A Local Banker Bonds With Her Butterflies

A Local Banker Bonds With Her Butterflies

By Anita L. Sherman

Delaplane resident Lisa Burnside has a decades long reputation in the banking world. She’s been a financial services leader and wealth advisor to countless clients. Her world has been fast-paced and number-driven but staying closer to home during the pandemic gave her time for reflection.

Financial planner Lisa Burnside has a new passion in life, helping protect Monarch butterflies.

Photo by Anita Sherman

It also provided the opportunity to spend more hours in her five-acre garden area. That’s where she discovered something very special.

“It was really a fluke accident,” said Burnside of her decision to cultivate a few milkweed plants. The monarch is a milkweed butterfly. The green leaves provide the perfect place to lay tiny eggs and clusters of them first caught her attention.

She started watching them. Pretty soon those tiny eggs turned into tiny caterpillars. If left undisturbed or not eaten by predators, these caterpillars attach themselves to the underside of the milkweed leaves to form a protective green sac (chrysalis). From there, the stunning predominantly orange and black monarch butterfly emerges.

“It was fascinating to watch,” said Burnside, who soon started researching and learning all she could about Monarch butterflies. The entire cycle of laying an egg to producing a butterfly takes on average about 32 days.

Burnside bubbled with enthusiasm as she shared photo after photo of the various stages of the soon-to-be Monarch butterfly and her new mission to save as many of them as she could.

Once the Monarch has hatched and has enough energy to sustain itself, it instinctively begins its annual southward migration from the northern and central United States and southern Canada to Florida and Mexico.

Burnside’s butterflies will cover thousands of miles with a corresponding multigenerational return north.

“Can we come and watch?” is now a request Burnside receives from friends, family and neighbors.

Burnside’s husband, Steve, is equally captivated. He’s helped erect butterfly cages (finely netted tent affairs) to protect the developing chrysalis from natural predators.

The final product, a magnificent Monarch.

Photo by Lisa Burnside

“We feed hundreds of birds in the backyard,” said Burnside, acknowledging that they are potential predators to the Monarch at all its life stages. She’s equally confident that through her efforts, a larger number of Monarchs will be saved.

“It was fun,” Burnside said, recalling her first efforts at seeing some 20 butterflies go from miniscule egg to magnificent Monarch. She started with six milkweed and now, with 200, she looks forward to the number of saved butterflies growing.

“I’m not a hobby person…I don’t collect things,” Burnside said. But she is keen on making a difference in the world however she can.

“And I haven’t been a gardening person,” she said. “I stopped using plastic bags years ago, and I don’t use plastic water bottles. I believe we can be better stewards, that we need do no harm to the environment.”

Burnside has spent too many years in the financial arena to give that up. She recently signed a contract with Fidelity Investments after a long stint with BB&T (now Truist).

Her business savvy, caring and commitment to her clients will continue. When she isn’t crunching numbers, she’ll be watching the butterfly barometer.

“I’m listening, I’m open,” she said, reflecting on her personal journey in life and what is important to her.

“When you look at the transformation that God has created in the life of the Monarch butterfly, what greater transformation can be found in us? It’s amazing.

“This gives me peace.”