090316 Butterfly Garden

Back in May, I planted a butterfly garden. I bought various native nectar plants and some host milkweeds, the rest was filled in with annual zinnias and cosmos. I honestly didn’t expect much the first year. I figured the perennials would grow and really produce results in a year or so. I was pleasantly surprised, in the last few weeks, with all the new faces I was seeing out there. At first there were a lot of skippers like this one.

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Then Gulf fritillaries started to show up around the purple passion vine, which is their larval host, and feeding on the zinnias. They are really pretty butterflies.

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Then their larva appeared in abundance! They look dangerous, but are harmless (unless you’re a passion flower vine).

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In the last few days Monarchs have made an appearance! I was very excited to see them, and I had a few host plant ready for them to lay eggs on.

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Eggs and larva appeared on one of the milkweeds. There were quite a few caterpillars, of various sizes, on this plant. One day I was out taking photos of them and saw a large caterpillar attack and throw a smaller caterpillar off the plant! Crazy! I couldn’t believe it, but they do compete for food. Now there are a lot fewer caterpillars on the milkweed. I’m counting on more eggs and larva soon since the butterflies are appearing daily.

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Back on the passion vine, I noticed something very special! A praying mantis! I’m assuming he was eating caterpillars, but I never saw him move.

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There have been several types of bees visiting.

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I can’t wait to see what happens next.

5 thoughts on “090316 Butterfly Garden”

  1. It was good to read another post, Stace! Hope you’re doing well! I loved seeing the pictures of the catapillars and butterflies.

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