I was in North Dakota for two weeks and returned to find some changes in my gardens. First, my parsley patch was stripped down to the stems. The only plant remaining was covered with Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.
I planted banana trees a few years ago to camouflage the fence plus provide a little privacy. They appear to have grown a few feet since we left!
And there’s a flower on one of the trees! Is a banana stalk next?
I don’t think we’ve had this butterfly before. Or if we did, I didn’t get any pictures of it! After doing some research, I’ve decided that it’s a White Peacock Butterfly. According to the book, it’s quite common in Florida.
We have more Gulf Fritillaries than we have Swallowtails. We get a lot of them every year. I think that they are attracted to the yellow and orange cosmos that reseed themselves. Plus I have passionflower vine growing on the fence that is one of their host plants. I liked the colors in this photo.
I have no idea what kind of moth this is. We seem to have more moths than usual since our return. It’s hard to get pictures of them because they flit around so quickly.
Amazing! Thank you for starting my day off with the beauty of nature.
I’m glad you enjoy the pictures. This is probably the best year yet for the gardens. Lots of sunshine followed by evening rains.
Yes, the bananas are next! There are flowers inside that alien looking pod. Then the pod leaves will fall away leaving little green bananas! Let them get bigger, but cut the stalk off before they go yellow. You should take a photo every few days for a ‘time lapse’ shot. Let’s hope your squirrels don’t like bananas.
Hmmmm….I haven’t seen squirrels in the banana trees but it could happen! I’ll definitely be taking pics as the days go by!