This morning I stood beside one of my zinnia garden beds and took these pictures in just a few minutes. An amazing variety of butterflies show up every day here, and I absolutely love it. This is a Giant Swallowtail.
But before I get to the rest of the butterfly pictures here's a little history on how I got so many butterflies to visit me every day. Here is the zinnia garden bed a few days ago.
I forgot how many zinnias I planted in that bed, but it was more than 150 I'm sure. The next picture is how that same garden bed looked at the beginning of March. Yep, it was a row of very nice daffodils back then. (That's the formerly feral cat I named Bob in the first picture back when he wouldn't let me get near him.)
I used the carpet as weed suppression over the winter and I must say it worked nicely. I built the garden bed around those daffodils, which were already here last fall when I got here. I saved my coffee grounds with filters and placed them on both sides of the daffodils. On top of the coffee grounds I put an inch layer of leaves from around the property. On top of the leaves I placed a layer of newspapers. Finally, on top of the newspaper I put a two inch layer of old hay that my cool neighbor gifted to me.
Other than peeing out there once in a while, that's about all I did to build that garden bed of zinnias that are attracting all these butterflies. You can't even tell the daffodils are there any more, but this fall when the zinnias are done I can dig up the daffodil bulbs and sell them if I need to.
I told you all of that so I can now show you this. Butterflies galore every day here at Bobblehead Homestead. Enjoy!
ALL of the butterfly pictures were taken this morning in about 10 minutes with my Kodak EasyShare M883. I cropped most of them to focus on the butterflies.