Butterfly Gardening Blog

Today we went to Shaw Nature Reserve today! The weather was just great – it wasn’t real hot here. I think at the most it got up to 80 or 81.

We saw all sorts of cool thing! A butterfly species I’ve not personally seen before, cool little frogs and beautiful prairies!

Over the next several days, I’ll post the pictures – I would start tonight, but – well – we had such a nice time today, and then, after we got back I was in our front yard and got stung by a wasp or something on my little finger and it hurt really bad. Then when I took a shower I noticed little ticks all over my legs. Got a bit distracted by all that and so now its a bit late to post pictures.

It was too rainy here most of the day to even go outside – and muddy! Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer!

I do plan to start writing here again this summer. I now not only have a digital camera, but also a computer that I can pretty easily get the photos on to. What I don’t have is a camera that can focus on really small things like eggs and first instar caterpillars though. Maybe someday.

If I can, I’ll start writing again on earthday – seems appropriate – which I think is this coming saturday.

Updated: I see that Earthday is actually Tuesday – I’ll resume posting here tomorrow then!

I haven’t posted for a while but I haven’t forgotten to. I ran into an issue with my host where they thought my old MT blog might have been a security concern, but in the end it wasn’t really.

The plants and butterflies are doing well, except the plants the rabbits are eating!

I got some pictures in last night from my film camera. Once I get a chance to scan them in I will post them and other updates.

It’s been warm and mostly dry the past couple of days now – so plants are starting to grow again! I will get pictures of what is blooming now real soon. I’ll get pictures of the caterpillars I’m raising now too – they might be big enough to get them with the digital camera now even.

Meanwhile – look at this: Friday Sprog Blogging: lepidoptery – one of Janet Stemwedel/Dr. Free-Ride kids is interested in growing carrots to feed caterpillars and wants to study them! If I ever have kids, gosh I hope they are interested in butterfly gardening too!

I think I got the picture thing and the paragraph problem straightened out now – I ended up installing an older version of WP. I will add a bunch of pictures, but I want them posted on the date I took them so I will add back a few post dated entries here.

I’m also going to better organize my blog categories – so posts may be moving around for a few hours until I get it straightened out.

— update: I have all the pictures I have so far on the blog now! I think I have all the categories organized right now too!

I just updated the Pipevine page, I plan to go through the site page by page and update everything this summer.

OT – Anyone reading this using this version of WP? It’s driving me nuts – I can’t get it to leave a space between the paragraphs no matter what I do!

It’s pretty hot here already, and the garden is starting to grow – and I’ve already seen a few butterflies.

Of course for those of you who live further south, I imagine you’ve been seeing butterflies for quite a while now. But I just saw my first one last Wednesday. Three actually – a swallowtail that I couldn’t identify at Lowe’s, a Monarch flying across the road on the way home, and a Swallowtail later at home! That’s a lot for this area this time of year!

I’ve even had some Black Swallowtail eggs already! I found them last week, and three have hatched already. I think this is the earliest I’ve ever had them, but I didn’t keep track that well before.

I’ve had two that overwintered here come out of their chrysalis too! A Black Swallowtail (a male) yesterday and a Spicebush Swallowtail today!

This year I actually have a digital camera too! Unfortunately it doesn’t work with either of my computers though (linux and NT), so I still won’t be able to post pictures in a reasonable amount of time. The only computer we have that works with it, is one of my husbands and it doesn’t work real well, CD’s made from it won’t run on this computer, etc. to get pictures on here to post I have to burn them on a CD on one computer, then make a copy on another computer, then use the CD on this computer. Takes 1-2 hours each time, and two blank CD’s. So I still won’t be able to post a lot of pictures until I can afford to buy a new computer. Also, the zoom and macro ability isn’t too good on it either. I still can’t get really good close ups of butterfly eggs or small caterpillars, or a butterfly from a distance.

So if anyone is reading this and feeling rather charitable, you could buy some of my cafepress items, or a plant through an affiliate link so I could make some more money! 😉

I will try to post some pictures as I can though!

I was having so many problems with my old MT blog that I decided to just make a new one – this time with Word Press. The old blog will still remain on the site though. The old blog is here: http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/blog