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| OHCC LIVING | JUNE 2024 |25 Do you need a temporary loan of medical equipment? Helping Hands maintains an inventory of wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, canes and shower chairs for people living in Ocean Hills Country Club. When having knee, hip, or shoulder surgery, we loan out water cooling devices that reduce the swelling and discomfort. Call one of the volunteers listed at the end of this article and we will deliver to your door at no cost to you. You can help a neighbor in OHCC by donating a clean, serviceable item that you are no longer using to Helping Hands. Check your storage areas for the items listed in this article. Please do not leave items outside of the storage area. Call the volunteers listed for more information. ank you! ere have recently been fewer donations of no longer needed wheelchairs, walkers with seats meant for outside strolling, and shower chairs. If you have such items being stored, please let us know. anks. For information, call Tom Mazur at (760) 295-1006, Tim Wilbur at (760) 639-5221, Dolores Hofmann at (707) 339-0508, Dennis Drake at (760) 859-7046 or Stan Katz at (760) 505-8298. Helping Hands Group Where the heck are our butterflies? at's the big question on the minds of OHCC's many "friends of the Monarch" as we rolled through April, and then May, with barely a sighting of our returning Monarchs. e Butterfly Sanctuary in the Park has been ready and waiting, with milkweed sprouting and its many species of nectar plant blooming, but through the first week of May, only a few solitary Monarchs have been spotted. We've seen a handful of Swallowtails and a few happy Sulphur Yellows, but so far not the masses we've come to expect. Two years ago, for comparison, we were welcoming our first Monarchs in February, and even last year, aer those damaging winter storms, we had Monarchs in the Park throughout April. So, what's happening this year? According to expert groups like the Xerxes Society and Friends of the Earth, this past winter has taken a huge toll on California's Monarchs. Storms in their wintering sites, which in some cases uprooted their host eucalyptus trees, destroyed tens of thousands of butterflies, and the unusually cold and wet conditions ever since have compounded the problem. ese groups estimate that more than a third of the existing Monarch population in the state died over the winter, wiping out the gains we had made in growing their numbers over the past few years. e population is now thought to be about 200,000 across the state, about the same as three years ago. at's better than 2018, when there were only about 1,800 le and the species seemed to be on the verge of extinction, but it's still a stark reminder of just how fragile these precious creatures are, and how important it is to provide conditions that are as welcoming to them as possible. Here in OHCC, the SMB Club is working hard to expand our butterfly habitat. Club volunteers have planted five new spaces allocated to it by the Master Board: in a section of the garden on Aeolia, just off Leisure Village Way, on either side of the access road to the nature preserve beyond the Park, on the slope in the Park next to the Oceanside Water Department building, and in a space between the two benches on the walk above that building. We plan to continue this expansion through the summer as space becomes available. Meanwhile, we wait, anxiously but patiently, for our butterflies to come home to OHCC. Written by Myra Esler Save the monarch butterfly

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