Monarchs, Variegated Fritillary, hummingbirds and more oh my!

[GH85Carrera]

My wife, the master gardener has lots of plants for the pollinators of the area.

The Variegated Fritillary is not real common in Oklahoma except at the Carrera house.





These are the Variegated Fritillary caterpillars eating on the passion vine.


The adult Variegated Fritillary laying eggs. You can see the leaves are much eaten up, but more food the the cats are still there.






The shows the Monarch caterpillars munching on the Milkweed she planted. They stripped the top of the plant, and vanished off to make a chrysalis. The milkweed regrew leaves in short order.

The bees and bumble bees are thick. Lots of other butterflies, hummingbirds, and pollinators of every sort.



This is just part of the multiple flower gardens. Mrs. Carrera recently underwent shoulder surgery on he right, and dominate arm. So I "get" to help her water the dozen different gardens, and trees. She has one tree that blooms all summer, and another one in the corner of the yard that is about to start blooming. It gets covered in Monarchs and it gets a bit freaky mowing the yard, and having a couple of dozen butterflies swarming around me. I know with certainty butterflies are totally harmless, yet having them swarming is just weird.

[gsxrken]

Nice! She sounds like a keeper.

[flatbutt]

I get the Fritillary every year. I think them prettier than the Monarchs. I have boo koo pollinator plants in my garden but have noticed a marked decrease in bees this year.

[GH85Carrera]

We still have a lot of bees and bumble bees. My wife found a guy within a mile of our house that raise bees. He suspects the bees feeding in our yard are a major source for them. He gave us a couple bottles of raw honey. My wife gave him some cutting of the bees favorite bush. That bush sounded like a electrical transformer from all the buzzing.