In which we plant a butterfly garden.

It is that magical time of year: when the perennials go on sale. About three minutes after we first saw our house, we decided that the unused raised bed in a corner of the garden could be for plants that attract butterflies: butterfly bush (naturally), bee balm, whatever else we could come up with at the nursery, and, according to Grace's firmly held belief that we needed something monarch caterpillars would love, milkweed.

Yesterday we saw some snazzy butterfly bush at the farmers' market downtown, and decided the time had come. We brought it home, then stopped by a little nursery we like after church to get some more plants. We got bee balm (the pink kind), hyssop, and some hollyhocks (which we tried to grow from seed once and things were going pretty well early in their second summer, just when we could expect some blossoms, and then the weed whip intervened. So sad.)

We had to start by amending some really unhappy soil. We bought some special transplant soil from the nursery, watered our little bed really well, weeded, and then got out the tiller.




Then we started to plant things. We left in place one volunteer purple coneflower, figuring that the butterflies will at the very least not be offended by it, and we carefully placed our other plants just where we wanted them before digging. We have room for another butterfly bush if we want one. The transplanting of the three milkweed plants we found went pretty well - given that they're actual *weeds* I have high hopes for them.



Our finished butterfly garden is very pretty. Up next: we have directions for a DIY birdbath that looks really, really cool, and next week Gracie and I are doing our mud run.