Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Life in my garden today, 1 by hill5422

hill5422 wrote:
Hi Paige--apparently the beebalm is a prolific seed producer. I started my crop this year from seed, a packet I picked up at Wmart for 97 cents. I only used about a quarter of the packet, if that, when I sowed them. I have the rest of the packet of seeds left, somewhere in the greenhouse. Which reminds me, weren't you the one who was interested in some of my bicolor gaillardia seeds? The gaillardia blooms look like a double fanfare. I have some seed left in the original packet, plus I will be collecting seed from my gaillardia this year too. I am afraid that I never found anymore at Wmart. I would imagine that by the end of this season or at a plant swap or roundup, we'll have plenty of seeds or plants to share and swap with. Hubby and I are discussing attending the Dallas swap and the Texas RU.

Ok, you had asked me about Hover fly sizes. When I posed this question to hubby he said that Hover flies have a pretty good size range from teeny-tiny to upwards of 3 inches. I can't recall seeing a 3 inch Hover fly (that's pretty BIG), so I'll have to get him to give me some specific examples of Hover flies that large. Of course, he could have told me upwards of 1 inch and my memory has blown it out of proportion to 3 inches. I'll double check. Didn't want you to think I had forgotten your question.

Here's a pic of my beebalm blooming away today. Can you spot the dayflying sphinx moth? I was trying to get his/her picture, but according to this link, even a 1/3000 of a second speed barely freezes the wing motion!

http://www.odolep.com/Moths/SPHINGIDAE/amphion_floridensis.h...