I'm Amira Provost — known online as The Monarch Matriarch. What started as a few milkweed plants in a backyard waystation turned into years of tagging logs, egg counts, and migration data, and eventually into helping coordinate the NH Monarch Festival itself.
Monarcheology — both the book I'm writing and this site — comes out of that same instinct: monarchs reward the same patience an archaeologist brings to a dig. Layer by layer, season by season, the record builds itself, if you're willing to keep showing up.
I'm not a professional lepidopterist. I'm a gardener with a notebook, a spreadsheet, and a real stubborn streak about milkweed. This site is where all of that lives: the field notes, the data, the garden guidance, activities for the next generation of monarch-watchers, and the book that ties it together.
It's not about being the expert.
A monarch matriarch is just the female who lays this generation's eggs — she doesn't live to see them migrate. The name is a reminder that this work outlasts any one season, or any one person keeping the log.