Butterflies!

We've been seeing a lot of butterflies around our property lately.

Here's one Mum found resting on our back deck, very pretty! We think it's a Speyeria Diana or Diana Fritillary according to some of the handy dandy butterfly identifiers.

Seems it's pretty rare, so we were very happy to see it! They called it 'One of the Southern Appalachian’s most treasured denizens'. Very cool!


They go on to say...'the Diana’s beauty resides in its striking sexual dimorphism, a phenomenon in which each sex of a species exhibits a different form. The male Diana, like most Fritillaries, fashions a bold orange border against dark wings, while the female wears a deep blue border against her dark wings.'

So Mum got to thinking...'why so many butterflies?' There has to be a reason, so she started looking around the property and who knew! We have three butterfly bushes tucked down near the woods edge on the front of our property. Very pretty!!! We would need some monster hdmi cables to get them all downloaded to our computer!

Mum doesn't have pics of the bushes yet, but we have ones like these! We think they are Buddleia Davidii Dwarf Blue (dwarf because of the leaves, not the size of the plant :).

They are very overgrown and need a really good trim, so she's going try and borrow some tools to trim them after blooming time. They should be much more bushy by next year!

Photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Growers where you can buy them online!