Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Fennel It must be getting close to Spring as I’m starting to see some Butterflies. For the first time this year, I saw an Eastern Black Swallowtail and she was laying eggs on the Fennel. We never cook with Fennel, we just let it grow however it wants in our garden. The result is that we…  We’re not seeing a whole lot of Butterflies at the moment, but we do have a few. The last couple of days we have had a female Eastern Black Swallowtail hanging around the Fennel and laying eggs.  I have some pictures of Eastern Black Swallowtails that I wanted to share. Before I get to that, I wanted to share some information and see if others might have noticed the same thing. We’ve had quite a few eggs and Caterpillars from the Eastern Black Swallowtail, but just as the Caterpillars get to be…  I got home while there was still a little bit of daylight left, so I grabbed my camera to take some pictures of the Butterfly Caterpillars we have. First are the Eastern Black Swallowtail Caterpillars. We have quite a few of these now, we’ve counted around 20, but our Fennel is so thick, I’m sure…  In between digging up some Bamboo, photographing Wildflowers, and trimming some Milkweed, we had another Eastern Black Swallowtail visit the garden. This particular Butterfly was laying eggs on both the Fennel and Dill. In the past, the Eastern Black Swallowtail would only lay eggs on our Fennel, not the Dill, although that is one of…  Our first Eastern Black Swallowtail of 2011 appeared today. It was flying around one section of our garden where the Fennel is in full bloom. I’d like to assume this was a female getting ready to lay some eggs, but honestly, I never noticed this Butterfly laying any eggs in the short time that it…  We’ve had some beautiful weather here in Houston the last few days, with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60′s. That’s going to be changing this week, where we may have 4 days below freezing. And just think, I almost decided I could start preparing for Spring in the garden. We still have Monarch… I thought I would put together some brief videos on how to create a successful Butterfly Garden for my last day of vacation. There are a total of 5 videos, each one is less than 2 minutes long. Watching these should give you a decent idea of how to start (or continue) a successful Butterfly… We haven’t seen any Eastern Black Swallowtails lately. However, today was different. Nearly all the Butterflies we’ve ever seen were floating around the yard somewhere today. The picture below is an Eastern Black Swallowtail laying eggs on the Fennel. We finally got some Ladybugs (3000) yesterday to hopefully reduce this Aphid infestation we have. Last night and early this morning they were really feasting on the Aphids. Towards the afternoon when we started to hit a heat index of probably 100 degrees, they started to fly off. Hopefully they will come back tomorrow because…  It’s so damn hot and humid in Houston right now I think even the Butterflies are laying low. Unfortunately, the pests that inhabit a Butterfly Garden are all over the place, at least all over my place. Aphids. Normally I don’t stress too much about these little pokemon looking critters, but some of my Milkweed…  If you’ve been reading, you know I have lots of books on Butterflies but sometimes books don’t provide all the answers. Look at the next three pictures and see if you can identify what type of Butterfly these might be as I have no idea. First up, some type of Butterfly on our Fennel. Here’s… |
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