Building for butterflies

My "rock outcrop"

I checked out the Fall Plant Festival at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center over the weekend and walked away with almost a dozen native plants and a couple of ideas for my own garden.

We first walked around the center and stumbled across the butterfly garden. Lately, I've been especially interested in planting for the butterflies, so this was an area I lingered in. There was one spot that had been built up with rocks and soil and other plants. The placard said the rocky outcrop was great for giving butterflies a sunny, dry area to hang out.

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Really cool insect site

This is a Monarch butterfly, which also loves the Gregg's Mistflower.

I found the COOLEST website the other day while trying to identify that little worm that was devouring my bean plants.

Whatsthatbug.com is site full of photos and letters from people who have found interesting, creepy and weird bugs and need help identifying them. The folks at What's that Bug? do the research and even label some bug encounters as "unnecessary carnage."

I found myself cruising the site for a few hours looking at photos or caterpillars and butterflies -- not even scratching the surface of all that's on the site.

And I love the message -- learning to appreciate the beauty of insects and other creatures, rather than just mindlessly killing what we don't understand.

It was while look through What's that Bug? that I finally identified a butterfly that has been hanging out in my front yard by the dozens for the past several months. The Queen butterfly has some of the same markings as a Monarch on the underside of its wings, but when it spreads them out, you can really see the difference.

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Name that worm

I don't know what kind of larvae it is, but it sure likes my bean plants.

I've been keeping a close eye on my bean plants for the past week after noticing something had been eating them.

One day I found this (the worm in the photo on the right). Well, they were actually a little smaller (I guess they grew since I first discovered them). They were on every leaf, but I had to look really carefully for them because they had curled an edge of the leaves over themselves and made a little tunnel to hide in.

They had made mincemeat of the leaves.

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