Butterflies delineate the transition from early to late fall.\u00a0 Choice food plants–asters and butterfly bushes\u2014are in bloom in my garden now, in mid September, and Monarchs and skippers dance among the flowerheads. \u00a0Summer\u2019s swallowtails are mostly gone, but the ubiquitous Cabbage Whites persist. \u00a0A few stragglers remain from the horde of Painted Ladies that descended at the end of August, along with the occasional Red Admiral or fast-flying fritillary.<\/p>\n
Fall is also about the sure knowledge that one day the butterflies will be gone\u2014just like that. I figure it should happen in another week or ten days. \u00a0Many of the Monarchs will be on their way south.\u00a0 Other butterflies will have lived out their short lives or had them artificially shortened by the first cold night. \u00a0Some of the flowers may persist after that, but there will be no more butterflies gliding among them until both flyers and flowers return next spring. \u00a0Mild weather sometimes allows us roses in November, but picking them is a lonely affair without the butterflies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Butterflies delineate the transition from early to late fall.\u00a0 Choice food plants–asters and butterfly bushes\u2014are in bloom in my garden now, in mid September, and Monarchs and skippers dance among the flowerheads. \u00a0Summer\u2019s swallowtails are mostly gone, but the ubiquitous Cabbage Whites persist. \u00a0A few stragglers remain from the horde of Painted Ladies that descended … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[264,255,360,260,359,358,267,355,357,356],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","tag-asters","tag-autumn-gardening","tag-buddleia","tag-butterflies","tag-butterfly-bushes","tag-cabbage-whites","tag-fall-gardening","tag-monarchs","tag-red-admirals","tag-swallowtails"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":581,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}