Wednesday, July 20, 2016

A Monarch Indeed!!


 We have always had a thing for butterflies.  From the very beginning when we moved here we began to encourage the milkweed growing here.  The fragrant blossoms attract many kinds of butterflies, but of course the Monarch is king. Click Here to go back to 2008! 
 

This far North however it is not the fragrant blossoms that really attract the Monarchs.  What they are eagerly  looking for is some nice green milkweed leaves on which to lay their eggs. Ed carefully mows the plants in stages so that we have new milkweed plants when the butterflies need them.


We have been waiting and watching for the Monarch's return. Whenever an orange and black  blur goes by we wonder if it is a Monarch.  Sometimes we see what we want to see!  Yesterday a Monarch stopped to feed on this freshly opened Liatris plant.  There was no doubt this time and it was a girl.  No, there is no picture of the butterfly, but as of July 19, 2016 we can indeed say a Monarch has been seen here at the Stone Wall  Garden and inside the square at that!

 Every  Monarch we see is a joy and the same will be true of the caterpillars.

1 comment:

Indie said...

Yay!! Every monarch spotted is a cause for celebration! I was lucky enough to have one in my garden this year so far, too. Sadly I haven't spotted any caterpillars. Is it just me, or does there seem to be very few butterflies in general this year? It's hard for me to tell what is normal since I've only lived up here for the last 3 years, but I feel like we had many more butterflies last year.