August 23, 2015
The past week has been pretty busy with working on the bathroom makeover and watching our newest grandchild, Memphis. Her mother has gone back to work part-time at the garden center. Danielle, once again, can keep us up to date on the plants at the nursery. The good news is Showplace Garden Center, where she works, here in Kentucky has the orange milkweed plants I wanted to plant this year! My plan is to add at least one of those plants to the same bed where the butterfly bush is growing.
The milkweed plant, butterfly weed, or Asclepias tuberosa, is a hardy plant that grows up to two feet tall and three feet wide. Obviously, the location of this plant has to be considered knowing the size of it. Apparently, it is not a little plant to be tucked neatly in among some of your other flowers. It blooms bright orange in mid to late summer and is supposed to attract all the butterflies in the neighborhood. Anticipating this, I am excited!
In stark contrast to the Monarch, a couple of days ago this Zebra butterfly made his appearance on the butterfly bush. His poor wings are so tattered and torn, it is amazing that he can still fly. I never really thought about how their wings get so ripped and shredded before. It is hard for me to imagine anything eating these beautiful insects, but a friend of mine reported that she has seen birds biting at their wings! I have never witnessed that myself.
My curiosity was peaked and I checked out a few websites about butterflies. Butterfly Wings and Ten Fascinating Facts about Butterflies had some interesting information on butterflies. After reading about them, they seem more incredible than I ever even imagined.
Did you know that a butterfly has to assemble his proboscis when he emerges from his chrysalis? When he comes out of his chrysalis, his mouth is in two pieces!
He uses palpi, jointed feelers, located adjacent to the proboscis to assemble the two pieces into a long tubular proboscis. Isn’t that amazing?
It seems the butterflies are at the lower end of the food chain and there are plenty of predators to eat them. I am sure we were taught that in biology but I don’t remember. That was many years ago and I prefer to focus on aesthetics! Being a very optimistic person, I like that quote by Brian Tracy. “You are a living magnet. What you attract into your life is in harmony with your dominant thoughts.”
Right now I am trying to attract some of those vibrant, gorgeous and even tattered and torn butterflies to my humble garden!
