Cricket, I don't think you will ever need to plant v. bonariensis again. Mine came up everywhere last year.

That is a pretty cosmos. Some years mine reseed and some they don't.

Let's hope both of yours do this year.

It's nice to look at a pretty, colorful picture after all these awful grey days we have been having!

Gld - Is it invasive? I had four or five plants that were blooming last year so I may have more seedlings than I want.

I was hoping some more people would have photos to post. Here's a couple more of mine:
This is delosperma 'Stardust' that I planted from seed last spring. It's perennial but doesn't like soggy soil so I'm curious to see whether it returns.

And a couple unnamed sunflowers that volunteered from birdseed.

I had a plastic container sitting in my kitchen with three swallowtail chrysalises in it when we had our house fire last August. I didn't have much hope for them because of the heat which even melted a little TV sitting on our dining room table, but two of them hatched out after a few days. I took a picture of one them. My hands were filthy since we'd been going through stuff all day and writing up inventory. This guy doesn't know how lucky he is to have survived the fire and fire hoses.
Smokey the Butterfly:

That is just amazing. Christie, I didn't realize how much damage you had. Was it just the kitchen?

Christie: I remember how much you love butterflies! I'm jealous that you got to actually hold the little beauty! We're supposed to be in "dry" season right now, which means butterflies for us here, but it's been unusually rainy for the past month now...butterflies are hiding.

When I was working in Pennsylvania, we had a store event and I ordered 1,000 butterflies for a release..Half monarchs and half fritalliry (sp?)... When the time came for the release, it was amazing!! Imagine a "cloud" of monarchs shooting up into the air at once... The fritilliry guys just went straight to the grass. The crowd was in awe and the faces on the kids would give you goosebumps!

We staged a bunch of butterfly friendly plants around the area of the release and sprayed the area with water. The poor things were so hungry after their journey that the flocked to the plants! What a great photo event for the crowd! They had a chance to come up close and photograph the butterflies feeding and the butterflies were so hungry and dehydrated they didn't care..

After the feeding they flew away happily ... I like to think that today, there are a bunch of new generation flying around the fields of Gettysburg, PA just because of me... Wouldn't that be nice???

The fire was just in the kitchen but we had smoke damage through the whole main level - not as much smoke damage in the basement but they still had to do a lot of cleaning down there too. Here's the kitchen where the stove was sitting. They had pulled it out and put it in the back yard.

{{gwi:1107827}}

We've moved back in now and everything is nice and new. I don't have a picture of that yet.

Fourseasons - I bet those butterflies did lay a lot of eggs. That would've looked so amazing.

When working on my Wisconsin Master Gardener project, I developed a web page it help identify the prarie species and herbaceous forest species. Many of them also grow here. If anyone wants to see it, visit the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Prarie & Herbaceous Forest Species of Wisconsin

pomonaflower, I really like your page. I like the way you have it all spelled out there. I have been trying to find something like that for mo. All I find are pages that tell very little or refer you to yet another page. Doing research or my new project.
Bonnie