First swallowtail ever in my garden.

I have planted and planted butterfly loving perennials and finally yesterday - a swallowtail visited. This year the monarchs are finally here regularly. I spied wild milkweed at the back of my property, which help enormously. The swallowtail came to my coneflowers. I was so excited. I, of course, spotted Japanese beetles for the first time on my hardy hibiscus. grrrr. Good with the bad I guess. ha

Congrats!!

NIce on the ST bad on the beetle! LOL!

Up here in Wisc, I see a lot of Swallowtails... one was black with yellow -- one like i'd never seen before...dont see many Monarchs...but A LOT of swallowtails. I have one bed specifically with butterfly plants. I need an herb garden now.

GK & TCS....... Take a look at the butterflies here....some may be in your areas. The list of host plants is there also and will bring butterflies to your yard even more than the nectar plants. http://www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterfly%20Gardening/Host%20Plants%20by%20Butterfly%20Species.htm

thanks Sheila!! I think mine was a "Giant"

i'd seen Black with a bit of blue, but not the way the Yellow was... it was gorgeous.

we have mostly the Tiger SwallowTails here.

great web site you linked to.

Terese

Yes, if you want to see the entire site, here is the link... www.dallasbutterflies.com

I have seen more tiger swallowtails now as the month has progressed. There were two that were flying around each other like they were caught in a mini tornado. mating? or scwabbling over territory? I just sit on my patio and there is so much going on the garden. I had planted two milkweed (the pretty orange flower milkweed) and there have been monarch caterpillars on them - first time. They are voracious! I love it. They just stick to the milkweed and eat eat eat. I didn't realize how big they are! We have had a lot of rain here this year and my Joe Pye Weed is about 6-7 feet tall and the monarchs really love them. I think I am going to get some more milkweed and tuck a few here and there throughout the garden. My Japaneses beetle problem is very upsetting but I have innoculated my lawn with Milky Spore and dug up my three non-performing rose bushes. Hopefully the MS will help.

The pretty orange milkweed is butterfly weed I mentioned in my previous post. I went to the link Sheila_FW provided and noticed the Monarchs favorite foods and butterfly weed jarred my feeble memory. ha. I planted it last year and kind of forgot about it. I remember last year I noticed something ate all the pretty flowers and was kind of irritated. I didn't see caterpillars on it nor any butterflies. I thought butterflies would flock to it not realizing it is a caterpillar food. Rookie me. So now I enjoy seeing the leaves decimated by caterpillars. The butterfly weed came up really late and I actually thought it didn't make it. I almost dug it up and when I pushed back the mulch a bit, I noticed it was just starting to wake up. Glad I didn't dig it up.

GKay....we all learn as we go....I am sure I have killed a lot of butterfly cats with chemicals in the past before I got on DG and begin really learning what they were. I am so glad kids are learning more in school about raising butterflies etc than we did when I was young.