Thursday, November 19, 2009

Butterfly Garden Gets Trees!

Thanks to a very generous donation from Les & MaryAnne, in memory of their parents,
we have a couple of Wild Olive trees in the butterfly garden.
Additional thanks to Patsy and Garland for our ability to add a wider range of butterfly attracting plants to our inventory.
We added Cape Honeysuckle, a shrub that has brilliant red/orange flowers. Firebush, a very showy shrub.Gregg's Mistflower...a must for attracting butterflies, especially Monarchs.And Mexican Tarragon or Mint Marigold, which is not a mint, but is a variety of Marigold and has culinary uses as a substitute for tarragon.
Smells great and butterflies adore it!The garden is looking great.
Hard to believe after the long hot summer, but what has survived, has thrived.
And now we have shade trees.
Mexican or Texas or Wild Olive...attracts hummingbirds by the truckload.
Annie & I were lucky to find a great price on some beautiful trees...one big, one smaller.
And to the delight of Bill & Jim, the trees were not only delivered, but planted as well!
It was a BIG job!They dug.......and dug...
...and dug some more.
The small tree went in first..Of course we had to pose as if we had done the hard part.
See the real worker lurking in the background? He was shy.
Then the big tree was wrestled in.
Wow! I'm sure glad we didn't have to do that!It takes experience...and muscles!
Ta-da!
The plants are spreading...
...blooming....
...and attracting lots of butterflies.Next we'll work on benches and memorial plaques.

4 comments:

John & Mary said...

Nicely done! We have an esperanza in the back of our deck. It was grown from seed from the esperanza that sat next to the old showers. This plant attracted butterflies by the hundreds this year.

John & Mary said...

I see that our comment was messed up.

Anonymous said...

Sue, will you allow me to suggest that you use engraved bricks for your memorials. The park (textile) we go to in the summer has a memorial wall that have the names of living and non-living members and messages. If this is a good idea to you, let me know and I will get in contact with them and find out who does it for them. Just an idea. I'm thinking walking paths through and around with names everywhere.

SueZ said...

Such a good idea, Anonymous. Wish I knew who you are.