Today’s blog is going ramble a bit, with the theme, “What is in my yard today?” I’ll follow up on a few previous blogs, and I’ll take you on a tour of weeds, wildflowers, butterflies, and a few random other things I captured with my camera as I wandered my property this afternoon. While it may not have a cohesive theme, I’ll try to drop some interesting tidbits along the way. So off we go!

Remember those two quick-and-easy flowerbeds I built to save my transplants this fall? Well, they are both thriving, and, so far, weed free. The lovely pink flower in the cinderblock bed is a penstemon, visited daily by my ruby-throated hummingbirds. Penstemons typically bloom once in spring each year, and then they are done, but it’s quite a show while they are blooming.

Penstemon.

Our Eastern phoebes successfully raised two young. It was a bit of a struggle at the end because, for reasons that weren’t quite clear to us, one of the chicks kept falling out of the nest. We had to check to ensure there wasn’t a baby bird on the porch every morning before opening the door. Adult birds are very devoted parents and don’t care that the chick has been touched by a human, so we’d just pick Jr. up and plop him back in the nest on days when he’d taken a tumble. After a week or so, Jr. and sibling finally fledged for real. It was a relief for everyone – human and bird, I’m sure – to get the babies off the porch and into the trees.

At my new house, I don’t have a planted wildflower meadow. But I do have an unmowed field that, currently, has some lovely wildflowers in it. Some people would consider these to be weeds, such as the vetch, but many weeds are host plants for butterflies. And this field was alive with motion: insects, bees, butterflies, even a snake. At night, it is aglow with fireflies.

My beautiful weed field.

Variegated Fritillary on vetch.

Silver-Spotted Skipper on vetch.

Along my driveway, I noticed several spots where butterflies were mud-puddling, or sucking up minerals, after it rained this morning. Keeping wet, muddy spots in the yard is actually a good strategy to help and attract butterflies, especially when it gets hot and dry in summer.

Red Admiral butterfly puddling on my driveway.

This coreopsis has been a butterfly magnet this spring. It seems to be a favorite for Silvery Checkerspots. One day last week, I counted ten of them on the plant at the same time, until a phoebe swooped down and caught one for dinner. And then there were nine…

Silvery Checkerspot butterflies on coreopsis.

I’ll leave you with a picture of this rose. I don’t know that roses are especially good for wildlife, but seeing them in my yard is certainly good for my soul. I wish I could share the scent with you, as well. Exquisite!