The sun shines for a shorter time each afternoon and I am now daily bombarded in my garden with bright flashes of orange and silver, yellow and white, black and orange. The autumn butterflies have returned. Not only that but there are caterpillars on every stem and stalk of the yellow cowpen daisies, webbed nests in the hollyhock leaves, and giant holes in the sweet potato leaves.
The butterflies flip and flirt in the wind like falling leaves then dash to dodge the cats who jump in anticipation of finally catching one. The zinnias have grown as high as my waist and are colored much like the butterflies in bright oranges and pinks, whites and yellows, reds and salmons. The butterflies light on these and pace back and forth in search of nectar, in search of mates, or in search of a safe place to lay their eggs to perpetuate their existence.
It is a great mystery to watch them in this first leg of migration to the far reaches of Texas and even south into Mexico and beyond; and it is an equal mystery when they come home again to repeat the process each year.
I am laying the pumpkins in the compost heap. They were big and beautiful and fat with fall promise as pies and jack o’lanterns. Then with the butterflies came the squash bugs. Squash bugs look just like pumpkin seeds as they bore holes into the yellow flesh and scar the outer rind with trails of destruction. The pumpkins have deflated.
But as sad as I am about my pumpkin patch disaster, I am also cheered by the butterflies.
The butterflies pictured above are a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly (Agraulis vanillae)–orange with silver spots, and a butterfly that kept its wings so tightly closed that I couldn’t identify it and a monarch.
QueenRight Gardening 