Bucktown’s butterfly garden

Downs, who is 61 and a certified end-of-life care practitioner, talks easily about death, intermingling freely the metaphors of monarchs and life after death.  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

Downs collects monarch eggs from the underside of milkweed leaves and brings them to a makeshift hatchery in her basement. Eggs and leaves hatch there in all sorts of containers, plastic salad containers, old aquariums and jars.  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

Downs zips a tubular mesh “butterfly cage.” Back in 2002, she hatched two butterflies from her kitchen counter. Every year since, her crop has multiplied; last year she raised and released 270 monarchs.  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

A monarch spreads its wings spread shortly after hatching but not yet in flight. Chrysalises form and dangle from the containers’ horizontal lid.  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

Downs began bringing boxes of chrysalises and butterflies to the Fairmont HealthCare and Rehabilitation Centre. A butterfly room opened five months before her mother died there, and Downs named it The Chrysalis Room. Now president of the Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition, Downs is leading an effort to open Chrysalis Rooms in nursing homes across the country.  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

In her garden Downs grows many flowers that butterflies love, including phlox, purple coneflower, bee balm and black-eyed Susan. She calls her side yard “a tavern for the butterflies, they go there for a cocktail.”  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)

“The garden is a healing space,” Downs says in her butterfly-beckoning space. “I come here to heal.”  (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune photo)