Reflections from my yard: the monarchs

(The monarchs also like this purple thing, that's growing in a big pot outside the house. I can never remember the plant's name!)

I was sitting on the enclosed porch this morning (once I'd killed off the population of greenheads that had appeared in there since yesterday, of course), looking at the garden.

Suddenly, this tiny bird appeared, hovering around the blooming coral bells (meaning they are in bloom, not that they have angered me in some way). Before I could even register that it was a hummingbird, a much larger bird (what isn't larger?) swooped down and chased it away.



I'd never seen that happen before, with a hummingbird being the 'victim' (although I've only ever seen a hummingbird in the yard one other time in the 4 summers I've lived here).



Which reminds me, when I posted about the monarchs, I didn't say there were 2 of them. The other one kept chasing the one I was photographing away, but it always came back. This morning I looked out my kitchen window and there were 2 of them on the butterfly bush.

I never saw this because I guess I get up too late, but my neighbor told me last summer that while walking her dog at like 5 a.m., she saw my butterfly bush literally covered with monarchs.



Last year I wrote a story for SeaCoast Scene about monarchs and attracting them to your garden. At a lovely home and garden in Newbury, I learned that they lay their eggs on milkweed. I used to pull all the milkweed up out of the yard - after talking with her, I stopped doing that.

Since I put the garden in, the second summer I lived here, I have all kinds of butterflies. I also really like the little yellow ones, but I don't think they're here yet.

Note that the only other sighting of a hummingbird was also near milkweed (I wasn't so rabid about pulling it up from the back yard).