http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:52:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Well, 2009 was a bad butterfly year for my garden. Very bad. I hope this year will be better! http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/butterflies/2010/01/11/378/ I hate to say it, but it hasn't been a very good year for my butterfly garden so far. The last couple of years I had monarch eggs on my milkweed as it was barely coming up out of the ground. This year I haven't seen any at ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/butterflies/2009/06/01/372/ I've got some other flowers blooming now - my yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa) and my purple milkweed! Too bad they weren't planted next to each other, I think they would look great blooming next to each other! Hmmm, I think I have some more Echinacea paradoxa seeds somewhere .. ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/butterfly-garden/2009/05/29/369/ My monarda, sometimes called bee balm, is blooming now! I don't have a lot of plants that bloom very early in the spring/summer - but this is one of them. http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/butterfly-garden/2009/05/12/362/ Today I saw a turkey vulture right behind our house, by the creek. It was huge! Didn't seem too afraid of me either. I was able to get one decent picture of it: http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/other-wildlife/2009/05/05/358/ I contacted the Fenton Garden Club recently and asked them about joining. They invited me to their next meeting which was scheduled to be at Shaw Nature Reserve, today. So I went and had a great time! I just wish I would have thought to take more ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/other-gardens/2009/05/04/343/ We went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for Chinese Days again this year. I'm not usually at the garden this time of year so there were different things blooming than what I am used to seeing there. Mostly tulips. In the morning our arbor/trellis/whatever-you-call-it blew over in the ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/other-gardens/2009/04/26/324/ I found some baby preying mantis that had just hatched today! I was able to only get a few quick pictures of them before they all started running away. ( you might need to click on the image to see them more clearly) Here's the egg sack they came ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/other-wildlife/2009/04/23/315/ There's a pond near our house that I stop by sometimes when walking my dog. There are many different birds all around it. Today, I saw some geese - and a nest with eggs in it! Here are the eggs: I don't know what kind of bird this was: http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/other-wildlife/2009/04/23/312/ My one Pipevine Swallowtail pupa - from the only Pipevine Swallowtails caterpillars that I've ever had - that I took such good care of over the winter - my dog attacked and possibly ate. Killed anyway. It was in the jar shown a couple of posts ago. ... http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/wpblog/butterflies/swallowtails/2009/04/21/306/