Posts Tagged: butterfly

by Dale Hoopingarner on August 25, 2026

Empty Nest

Monarch #9, last of this year’s brood, flew off to her Great Southern Adventure yesterday afternoon.  Here she is just a couple of minutes after emerging: I waited all morning for the emergence, hardly stepping away from the cage as I desperately wanted to see the event.  I kept checking every minute to see if I could detect the split.  Glanced away for probably 30 seconds and I missed it!  Caught the last half of the act, she was pulling her engorged abdomen free and then was dangling uncertainly from the chrysalis shell.  From split… Read Article →

by Dale Hoopingarner on August 18, 2026

The Kids are Moving Out

Yesterday Monarch #1 emerged, filled its wings, patiently waited for them to stiffen, then flew off for her Great Mexican Adventure! Today? FIVE more emerged and are either already gone or just resting up for a bit more and will be heading out.  Once their wings had stiffened I carefully had them climb on my hand so I could safely move them to a bush or branch outside, resting up before they head out.  Here’s two of them on my hand! To say I was fascinated is a bit of an understatement.  Every year I… Read Article →

by Dale Hoopingarner on October 26, 2025

Encouraging

I’ve been busily scattering seeds via my “seed bomb” delivery system. tossing these little compost-and-seed lumps into vacant lots, power line cuts, wild road medians and the like. But with the prolific crop I had this year I’ve got way too many seeds to deliver by this method with each bomb only having half a dozen or so seeds glued to them. So I’ve been making up little seed packets in some little zip seal plastic bags – a couple of dozen seeds with a printed insert with some guidance on how and where to… Read Article →

by Dale Hoopingarner on September 29, 2025

Goal!

Last year I harvested and distributed about eight ounces of milkweed seeds. My goal for this year was one pound of seeds and the patch really delivered, yielding 17.45 ounces of seeds! This is a LARGE mixing bowl so the size is a bit deceiving. Volume-wise these seeds would nearly fill a gallon jug. This isn’t the full total as I have already distributed some seeds via compost bombs and there are still a few pods out there (I’ll let the wind distribute those) but this is the great bulk of the harvest. Couldn’t be… Read Article →

by Dale Hoopingarner on July 10, 2016

Size Problem

One of the joys and frustrations of gardening the dealing with the vagaries of nature — both weather and pests.  The vegetable garden this year was decimated by critters, with nearly all of the peas lopped off by a lop-eared rabbit (sorry, couldn’t resist) who snuck behind the wire barricade I had in place.  Corn crop will be at most 1/3 of normal from a combination of seed eaters and poor germination (bad seed?) Flower gardens on the other hand are doing wonderfully. The daylilies are scrumptious – we have a full palette range of… Read Article →

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