Butterfly bushes work!

[mnhtnbb]

Yellow swallowtail enjoying my dwarf butterfly bushes in the garden late this afternoon.



Yarrow behind the butterfly bush

[Deuxcents]

1. Your visitors are beautiful and so are your photos 🦋

[mnhtnbb]

12. Yes, they are!

I hesitated to go out with my camera because the sun was still so bright, but I'm glad I did.

[Silent Type]

2. Nice shots. My grandmother had a garden with those flowers. Hundreds of Monarchs back in 1950s.

[mnhtnbb]

11. I once saw hundreds of Monarchs

in eucalyptus trees on the crest of the canyon where we lived before moving from California in 1989. It was a spectacular sight!

[HAB911]

3. Excellent!

[mnhtnbb]

13. Thanks!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Wow, those are great photos! You planted wisely, my dear mnhtnbb. Lucky butterflies, you and us! ♥ nt

[mnhtnbb]

15. The butterfly bushes

have just started blooming in the last week or so. They should bloom all summer, so I hope to see more butterflies!

[Grumpy Old Guy]

5. Wonderful photos.

I need to get some of those plants.

[mnhtnbb]

16. Mine are planted by my hummingbird feeders

Hummers like them, too!

[BumRushDaShow]

6. That they do!

I have a "Miss Molly" one. It's not blooming yet though (still somewhat early still) but I see some buds forming.

Swallowtails are great and did guess correctly the (red) yarrow! I get the black swallowtails more for some reason.

[mnhtnbb]

10. The black ones are more rare here

And when they do visit, it's almost impossible to get shots of them because they don't stay in place feeding for more than a few seconds. This yellow one was also flitting about rapidly.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. I have some tall (or "cut leaf" - Rudbeckia laciniata) coneflowers that are mid-late summer bloomers

and the swallowtails + the monarchs do like those. I found they reseed themselves pretty efficiently too so I get them popping up in all sorts of places!

[mnhtnbb]

17. I have volunteer wildflowers

popping up in lots of places! Last week I transplanted about 7 of them into my wildflower 'space'.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Nothing better than "free plants"!

[mnhtnbb]

21. Indeed!

Two years ago I scattered a packet of multiple types of wildflower seeds in a bare space in my courtyard. So far I've had many blanket flowers, some coneflowers, a few daisies, and also some black eyed Susans. The American gold finches come now to the wildflowers all summer long to eat from the blooms that go to seed. I've definitely gotten my money's worth from the $9.95 seed packet!

[58Sunliner]

7. Lovely. I hope to see more in my garden.

I had caterpillars in my bronze fennel. Where did they go?

[japple]

8. Yellow swallowtails are frequent visitors in my yard. They seem to really like the Sequoyah viburnum

that is one of the earliest bloomers. Try as I might, I've never been able to get pictures as good as yours. Congratulations!

[mnhtnbb]

18. I took about 40 shots

And these were my favorite 3. It's very hard to get a good shot of a subject which won't hold still for more than a couple of seconds!

[surfered]

9. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. The collective noun for a group of butterflies is kaleidoscope

[mnhtnbb]

22. Kaleidoscope!

I love it!

[AllaN01Bear]

20. wow.