Coral restoration, tropical fish species, reef ecosystems, native plants, and pollinators.
It was a busy morning at the torch flower bed today! I saw a new butterfly - the White Peacock butterfly along with a pair of mating Gulf Fritillary butterflies. The White Peacock butterfly is a native butterfly in the brush-footed (Nymphalidae) family of butterflies. These brush-footed (or sometimes called four-footed) butterflies are so-called because… Continue reading White Peacock Butterfly
I planted milkweed to entice butterflies and to support an endangered species by providing food, shelter, and host plants for their caterpillars. Last week, I figured out that I had planted the wrong milkweed. Not just a little bit wrong, or kinda unhelpful - I planted a type of milkweed that is actually contributing to… Continue reading The wrong milkweed!
My Beauty Berry bush has ripe berries and I finally got to taste them. They had a distinctly piney aroma and slight piney taste that was a little medicinal as well. The texture was very sweet and grainy/gritty. There was little to no sweetness. But WOW, they are SO brilliantly purple, it was like eating something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I was so excited today when I discovered that a new butterfly species had come visiting the backyard. The Zebra Heliconian butterfly is strikingly beautiful.
For most of the summer, I only saw Gulf Fritillary butterflies flitting over my two passion flower vines and occasionally sipping nectar from the flowers I had planted. Then sometime in late September, I saw my first Monarch! It was utterly thrilling to see as many as three or four at a time nectaring on the Torch flowers and laying eggs all over the milkweed plants!
Erica Lauer Vose 