For the love of a Butterfly

Can you believe that at 12:30 AM tomorrow it will be officially Winter....CRAZY....I mean it reached 80 degrees today...Well here's hoping for a mild winter for 2012! I've been working on my butterfly garden recently....and I got a huge surprise over the weekend! As I tried to identify tiny lil sulfers darting everywhere..I caught from the corner of my eye...a new butterfly, flying erradically around the coral Porterweed .(stachytarpheta mutabilis)..I knew instanty what it was... A Zebra Longwing! 

Wow...the first one to visit this garden in the entire 10 years I've been here....It's not that I don't give them a host plant..I do, but I just haven't had one until this day!!!  Passion vine is the host plant of the Florida state butterfly, the Zebra Longwing. That surprise reminded me of one of my favorite Garden/Christmas memories.....Years ago, in my first garden about this same time of the year...there was going to be a freeze and I noticed some eggs on the new growth of the vine. I broke it off and brought it inside, That's when the genius in me came out....I had a baby at home at that time, so I stuck the sprig in a very well watered Diaper....yep that's right a disposable diaper, cut some small slits water it up....and slipped those sprigs right in...worked like a charm...told ya...genius!!!!! Never even had to water it again!  We moved them into a hamster habitrail and kept them well suplied with food. It was our first experience in watching all stages close up and personal in the comfort of our home. My five year old son, Nick, loved it, we watched everyday as they first hatched, then grew, then each, one by one turned into a Chrysalis and then finally, they all reapeared as beautiful black and yellow butterflies. 

We released them on a moderately chilly night that December, amongst the Christmas lights in the shrubs in front of our kitchen window. My son took each out so carefully and let them go. They stayed around for a little while over the next couple days or so, we would keep count each time we saw “one of our brew”. It was a great experience and a wonderful memory! 

   

    Speaking of Butterflies..this is my advise..... If you want butterflies in your garden, first you must determine the butterflies native to your area and then you must plant their host plants. So many people try to lure them in with flowers, which works temperarily, but to keep them, give them what their babies need...FOOD. 

And never ever use pesticides. If you have a plant or flower that is a bug magnet, get rid of it or move it to another part of the garden where the butterflies do not visit. I find that if I give nature time, it takes care of itself. Just when I think the thrips or aphids are going to get the best of the roses in the garden, the first rains appear or the ladybugs come and keep them in check. My garden is full of pests actually, that is part of the great allure for the kids...they just love the creepy crawlies.  As it turns out, it is very seldom that I have to resort to any sort of pesticide. We do rid ourselves of the ant mounds though, and when the occasional VERY large bannana spider shows up,  I ask my husband kindly to remove it from the garden. How he does it is up to him, as long as it goes. I hand pick the hornworm catpillars that devour my Pentas. Even though they turn into Sphinx moths, they will strip a plant in a single night. The Pentas (pentas lanceolata) are the cream of the crop for my Butterfly gardening, they must be protected though if there is a freeze. I believe if  I was limited to one host plant and one flowering nectar source for butterfly gardening, I could be succesful in Central Florida with just Passion Vine, and lavender Pentas.  

    As I get refocused on my butterfly gardening..I will be researching some new host plants and nectar sources for my area of central Florida...But I will surely include my Pentas...Three of which I have already picked up, along with a new butterfly weed, and some tri-color lantana! (lantata camera).... Yea!...it's already getting exciting and I haven't planted a thing yet! Please stay tuned in...My goal is to lure some more Zebra Longwings in too, now that I know they will come here! ......heck, maybe she laid eggs over the weekend....hmmmm, I may have to dig out a flashlight right now and go check for some cute lil black and white cats out there! Please leave me a comment and share with me what flowers you plant to bring butterflies into your garden...or what suggestions you may have for my Fl zone 9 garden...

   Well in a few hours winter will have arrived....and we are still expecting 80 again tomorrow...but it's okay! This is a great time of the year.....! I wish each and every one of you a most joyous holiday season! God Bless and spread some seed ;).....  Janine

A tale of a Passion Vine......

