love your photo, thanks for sharing. So many different butterfly catepillars, how fun for you!

Yes, indeed!

It's cool again this morning, and I heard somewhere that it's supposed to go down to the upper 40's one night this week!
We had April in March, so now we're having March in April!

Sherry

Misssherry, I am so impressed with activity you have in your gardens. You must have everything a butterly can ask for. We are in a lull down here in Houma,Louisiana. only seeing an occasional Sulphur and black swallowtail. I dont have enough experience yet to determine if this is natural or not. Febuary and the early part of march showed so much promise. My yard/garden is only 40ft. x 40ft. and in a subdivision. Thanks for your amazing and informational post.

You're so welcome, Butterflyaddict - nature is my much-enjoyed hobby!

Your local butterflies are probably in their caterpillar and/or chrysalis stage right now. Most of the ones you saw in Feb. were individuals that had overwintered - you should be seeing another influx soon. By late summer/fall, the generations will have overlapped, and you'll see them every day, not just in waves. I'm lucky to live in the country, close to the Desoto National Forest, where host plants are everywhere, so I get to see lots of butterflies.

I saw two different tiger swallowtails this morning, a male and a yellow female. I made pictures of them, but they didn't turn out, because they were basking in the sun, and were overexposed. I used my editing functions, but they didn't make the pictures better. The female was really beautiful!

I checked out the big false nettle patch for question marks - didn't find any cats - but got these pictures -

As it turns out, there are still some parasitic critters doing their damage to the red admiral cats, because I found one of those little white cocoons in a nest. But fortunately, that was the only one I found - red admirals are beyond plentiful this year. Here's a cat in the patch, raising itself -

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I always find a lot of frogs in the nettle patch. This one was perched by a nest -

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Sherry

Thanks for sharing Miss Sherry!

We are getting a cold smack of reality up here in Minny too. Last night it got down to 31 and tonight is going to be upper 20s before it starts warming up again. I covered all the perennials that have any sort of flower bud formed...will probably have to do the same for the next 2 nights.

Thankfully I didn't go crazy during our 80 degree weather and plant annuals!

Have you seen any of your liatris ligulistylis coming up? Also, those agastache 'ava' do start from seed. I have a couple coming up in my seedling flats. I hope they grow well for you in MS. Happy gardening, Tony

Thanks for sharing, Miss Sherry! Great picture. Unfortunately, my TMs never flowered last year. I think their exposure to the black walnut tree (gone now) and my cutting prevented it. How do you harvest TM for feeding caterpillars indoors without keeping it from growing enough to bloom?

Jibd, I'm not raising these monarchs myself indoors. When I do raise them myself, I raise them in cages on my front porch. As I recall, this plant had buds on it when I bought it about a ?week or two ago. I've bought and planted more milkweed this year than ever, because a monarch laid eggs on the ones I already had. And then I noticed eggs on the ones I bought as I was paying for them at the check out! I'm just hoping that these milkweeds will be able to keep up with the caterpillars. I've raised many of them myself in late summer and fall, but the milkweeds are big by then, and it doesn't matter if I wind up wasting some feeding them myself. I have to make every leaf count with these spring cats! Which reminds me, I need to go water them. After all that rain we had, we haven't had any in a while, and they're in raised beds.

Tony, I haven't noticed any Liatris ligulistylis coming up, but then I scattered the seeds in my "meadows" so I might not know they're there until they bloom. I sure hope I'll be seeing some of those gorgeous blooms one day!

Sherry

Great pictures - things are still slow here in St. Louis - I haven't even seen a Monarch yet.