My little flying flowers are coming more and more frequently now. I have seen swallowtails (either Giant, Pipevine, or Tiger--they were too far away to tell for sure), Sulphurs, Gulf Fritillaries, and also Monarchs. All are laying eggs. I have seen small monarch cats, got a black swallowtail cat on a dill plant at Home Depot (I needed dill for my salmon and he needed salvation from certain squashing or chemical onslaught!), and just rescued a frittilary cat from the front yard. He's in my b'fly hatchery now munching away. I'll have to think about getting him some more passionvine maybe tomorrow. He's growing fast! Little eating machines those cats are. So glad spring is here and my b'flies are coming back :)
B'flies coming back :)
I'm anxious to see how my butterfly garden does...this will be the first season since we installed the garden. I just put in some herbs for the caterpillars today - bronze fennel, fern leaf dill, rue and moss curly parsley. I'm in zone 7b so have not seen any yet, but I am sure looking forward to it! I hope to have them everywhere, and see all the stages of a butterfly's life. Hummer's too :)
Here's a picture of my "new" butterfly garden in Oct. 2002. It looks more like a weed patch at the moment in parts of it. I made the mistake of putting Bidens alba (Spanish needle) in there. Only 5 seeds. All of which germinated and threw off 1000s of seeds, which all germinated, which threw off 1000s more seeds each... I've removed 2 32 gal. trash cans full of this plant so far. It's such a pretty little flower, but it HAS to be deadheaded religiously or you end up with what I have now--a weed patch of solid B. alba. Lesson learned. I am very careful now. I have one plant in the back yard and I may leave one or two in the front yard. The butterflies and honey bees LOVE these little flowers and flock to them in droves.
