Feasting Visually

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had LOTS of rain this summer. This made my garden produce less than in previous years. I haven't posted many times to the Harvest Mondays. There just wasn't much to report.

I have thought a lot about this post and whether I should write it. But this is the way I decided it. I do have a butterfly garden. We planted it last fall, when my children and I were studying insects for science. And it has been extremely productive for our family this year.

It has produced a feast for the eyes, and full of amazing transformations. We have been simply enraptured watching these interesting creatures.

We saw the mama Gulf Fritillary lay the eggs on the passion fruit vines. Soon afterwards, we saw the first instars of the caterpillars.

Do you see the orange caterpillars among the vines?

Then larger and larger caterpillars. Finally, we started to see this.

Chrysalids from Gulf Fritillary butterflies. Suffice it to say that
they are about an inch apart all along the roofline for 20 or 30 feet. 

Finally, we started seeing some of them emerging. One day, we watched 15 emerge in a single morning!

Chrysalids of Gulf Fritillary butterflies with a couple emerging
butterflies.

We still have many chrysalids, and now our front yard is alive with the movement, the fluttering of butterflies.

Gulf Fritillary on Porter Weeds

It has been wildly successful for us. And some of the plants I planted for the butterflies have also attracted hummingbirds. The porter weed (above) draws hummingbirds even in the pouring down rain.

So, you see, even though I haven't harvested much food from our garden, we have all benefited from the harvests in the butterfly garden.

Hop on over to Daphne's Dandelions and see what others are harvesting.

You Can Always Cheat

If your seeds, little packages full of promise, don't live up to their promise, you can cheat. You can buy plants and plant them.

My spring seeds did great. My fall seeds--not so much. I planted broccoli twice. All of them died.

My cheat (please realize that I am joking. I don't really think it's cheating. I just wish the seeds had done well.)

Broccoli seedlings from the store. I am fighting a little bit of
purpling of the leaves, which is supposedly caused by a
need of bone meal (phosphorus, specifically). I have applied
bone meal. Do I need more?
 

I planted 100 onion seeds. All but 3 of them died. I bought sets at the store. (And forgot to photograph it.)

I planted Swiss chard twice. Only 2 came up. My "cheat".

Swiss chard by the Lincoln English peas. I have 7 more planted.
I hope they do well. I really want these this year. 

A couple years ago, I planted milkweed for the monarch butterflies. All of it died.
My "cheat."

Yellow flowers flopping over with the weight of their seedpods are
milkweed. Watch, I bet the seeds will have me overloaded
with volunteers. But the seedpods are so cool! I will have
to post pictures of them. Do you know that they gave children
money for collecting seed pods during World War 2? The seed
pods are so light that they used them to stuff life jackets for flyers, so they
paid children to collect them. Cool trivia, in my opinion.

Passion Fruit Vines

Passion Fruit Flower Picture from Wikipedia

Click the link for a picture.

One of the treasures of our family is a wonderful couple named Dot Dot and Robert. They take up a great deal of time with my kids and lavish them with loving attention. My children simply adore them.

They have a wonderful garden. I have been asking Dot Dot if I could photograph it for you. I know you would enjoy it, too.

In conversation, I told them that I had read online that Passion Fruits were edible. After a long discussion, I offered to be the guinea pig. I ate a couple of the fruits last fall. They have an interesting, unusual and perfumey flavor, to me anyway. And maybe a bit slimy. I think I could get used to it, but it is nothing like anything I have ever experienced.

So the fruit is edible.

The flowers, Oh the flowers are stunning.  They are completely covered with bees. They have this really interesting stamen that stands up from the flower. The ones at Dot Dot's house are purple with light yellow. After the bees finish with the nectar, the caterpillars take over and harvest the leaves. These are the caterpillars of the Gulf Frittilary butterfly. Passion Fruit is their favorite host plant.

Click here for an image of the Gulf Fritillary.

So the Passion Fruit Vine is also an important part of maintaining our butterfly friends and feeding our bee friends.

She gave me some today. I hope they grow. I'll take pictures if I get anything from them.

(Man, I hope we get some. I would love for my kids to get to see the life cycle of the Gulf Fritillary. Wouldn't that be a cool science thing for them?)