Another Autumn

The Monarch butterflies seem to be flocking in preparation for migration. Bushes full of butterflies that can hardly be distinguished from the orange flowers...

see how many butterflies you can spot on the below photo. These pictures are all clickable...

I count 5 orange butterflies... among the orange flowers.

The bushes are large enough that shooting the entire bush results in not being able to even pick out the butterflies...

Gotta love bushes that grow and bloom despite the drought, that you don't have to do anything to protect from the local deer herds...



The lantana also attract the night flyers.





The agalinis are in full bloom.

Agalinis purpurea are pretty, and are host plant to the buckeye butterfly, which makes them an asset to the meadow.

Their short-comings are that they are annuals and strictly Autumn bloomers, and need disturbed soil to come up each year.

Here's an interesting flower, 'Summer's farewell' (Dalea pinnata)

This cool plant has ferny leaves closely resembling moss verbena, which was what I thought I had when the babies initially showed up...

Later, when the plants grew upright, rather than prostrate as expected, I could see that it was something else. These little button flowers are interesting...

The plants appear to be biennial, which coupled with their short bloom time rather negates their value in the flower border.

Caught some afternoon "popcorn" showers

A bit of rain encourages everything.
While the vegetables are long gone, any perennials that surived the drought have bloomed.


These echinacea are a coupla years old, the constant drought has resulted in some incredible dwarfing... of the ones that didn't die...








The clasping heliotrope are incredibly drought proof, and the tigerswallowtail butterfly is happy to feed on this native delight.






Tree-frog onna milkweed Asclepias syriaca... They aren't going to eat the monarchs, are they?




Speaking of which...
The monarchs are back!!
Monarchs take their time getting to middle GA. I saw some monarch caterpillars in the Spring, and was surprised by the unusual earliness of the sighting, I don't know what happened to those out of time babies... these guys are right on schedule.




Always fun watching butterfly mating rituals...















There were no persimmons last year, I'm seeing some fruit this year!