The "Constant- Not-So-Constant-Butterflies are Back!

I believe last year, just about this time, I wrote a blog on the “constancy of butterflies” for truly, the first year I was here, there wasn’t a month that passed that didn’t feature some species being omnipresent in the yard.  Then, this year, when I was all set to lay out the plates of smashed bananas for the Red Admiral butterflies, I was disappointed to find only a handful were about.  Summer slipped by with Pipevine Swallowtails skittering about the ground looking for pipevine to lay eggs on, but no where near the numbers that had been present that first summer.  So, earlier this year I wrote about the NOT so constant butterflies.

Ah, but I spoke too soon, for today, while cutting grass, I noticed the locquat tree was in bloom, and was once again it is THE hang out spot for several different species of butterflies.  Plus the tree was swarming with bees, beetles, and those flies that want you to think they are bees.  What an entomological bonanza!

To be honest, butterflies have been abundant for the last few weeks.  We had a huge rain a three weeks ago now, as happened last year, there was an explosion of snout butterflies, flying low, flying high, flying in butterfly squadrons seemingly from north to south, although they don’t really migrate,  they surely appeared to be heading somewhere together.  The Queen butterflies that I also have written about were back feasting on the blue mist flowers, and mixed in with them, on occasion, were a few, a very few Monarchs.  They are sadly said to have been at their lowest numbers ever this year in Mexico. 

It was a delight to see them all, yet they have once again set me back on any sense of Thanksgiving and Christmas being on the horizon.  I had worked so hard to convince myself it was “peanut butter ball making” season this morning, playing Manheim Steamroller and pretending the gray clouds had a promise of snow in them.  But then, out I went to cut the grass, and with the air alive with butterflies, I have been transported back to a summer frame of mind.  And the sun is out.  And it is climbing into the 80’s.  What's a person to do but go with the butterfly flow?  In a month I will be in Maine and I will have no trouble at all imagining I am at the North Pole!