Early Snow

After a beautiful 70 degree day yesterday, we woke up to snow this morning and so far its about 3 inches. We knew it was coming of course; modern meteorology has a way of knowing these things.

We spent the weekend preparing by gathering all of the squash we were growing. We picked about 12 pumpkins, 30 butternut squash and 10 spaghetti squash. I picked as many calendula flowers as I could. Because this is one thing we really use a good deal of in our skin care line, I covered as much as I could with plastic. The temperature tonight is predicted to be 21 degrees, maybe too low for plastic but I can always hope.

As I worked I watched the butterflies flitting about wondering if they knew of the upcoming frost and what they will do. We've got swarms of Painted Lady butterflies migrating though right now. The local news said that some will flee and some will die. Are they getting their last meal now? How sad.

We spent the morning today outside with brooms and poles trying to hit snow off the the tree branches still fully leafed out. We don't want the branches to break from the weight of the snow. I doubt we'll see colors this year as the frost tonight will probably cause them all to loose their leaves. The coming of winter is always bittersweet. I look forward to the lessened workload without the farming, however, I also miss the warm days and seeing the plants grow. This year it is sudden and I'm sure we will still have plenty of warm fall days. I'll enjoy the lessened work load, but look forward to next summer  and seeing and smelling the lavender.

Butterflies in the Garden

Gardens are a lovely place to enjoy birds, bees and butterflies. Do you want to attract  more butterflies to your garden? Besides being beautiful to watch, butterflies also pollinate our gardens.

Butterflies eat liquids that include the juice from fruit and the nectar of flowers. You can probably attract some by leaving out pieces of cut fruit for them to dine on. Butterflies eat, or rather drink through their proboscis.  Flowers that butterflies love include lemon balm, lavender, fennel, anise hyssop, bee balm, catnip and yarrow. These are all herbs that we grow on our Colorado Aromatics farm.

proboscis

proboscis

proboscis

Be sure to feed the larvae, or caterpillars too. This early stage eats only leaves and includes many vegetable plants unfortunately, but also clover, fennel, hollyhock, hops, lilac and mallow.

Want a butterfly to land on you? They enjoy the salt in sweat, so exercise a little first to increase the likelihood of one landing on you. Butterflies are very active during the day looking for food. At night, they tend to sleep on the underside of leaves or in small crevices between rocks.You can also build them a house that has narrow openings where they can hide.

A butterfly has 4 stages to its life cycle. The egg,  caterpillar (or larva), chrysalis (or pupa) which overwinters on a plant, and the butterfly. The lifespan of a butterfly is only 2-4 weeks, so enjoy them while they are around.  There are 28,000 different types of butterfly species worldwide, find out about species that are common near you.