Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 14, 0 by mellielong

mellielong wrote:
Ahhh...the only thing I like better than gardening is taking a shower when I'm done. For those hot days, I highly recommend mint shower gel.

Well, Mom and I started our day going to Pinellas County to visit Wilcox nursery. Adrienne had told me they can be a little pricey, but I figured if they have hard-to-find plants it would be worth it. Unfortunately, despite what their website said, they did not carry any pawpaws. The lady there gave me a line about how they went to a conference on pawpaws and the botanist said they were hard to propagate and had to have the perfect conditions and blah, blah, blah. I advised them not to put things on their website if they don't have them or plan to have them. Arrgh! On the plus side, we did see some bfs flying around, including a White Peacock. Mom has decided she likes the big yelllow sulphurs.

We left empty-handed and Melanie was sad. : ( On the way back across the bay I said to Mom that maybe we should check out Hollie's nursery back home in Lutz. I had been there once years ago but I forgot until I saw it again. So we stopped in and they made me much happier. I got two pipevines, plus the caterpillars on them! They even said I could take some off their big pipevine trellis, but I just took one really big one because I didn't want to run out of food. The one I bought already had eggs and so does my one at home.

Hollie's was really cool, because unlike most garden centers, you could tell they must not use pesticides. There were so many different types of bfs! Mom kept trying to get me to identify swallowtails flying in the distance. She did manage to ID a pipevine ST (she calls it "the blue one"). There was also a White Peacock there, many yellow sulphurs on the cassias, monarchs, and I even saw a Gulf Frit flirting with one of the Monarchs. I tried explaining that just because it was orange didn't mean they could be "special friends". Hollie's even had their own hanging butterfly cage with several kinds of cats and chrysalis in it. They had a yellow sulphur cat, monarch chrysalis, some kind of hornworm, and Polydamas cats! The lady told me how she had seen the yellow sulphurs, but hadn't seen their cats until recently - and she's been there over two years! Once they knew I was a butterfly gardener they pointed out some of the different plants and cats they had. Like she showed me some dill that had come in clean yesterday, but today they ALL had eggs on them. And they had a different kind of pipevine (I need to look it up on the PlantFiles). They said they kept trying to propagate it but the cats always found it first. She showed me the poor little sticks in the ground. The people there are very nice and whenever they find cats they move them to their bigger plants or the ones they have growing permanently in their land. I thought that was nice.

So I got two pipevines, two "Mystic Spiral" salvia ($3.99 each!) and five more porterweeds for $3.99 each. I think I've mentioned I do the landscaping for the front of our street - my side I'm turning into caterpillar corner with mostly larval plants, while my neighbor's side is mostly nectar plants. I have quite a spread of blanket flowers but I was thinking I needed some blue for contrast. Since porterweed has been a hit, and I'm also focusing on natives for that section, I decided they would go there. I had just started watering in the sage, when my usual visitor came to visit the porterweed I already have, proving yet again what a great plant it is.