Those are beautiful pictures, Genie!
Good to hear from you!
MissSherry

Hi Genie, and a happy new butterfly season to you! Thanks for the pictures, they are really beautiful...Can't wait till my zinnias start blooming....

Oh Geni,
Those are fantastic pictures! I am living in butterfly envy after seeing your shots! :) Thank you for sharing.

Genie,

I don't visit the gallery often enough! Your pictures demand more frequent visits. They are wonderful. What flower is pictured with the Horace's duskywing?

mike

Another yellowish Cabbage White; now jrcagle will be less suprised (see main forum).

I'm not getting large numbers of butterflies this year. But that makes each one more special.

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Buckeye

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Buckeye

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Gulf Fritillary

All these are nectaring on Lantana. I don't know the varieties. Mike, Lantana is a perennial further south, and these plants are in their third year for me. We've had mild winters. These are the first ones that I've had stay alive for more than one season. They make enormous mounds of foliage and multi-colored blooms, covering the soil so that almost no weeds grow. I have them growing as ground cover under Buddleia bushes. What butterflies I've had this summer have seemed to prefer the Lantana to the Buddleia. It's a strange year.

Geni,
wonderful pictures again..
I think you have the Lantana sonset, the one I also have, which has different color, it switches from bright orange/yellow to pink/orange etc..
Whenever you have time go back to the Alabama Forum and read the posting about me moving there, there is a surprise for you.. :)
Take care
Yours
Susanne(SUE)

Gorgeous pictures, Geni!
MissSherry

Love those Buckeye shots, Geni!

Strange summer, indeed. Must be that way EVERYWHERE!!!

Thank you for sharing your photos. I haven't taken many this summer...been too busy with T's health issues but now that she's stopping her chemo (yeah!) I am hoping to get 'on the ball' with other things. :)

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I finally started seeing a few black swallowtails in the air as I was driving, just as my fennel was starting to flower and my parsley was all but hidden by aggressive zinnias. So I trimmed some of the flower umbels off the fennel and pruned the zinnias back into a semi-controlled state. But I still wasn't happy that the herb garden was inviting, so I stopped at my favorite nursery, Rou-Rous, on my way home on Tuesday and bought four more containers of green fennel and two gallon-size pots of bronze. On a whim, I asked if they had any joe pye weed, and to my luck they had three huge pots. It was raining when I got home (welcome, welcome rain), so I set the plants by the fence to catch the rain.

So today I came home in a foul mood, and to improve my outlook, I picked up my camera and headed for the garden. This lady was there waiting for me. When I glimpsed her black wings, I figured the new fennel, still in pots, had drawn her. I got quite a surprise when she opened her wings and let the sun light up her tiger stripes.

I'm not disappointed that she's not an Eastern Black -- I love Tigers. And with all this fennel, I'm sure to get some EBSs sometime this summer. Meanwhile, I looked at the label on the joe pye weed, and there was a picture of a Tiger Swallowtail.

Geni,

How I miss the Buckeyes. Haven't seen one this year and SO FAR I haven't spotted any American Painted Ladies or any Painted Ladies. However, your wonderful pictures are helping tide me over their absence.

mike

An unexpected visitor today: I went out to collect seedpods from A. tuberosa and A. perennis and disturbed this Monarch ovipositing on the A. curassavica. I went back for the camera and followed her around for awhile, but she didn't seem to want to lay and eggs with me watching. She let me get close with the camera, but she had this exasperated look on her face and she moved rather urgently from plant to plant, so I left her in peace. I hope to find some baby cats in a few days. I don't think I'm up to searching for eggs among all those disgusting aphids.

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Incidentally, I have seeds to share. The common names are Butterfly Weed and Aquatic Milkweed. Both are perennial in Zone 7.

I went out to check if the Monarch was still with me and found instead another black swallowtail -- and this one is the real thing, a female Eastern Black Swallowtail. She fluttered around a bit, but she found the fennel that was mostly hidden by an overgrown oleander, marauding zinnias and an aggressive grape vine. She also discovered the new fennels on the other side of the garden, leaving a total of about 30 eggs. Since I have more wasps, grasshoppers, ants, lizards, spiders and birds than butterflies this summer, I collected all the eggs and brought them inside as soon as I was sure the butterfly had gone for the night.
Maybe she'll come back tomorrow. ;-D

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Basking on a grape leaf.

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Getting down to business.

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Nine little presents.