Saturday, September 22, 2007

Butterflies

A local garden columnist suggested it was a bad year for butterflies and other less enjoyable insects because of the Great Easter Freeze of '07' and the drought conditions this summer. If this was a bad year for butterflies then I can't wait till next year.













Granted I have a mountaintop meadow that blooms in successive waves of numerous species of plants from spring until, well I will soon find out until when, but there has not been a shortage of butterflies. The Spicebush Swallowtails in particular put on quite a show.


















The one thing I was not seeing until recently were Monarch butterflies even though I have seen several patches of Asclepias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed here. A few weeks ago I saw one, then another and today quite a few.
















The resident gardeners tell me this mountain is on the direct route of the Monarchs migration. This could get interesting.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty. We get a good number of monarchs during the fall migration too. I always look forward to their brief stopover in October.

chuck b. said...

Sweet! I mostly have moths.

Annie in Austin said...

Apparently the word is out that your meadows are the place to stop, Christopher!

I saw our first Monarch on Friday, just a few days after the Tropical milkweed opened a second flush of bloom. I guess both plant and butterfly planned ahead.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Anonymous said...

The butterflies are nice now down near the coast too - mostly gulf fritillaries and tiger swallowtails and black (or maybe pipevine?) swallowtails. There aren't as many monarchs now as there were just a week or so ago - Im guessing from the look of things from around your place that you'll have wonderful butterflies.

Oh - I do think the numbers are down this year though - it's pretty noticeable here.