My Yard

Front & Side front gardens

Back yard gardens looking NE

Garden along the back

My yard gives me great pleasure over the year even though the gardens can be s fair amount of work.  I love the end of the summer and fall as all of the flowers are in full bloom and draw in the hummingbirds and butterflies.  Sadly, this has been a slow year for the butterflies.  I have had less than 20 species so far with a Red-spotted Purple coming to the party 2 days ago.  I have lots of Monarchs who having been laying good numbers of eggs.  I have seen about 20 Monarch chrysalis and some have enclosed.  One Monarch was born and his wings couldn't expand - very sad.  I have seen some Black Swallowtails but for some reason even with lots of parsley there are few eggs or caterpillars.  I see Ruby-throated Hummingbirds on a daily basis and sometimes there are 3-4 chasing each other.  It's strange but they don't feed off my feeders at all and only go to the nectar plants of which there are plenty for them.

Red-spotted Purple

Ruby-throated Hummingbird