Butterfly Garden, *sigh*

spring, 2018

My butterfly garden started out so beautifully this year.  The stand was filled to overflowing with spring's blues and purples, with just a touch of red for accent. The flowers grew as they always do, then withered in the heat of summer's sun, ready to give way to the season's oranges and yellows.

Except, this year, the summer flowers didn't come.

In years past, the summer garden was impatient with its boundaries, overflowing its designated patch to commandeer the bordering flagstone path and spreading seeds in a wide circle into the surrounding lawn. My then-neighbor to the south called it the neighborhood afro garden - abundant, beautiful, untamed.

summer, 2017

summer, 2018

This year, there are just a handful of sprouts, lonely sentinels standing bravely in the patch of brown.

The summer has been hot and dry, but so was last year's. Should I have watered sooner? Did I pull the not-quite dried stalks down too soon last fall, and thus interrupt the self-seeding cycle? Or were the seeds done in by the long, cool spring, with its freeze - grow cycle lingering long past its usual time? (I'm pretty sure that's what did in the bulbs I had in another bed - by the time I got impatient in late spring and dug one up to check to see why they hadn't come back, there was nothing left but a withered shell of the root.)

I'm not experienced enough with the land to know. The flowers that did come in don't have many blooms, though they do seem to be appreciating the lack of competition for sunlight - their stalks are strong, the leaves reaching gratefully in all directions to the light.

I finally went out a couple of weeks ago to get some annuals to fill in some of the larger blank spots. I know it's too late in the season for them to really grow, but the empty dirt just looked so sad and lonely. I still see a few butterflies about, drinking gratefully from the few flowers I have. The large bumblebees have (I hope) found greener pastures, the small bees have been feasting on the blooms on the mint. The hummingbirds still come by once in a while, to feed from the pink flowers on the bushes I planted to shield my eyes from my air conditioner.

I miss the abundance, I miss my backyard bug friends.

Next year, I will try again with new seed, and maybe, maybe the bees and butterflies will come back. I hope.