Butterfly Days

During April we had masses of butterflies in our yard. I have always gravitated to flowers and plants that say "attracts butterflies", or "feeds birds/wildlife", so as the garden matures we are reaping the blessing of this lovely decoration. Hope you enjoy these pictures. Anna patiently took most of them.

I will not attempt to identify all these butterflies (being lazy), so if you know what they are, feel free to comment about it. I will restrict my identification to, "I think this is a (blank)", or "white butterfly" kind of thing.

Most of these pictures were taken in the Herbal Tea Garden. This garden is a few years old and is maturing up nicely. I posted about planting it in the no-till fashion here.

It's hard to get across in these pictures the sheer numbers of butterflies that were flying everywhere, but each plant had at least ten butterflies on it at a time!

 

This plant with blue flowers in the Herbal Tea Garden is Nepta, or Cat Mint. You can see several sulfur butterflies on it or flying near.

Sulfurs on the cat mint. I looked this up - its an Orange sulfur.

 

Butterfly on the thyme blossoms. We don't know what this one is, but it sure is interesting!

 These Grey Hairstreak butterflies are so cute. I lied - I can't help looking up some things!

Buckeye butterfly on the thyme. (Looked that up too.)

 

 Common Sulfur on the Cat Mint.

Lovely white something on the tall Verbena. This tall verbena is in the vegetable garden. I have been working on getting a lot more flowers in there to attract beneficial insects, and it is working.

Red Admiral?

Some kind of Skipper.

and there were many more! All of these shot the same morning. If you love butterflies, its worth it to plant plants just for them. Do some research on what grows in your area that butterflies like, and enjoy God's beautiful creation.