How I Spent My Summer Vacation - The Butterflies

Now that it appears I may have safely lived through one of my worst summers (worst summers so FAR - insert hysterical, as in she's lost her mind, "laughter" :-o), I am going to try to catch the blog up with at least some of the actually good parts from the past few months.  

I hate that I let the blog slip so far away.  I did keep the Instagram feed running all summer and I'm extremely thankful for that, but I'd much rather have the higher quality photographs from the "big girl camera" and more stories.  Even sad stories deserved to be told.

That being said, these next few posts may be more letting the pictures tell the stories, just in an effort to get them posted, but hopefully, as I get back into the routine of blogging, the rest will come back as well.  

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - The Butterflies

I think it was around mid July when I first heard about looking for and bringing in monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars and raising them in a secure location away from mowers, chemical sprays, even predatory birds and other insects. 

It took some practice to spot them, but as the summer progressed, I got pretty good at it and ended up setting up a pretty big butterfly nursery on the back porch.  I lost track of how many I helped hatch, but there are a ton of pictures of the nursery and hatching butterflies on my Instagram feed.  

Watching eggs hatch into teeny tiny caterpillars who then grew and grew into big caterpillars who then transformed into the most beautiful green and gold chrysalises and finally hatched into beautiful butterflies never got old.  

The first to hatch here were actually brought in when Robin and Julie came to visit in August.  Three hatched the first morning they were here.  We gave them several hours to dry off and gather strength and then released them out by the Frog Pond.

This is a female.  You can tell by the two thick black diagonal lines and the clean lines on the lower wing patterning.

This is a male.  The diagonal lines are not as thick and there are two dots on the lower wing patterning.

The very next day, my first butterfly hatched :-).

It was very excited to get out and immediately flew up into a tree.

Is this a male or a female?

This is one of my favorite videos from the butterfly posts.  See, it wasn't all bad, Sara :-).

View this post on Instagram

An early morning hatch ready for release at the Frog Pond. #monarch #monarchbutterfly #butterflyrelease #frogpond #nativeplants #ironweed

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Aug 25, 2018 at 8:40am PDT

Weed Or Feed?

A quick visit to The Frog Pond.  I've seen a few more Monarchs this year than the last couple of years, but still not like "the olden times".  We are working on adding more milk weed areas to the back of our farm and the neighboring farms for next year.  I'm super excited about that.  We all do too much mowing around here.

When we moved here in 2003, we "landscaped" around the small pond out back.  I added quite a few Kentucky native plants and left some of the other "weeds" to fill in between.  The single Joe Pye Weed I planted  (that this butterfly is feeding on) has spread around almost half of the pond.  

It's probably ten feet tall and I can see it from way up on the hill.  It's a favorite!

Thistles are a conundrum.  Such a pest, but so pretty and everything loves the flowers.  I let them stay, but try to keep them a bit under control.

Incoming!

This beautiful butterfly has a beautiful blue body.  Hopefully you can see it if you click to biggify.

A weed that feeds :-).

 

A little puzzle fun.  Enjoy!

Weeds

I was out mowing what we call "the pond field" this morning. The alley-way between our farm and our neighbor's back field is overflowing with Queen Anne's Lace this year. I keep thinking I need to mow it down - it's an invasive, non-native flower - but each time I go out there, I can't bring myself to do it. It happened again today.



I think the fence would be lonely without them.

And so would I.



They might be one of my favorite flowers because they look like snowflakes when they are young.



Or maybe it's the cheerful little center.



And I'm posting this one even though I'm a bit crabby with my bees right now. You really need to biggify this picture (and the one above too while you are at it). Is that not a happy little bee?

One of my hives (at least I'm pretty darn sure it was one of my hives) swarmed over the weekend. I found them not far away and tried to re-hive them in a new box. A new box apparently not to their liking. They all gathered in a relatively peaceful protest on the sheet "porch" outside. A few walked in. They walked back out. Everyone disappeared.

Kids.

Weeds

In spite of my poor maintenance this year, the flowers in the native plant pond are shining. Normally the invasive exotics would have been kept in check, but since they weren't, we'll just enjoy them (until the weather cools a little).



My usual gardening buddy, Brushy, elected to stay on the porch this afternoon. Comby braved the heat and was good company.



As I snapped this picture, I thought of this one from a few years ago.



We don't have any idea how old Brushy is, but he's not making as many Frog Pond ventures as he used to. That's okay, we'll just enjoy him, too.

Bee Happy