of the county that I am not as familiar with. The monthly sorting usually starts out a bit daunting with tables full of books that have been donated. Two people come in each week but there are certainly times that there is more than two people can sort into shelving by subject or box up within the 2-hour shift. I am always relieved when the table is cleared when I leave…and that the area is air conditioned; sorting books is good exercise.
I am the programs chair for my local Missouri Master Naturalist chapter, so I am doing the behind-the-scenes activity to arrange for speakers…and writing announcements to the chapter about what is happening. The speakers count as advanced training so I create an entry in the tool we have for logging our advanced training so that others can simply select it when they attend…minimizing what they must do to get credit for the training.
The Butterfly House has been my most substantial volunteering this summer…both in the house itself talking to visitors as they enjoy the butterflies and moths there and raising Luna moth caterpillars at home that have been taken to the house as big caterpillars and moths recently. The large cecropia caterpillars on display in the butterfly house recently were the 3 that were raised with my luna caterpillars (because they were mixed in when I was given the bin with a lot of newly hatched caterpillars).
I’ve enjoyed all the volunteer gigs I’ve had this summer…even the ones that were outdoors on very hot days!
I helped set up the used book sale at one of our county libraries last Friday. It was different than last year because the room was in use until 5 PM so our set up was delayed until after that. In addition, it was raining all afternoon. I wondered if there were going to be a lot of wet boxes.
I got there about 10 minutes before the allotted time and there were indeed people in the room, so I worked on a jigsaw puzzle that the library had set up near a window while I waited. Other volunteers were arriving too – some with a load of book boxes in their cars (since it was raining – enclosed vehicles were required…the usual pickups could not be used).
After helping stack chairs and move tables to the periphery of the room, I got started on the children’s books like what I did last year. There was a table and a cart. The differences from last year were 1) more helpers and 2) less books (we estimated what we needed for the sale based on what happened last year). I had two helpers that loaded the bottom shelf of the cart, so I didn’t have any backache from this set up! We were done in less than an hour.
Butterflies and birds…visiting a prairie and the place I spent some formative years….lot to celebrate in June.
Butterfly Festival. I volunteered at the Master Naturalist booth for the Butterfly Festival at the Springfield Botanical Garden. It was very well attended, and people seemed to be enjoying filling in the butterfly passport; I began to feel like a recording talking about the spicebush swallowtail as I handed out stickers…but kept going because the children’s excitement was contagious!
1st graders in the Caterpillar Café. 80 first graders and chaperones. I was glad the cabbages had caterpillars on them! The big message of the game I played with them was that most caterpillars don’t survive (i.e. they get eaten…baby birds need them!). I was glad I had prepared well enough that none of them cried!
Morning in the Butterfly House. I always choose the 10 AM to 12:30 PM shift in the butterfly house because it is the coolest time of the day…and, so far, every shift has been something to celebrate…and there are lots of aspects to celebrate: quiet time with butterflies/moths, watching caterpillars munching on leaves (or deciding to go walkabout), the development of fruit on the pawpaw trees, people (local and from around the world) enjoying the place.
Luna moth caterpillars. This celebration is ongoing because the caterpillars are still growing. I celebrate every time I count and realize that the numbers munching is staying about the same (i.e. not much mortality). Every time they shed their skin and are noticeably bigger, I celebrate their survival and realize that I will have to ramp up the amount of leaves I provide.
Magnolia petals as seasoning. I celebrated my daughter’s introducing me to magnolia petals. I tried slivers in salad and a stir fry. I liked them best in the stir fry (a little strong raw). My son-in-law made kombucha with them…and I am looking forward to trying it.
Schuette prairie. My fourth prairie walk…and probably my last until it begins to cool down. I celebrated that I could identify some of the plants I’d seen on other prairies and saw bunchflower for the first time.
River Bend Nature Center. I visited Wichita Falls – where I attended grades K-10 in the 1960s - and celebrated the new-to-me River Bend Nature Center that is just the kind of place I would like to volunteer. There are aspects of our formative years that we seek to replicate in our lives….but this was an instance where I felt the place was still attuned to what I need now more than 50 years later.
Juvenile robins. I celebrated that the robins seem to spend more time in our yard…and the juvenile robins seemed to congregate in my shade garden. Maybe not using chemicals on the yard and leaving the leaves on the backyard through the winter has made a positive difference!
Missouri evening primrose. I celebrated the large yellow flowers of the native evening primrose I bought last month. It started blooming soon after I planted it and kept getting new buds.
Hummingbird at our feeder. There is a female hummingbird that comes to the feeder on my office window multiple times a day. She gets a good long drink and seems to look at me before she flies way! I wonder if she is raising young birds nearby. Celebrating a relationship with a bird!
Copyright © 2026, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
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