White Admiral!

A good day and a bad day for butterflies

I have been reading up lately on Butterfly Feeders. There are tons of recipes out there on the web- concoctions of fruit, beer and yeast. I was on Garden Web (butterfly forum)yesterday and someone posted a picture of a plate with rotting fruit and a ton of butterflies. I figured I'd give it a shot. It works! 36 hours after putting out a frozen banana (the brown slug looking thing in the picture) and a few plums that are past their prime I was visted by a Red Admiral- Woo Hoo!

On a sad note- I went out to the back 40 today to see what the dogs were barking at (I never found out) on my way back I peeked in the back square of the veg garden and saw a Spicebush Swallowtail hanging out on the ground near my volunteer Nicotania. I ran back to the house and got my camera and got some good pictures of it before it realized I was there and it crawled under some leaves. We left for a few hours and came back and I checked just to see if it was still there. It was but it hadn't moved. So I went into the garden to see if it would move when I got close. Nope. I got a stick and wiggled some of the leaves above it. Nothing. I think it died :( I'm totally bummed.

I was also visited this week by a White Admiral (who had seen better days) and a Silver Spotted Skipper as well as the Monarch and Tiger Swallowtail and a couple of Hummingbirds. If I could figure out how to post more than one photo per post I'd add some pictures.

On another happy note: No sight of the dreaded late blight. I checked the late blight map a few weeks ago and it showd that a house in my neighborhood was reporting spores. I walked past the house- no garden, no pots of tomatoes. Just an overgrown bed with a badly pruned lilac. I wonder where they get their info.

Flutter-Bye

I had a visitor in the garden this morning. I was sitting in the sunroom drinking my coffee when I saw it swoop down. I wish my old camera (kodak easyshare) was working, it took great pictures. This is taken as a still from my Canon video camera.

I think it's a Monarch, I looked it up in the image gallery of "Butterflies of North America". He seemed to really like my marigolds in pots on the deck. He also liked the Echinacea. Not the gorgeous deep pink Ruby Star that just started to bloom yesterday but the generic giant monstrosity of an Echinacea bunch at the edge of the garden. My ultimate goal is to attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. I think I've seen some honey bees, I've had a ton of bumble bees. No hummingbirds, I have a feeder hung in the garden but it doesn't seem to be attracting anything but wasps I think I hung it too late in the season.

My foxgloves and delphinium are setting seed, so I was out early harvesting the seeds. I'm going to try to start them from seed myself so I can make new flower beds next year and fill them economically. DH will appreciate that.