I'm just a stone's throw south of you in N. VA and I found that the numbers were low early in the season but definitely picked up towards the end of summer and early fall. We have a nice grove of common milkweed but decided to add A. tuberosa and A. incarnata this yr. We had cultivars of both and the monarchs "swarmed" (relative term....relative to seeing only 1 last yr)this year. Unfortunately, they arrived fairly late and we are up on a mtn where temps drop much more quickly than they do for the surrounding area....we have 2 smallish monarch cats still going strong on the milkweed which is also still going strong and temps are supposed to fall into the low 30's tonight! One (somewhat) positive note I might add is that I have found many insect populations took a hit last winter....this is positive in that a reduction in number of butterflies is not necessarily an indication that the butterfly pop by itself is declining but rather a "bump" in the regular flow of things. I noticed slug, tick and marmorated stinkbug pops have dropped dramatically this yr where we are...so it's not all so bad :)

I was driving through Wisconsin last week and was really surprised to see Monarchs so far up north this late. I'm very new to butterfly admiration, but...shouldn't they be heading south by now?
Kristi