Flutterby

Every spring I think I will plant one of those butterfly-attracting gardens, but I never do. We have a lot of blooming things, as earlier posts have indicated. But most of the flowers featured in the earlier posts are gone by the time the butterflies arrive in our neck of the woods. The white and pink peonies have come and gone. The day lilies are sending up stalks, and the blue lupine is flowering. The trumpet vine, beloved of the hummingbirds, is flourishing on one corner of the deck but still a while to go before it blooms. The weigela by the deck has bloomed, but so far all I have seen around those bushes are various bees. By the front sidewalk, we have coneflowers [Echinacea] like those in the photograph, but ours have not yet bloomed. Nor have the black-eyed Susans and assorted other perennials.

At any rate, the butterfly in the photo is a Red-Spotted Purple. One has been passing the day around the house today, much of it sitting on the lip of the birdbath on the deck. I have tried to snap a photograph but have had no luck. I did find this nice picture online when I was researching what kind of flutterby it was.