I wrote this many years ago....before blogging was even a thought :) But my sister's first comment on my blog brought the memories flooding back so I thought I'd share! The time period is my first home and garden....I was new at gardening....All I had was a small side yard I gardened in...and it was the love of my life...some of my greatest moments in a garden were there!  So here ya go!

  I’m not sure where my love of gardening began. Possibly from the need to grow something from my childhood that kept me still attached to those memories. Or maybe the desire was always there and that just got me started as an adult. As a child, the only gardening that happened at our home was my father rooting and rerooting different houseplants on the back porch. He must have been way more toleranat than I remember, because I once took cuttings from all his plants and set up my own makeshift nursery in my bedroom. Making a total mess of the carpet. When I was discovered, I thought for sure he’d be furious, but instead he was very supportive, I don’t know but maybe he liked that I was interested in a hobby that he seemed to love so much himself. Than there was the time he planted Sweet potatoes bordering the pool decking, he of course grew them for the attractive vine that flourished here in Central Florida, I on the other hand was totally into the harvest. I dug up each and every tuber I could could get my 9 year old hands on. That led to my first vegatable patch and a small Strawberry plot behind the house. I was all that! Little miss farmer, or at least I thought I was.  I watched those strawberries everyday, so when I saw one half eaten one day, my heart broke. I immediately went into action. That hand painted “Poisinous Berries” sign went up that same day! Little did I know at the time that, a bug had been the perpetrader, and not some little kid from down the street, like I had imagined.  But the real passion that brought all those childhood feelings back, was the desire to grow Butterflies. 

You see my parents had gotten a Purple Passion Vine plant from my Aunt one year. They planted it on the ouside of the screen enclosure to the pool. In one season the entire enclosure would be covered with this incredible vine. I used to pick the purple flowers and float them in the pool. Dozens of them at a time, it was beautiful. The Gulf fritilary butterlies and catepillars were a part of the landscape, and as a child I just took for granted they were always there. Every year as the frost would top kill the vine, we’d pull it down off the screen and then in Spring the magic started all over again. It was about the third year into that my parents realized how invasive this vine could be and soon began the useless effort of erradicating the vine from the premises. I believe that continued for many years. My sister  bought the family home when my parents retired and moved into something smaller. She was determined to remove it once and for all. Thankfully by this time I had a home of my own and was just beginning my first garden on the side yard. I slipped over and dug up a couple of small sproutings, brought them home and placed them on my own fence, knowing very well that one day I may regret this decision, but that desire to have those butterflies back was strong enough to persuade me to go ahead. Though the vine still sprouted at the family home they had managed to keep it enough in check that the butterflies were no longer around.

I was so excited to be planting it, I had visions of masses of vine clambering along the fence. Of course I failed to tell my husband that this perticular vine ran, you know, about every three or four feet a new vine would sprout up all over the yard. You see Dave, likes a manicured yard, nice and neat. Boxwood type of gardening. Formal, you would call it. I on the other hand could see flowers and more flowers everywhere. Because he liked the idea of a vine growing on the fence he didn’t object, I mean how threatening are two little six inch sprigs freshly dug out of the ground. But, that first year my little 

passion vines never became lush and beautiful as I had anticipated. Just weeks into growth, I saw my first Gulf frittilary butterfly zooming around my yard. Now understand that our home is surrounded by undeveloped lots consisting of pines, oaks and a billion palmettos. Yet this lone butterfly was able to find my flowerless sprig of passion vine. She then laid her little eggs and was off. The catepillars kept those sprigs from getting no higher than about a foot tall that hot summer, and not one flower the whole year. By the next spring my own garden had some bones of it’s own, and the season was beautiful. My vines started popping up here and there, from the runners the first years sprigs had sent out. I got my first flower that year, and I’m sure we had several dozens of  frittilary concieved , hatched, and metamorphized right there in that small garden. I had learned the secret to butterfly gardening in Florida. Plant the right host plant and they will come. God made nature a wonder that way. He just sends them where they need to be and gives them all they need.  Now five years later, on any given day, even in the middle of winter (isn’t Florida great that way) there is a fritillary butterfly darting this way and that way in search of flowers, or a place to lay her eggs.