Quick start Hummingbird Garden

Yummy!! Pass some of that over to me!

And I love those Hydrangeas!

Yvonne's Salvia is positively stunning. I'm going to put it on my wanted list for 2009. I don't have any seeds to trade this year, but with Beckygardener's and Critter's seeds that they've sent in my new garden, I will next year.

I just planted Yvonne's salvia seed last week. Hasn't germinated yet but I am hopeful. I ordered a bunch of other salvia seeds, too, in the hopes that the HBs would like them. We'll see!

Bright and sunny to day and the HBs can't be too far away, can they?!

I saw the first purple martins yesterday. There were quite a few. I haven't lived here at this time of the year before, so each day is bringing more and different birds. I can hear cardinals, meadow larks, titmice, chickadees, and wrens in the morning, although I haven't actually seen them near the house. I did notice that the goldfinches are really beginning to get their yellow color. We've got 6-10 bluebirds depending on who stops by, and two houses we hope will be used this season. We have a hurd of crows that graze the grass from one end to the other like cows. They also eat burned brocolli. I know because I threw some out on the lawn, and sure enough they ate it all. Last year, in July, we had at least 3 HB's, all of them females. Last summer we watched as a big flycather ate at least a dozen yellow swallowtail butterflies. He sat on the top of the mimosa tree and plucked them right out of the air, flying back to the tree to eat them and letting their wings flutter to the ground. I had to stop watching. I'm putting my butterfly flowers far away from that mimosa, which is a magnet for HB's but a death trap for the swallowtails.

Oh how sad, That is the circle of nature sometimes it seems hard and cruel. One of my most vivid memories is of a neighbors Mimosa just covered in swallowtails.

This year seems to be different for me, too, with the birds. I am still seeing the goldfinches. They haven't left yet even though the weather is much warmer and many of them are almost completely yellow. So pretty. I usually don't see them in their summer colors.

I've had birds eat the caterpillars especially the Black swallowtails on my dill plants. The cats must be pretty tasty after eating the dill. I had one dill plant a couple years ago that was just loaded with BST cats and within minutes there were NONE! I was so upset. I think the cardinals got them all. It is a wonder that there are any butterflies at all! I guess that is why they lay so many eggs!

Becky, I know you're doing your part to populate Florida with more and more butterflies in your garden. It's hard to understand why one beautiful thing seems to be at the expense of another, but as HollyAnn says, it's the circle. The passion flower seeds you sent are about 2" tall. The hollyhocks are smaller, but looking very healthy. The tecoma and cleome haven't come up yet. It's 7 days today. I hope I didn't do anything wrong. They are all in plastic salad boxes. I made a bath towell-sized lasagne garden (no kidding, it's about 4 x 3) yesterday with every bit of compost and leaf mold I had available. I'm going to try snap peas in it to get some nitrogen into the bed, and two minature hay bales left from holloween decos that I'm going to plant with peas too. Everything I do these days seems like an experiment of some sort. My neighbor keeps Charlrois (sp) beef cattle. I'm going to ask if I can pick up some cow patties on the pasture they're not currently grazing. That can be the start of my next 4x3 bath towell-LOL.