Stop and enjoy the butterflies! I was so intent on potting things yesterday I didn't notice what was going on around me. But I will say that I really enjoyed myself.

Tom, I have never learned how to differentiate Queens from Monarchs. How do you tell the difference?

Tom, congrats on the Queen and all the other butterflies (what my
youngest son used to call them)! I'm with you, this is the best time of
year in Florida :) Now only is the butterfly population picking up
dramatically, but my flowers are bursting. But...still no hummingbirds
:(

Tom, thank-you so much! Great photos, and so easy to tell when you can see the details. I guess my problem is that they won't be still for me so I can study them carefully! I don't think I've seen Queens in my garden, but lots of Monarchs almost year-round. I will be prepared now, thanks to you, and will look more carefully. Because of a rampant Aristolochia gigantea that has escaped into the treetops, we have many, many Gold-rim swallowtails much of the year. They are very lively and keep us entertained. I plant lots of corkystem passionvines in the back of my beds to climb the shrubs, so we always have Zebra longwings on our firebushes, pentas lanceolatas and other nectaring plants. Interestingly, not a lot of gulf fritillaries come visit. Those are the most common in our garden, but occasional skippers, Giant swallowtails, Eastern black swallowtails, and rare others- Red Admirals, etc. Thanks for the pictoral guide!

No queens here but monarchs, giant and black swallotails, zebras and skippers and golf ftitilaries. We raise monarch cats every year.

This past summer was our biggest. We raised nd released 45 monarchs and 3 swallowtails.

We lost 6 other swallowtails after we gave them a newly purchased parsley plant that we were assured was not sprayed and obviously we were lied to.

Since then we grew several parsley plants and now have 20 milkweed plants for next year. We almost ran out of milkweed this past summer because we only had 10 plants at the time and our cats were not terribly interested in butternut squash, pumpkin or cukes which many monarch cats will eat when they are within a couple of days of pupating.