Congrats on the beautiful butterfly sighting:)

how fun for you, still a pretty good photo, thanks for sharing.

So much fun to see new butterflies. Thanks for sharing your sightings.

I love sharing my sightings, I get so excited when I see each species for the first time each year!

It's finally warming up again here, after this recent cold snap. I saw my first American lady of the season today. It flew off before I could get the camera out and take its picture. :( The cudweed is up everywhere, but it's mostly just the basic rosette, except for a few plants that are growing out of the holes in the bricks I've put around my blueberry plants - I guess the brick protects and warms up the roots? Anyway, these have already got the bloom stems, so it's possible American ladies might lay eggs on these. For that matter, it's possible they might use the rosettes, but it doesn't usually happen that way.

Sherry

Ahhh... The snow has finally ebbed from my Cudweed and it is already starting to peek out. Can the American Lady be far behind? Send a few ladies my way;)

What state do you live in Leafhead? And is your name really Leafhead? :) I'll send the next American lady I see up your way!

Today I saw a yellow female tiger swallowtail, which is sort of unusual in itself, since most females are black here, but she was SO little, about the size of a black swallowtail or a pipevine swallowtail! I know that spring butterflies are smaller than their summer counterparts, but she stood out! She nectared on the flowers on my orange tree, but by the time I got my camera out, she flew away. Still, it's good she's here, since I've seen males flying.

Sherry

I live in Madison, Wisconsin (and my real name is John).
congrats on the Eastern Tiger sighting and pix :) Perhaps she'll return as an ELF, or Egg Laying Female:) Do you ever see any Giants around / on your Citrus? That's where they lay their eggs.

Sherry, I've been out at Butterfly Acres--the acreage I bought--working and am finding lots of cudweed. I've had Am Ladies for a couple of weeks. There is so much cudweed, that I haven't really checked for eggs. Been too busy trying to get the garden space ready to plant.

I'm curious about putting bricks around blueberry plants? Is there a reason? I've been looking for used tree pots to plant mine in. A grower here told me to use these. You sink them in the dirt and make your mix in the pots. Plant the blueberries and add drip hoses for irrigation. It will keep the gophers away. I could easily have named the placed Gopher acres and mole runways. Going to have to protect my plantings!

Sandy

Sandy, I had some left over bricks from when we built the house, and I needed something to put around my blueberry bushes to keep my husband from mowing too close to their base, plus, I wanted to have an area about 2'-3' out from the base of the bushes to keep weeded and mulched. These bushes are growing in a grassy area of my property. So I made a square around each bush with the bricks laid flat on the ground. I weeded earlier this year, then put down some Hollytone (natural fertilizer for acid loving plants) then put oak leaves over that. These bricks are foundational bricks with the holes in them for mortar, and seedlings must like it in there, because every year a variety of native plants come up there.
Fortunately, I don't have gophers, at least not that I'm aware of. My blueberries are planted right in the ground in the native soil with no barriers other than the bricks, which wouldn't keep out underground critters. I get LOTS of blueberries starting in June, ending in ?August every year, with varieties that ripen early, middling and late.

By the way, I saw a pearl crescent today, couldn't get its pciture, but I'm so glad to have seen it - I didn't see a single one last year! I've got a couple of new types of asters that I've planted, one in my garden, and one in my road 'meadow' - I keep hoping that one day I'll have pearl crescent caterpillars!
I'm also trying a new plant in the carrot family for black swallowtails, wild chervil. I'll be planting it in shady spots in hopes that it can survive the summer here. The only black swallowtail host that comes back for me is the wild mock bishop's weed, and it's just starting to come up. I released another male black swallowtail today, wish I'd get a female. My last pipevine swallowtail is turning dark, should emerge tomorrow. I hope it's a male, since I've only released females so far.

I've ordered more new plants this year than I have in a while, so I'm working, working, working, outside in this nice weather to get things going.

Sherry