Finally!

I love butterflies, and grow quite some plants that butterflies love.  But for some reason, up to recent months, I hardly saw butterflies visiting my garden.  The most popular one I saw was white peacock butterfly.  Even when I occasionally spotted some butterflies visiting my garden, I either did not have camera in the hand, or just not fast enough to got some good shots of them.

Fortunately, this past weekend, I had luck to see two butterflies in my garden, and out of more than a couple dozen of blurred pictures, I indeed had some worth posting.  Finally!

I started from one milkweed plant over one year ago. It serves as Monarch butterfly’s host plant, and often seen being chewed to the bare sticks.  Now this one plant has so many volunteered seedlings popping up from here and there.  I kept another four in the ground to let them grow since they are in good locations, the rest of them will be pulled out or given away.  I was excited to see monarch caterpillars on them early this year, and even more excited to see the monarch butterflies finally visiting my garden!  (Update:  Floridagirl pointed out that the below two images  are indeed Queen Butterfly, not Monarch butterfly.  Thanks, Floridagirl!)

This gulf fritillary butterfly actually landed on lots of my giant Zinnia flowers, but none of those pictures were coming out clear!  I ended only have this one on the hibiscus leaves.  Yes, I am asking too much, not only a butterfly, but also on a beautiful flower with a perfect steady pose for me??  I should not be too greedy!

Some other things going on in my garden. 

This desert rose (Adenium obesum) is always one of my favorites that requires little attention from me.  I often wonder why I don’t see many Florida bloggers post this plant since for me it is such a easy and beautiful plant, blooming almost year around, with Spring being its peak time.  I only brought them against the house wall in those below 40 days in the past winters, otherwise they are in the full sun all year long.  They really did very well in the past two winters even they are considered tropical plant.

The other day, I spotted two long bean-like things growing from the branch.  Those are actually its seed pods!  I actually already started some from seeds my friend gave me, and wonder how long it will take for them to bloom from seedlings. I will try to collect these seeds by wrapping a plastic bag around it, so that the seeds will not fly away in the wind when the pod pops open.

First Canna lily flower.  It is late this year, maybe I need give them a little more sun.

Several Dendrobium orchids are blooming again in my garden.  I often think I should have fertilized my orchids more often, but they still surprise me with flowers from time to time.  Maybe they will reward me more flowers if I feed them a little bit more?

I hang this one on the tree in the front yard, and now I can see four flower scrapes from far away every day I come home.

The following one was started from a cutting two years ago, and this is first time it blooms.  The original color is light purple, and I surprised to see now the flowers are in white with some purple in the center.

The one is called “Blue Fox Tail”, in my favorite blue/purple color!

Don’t you think these purple/blue colors are so soothing cool to the eyes in this hot hot summer days?