Support Your Local Lepidopterist

Our new home has something I consider to be of an added benefit: an established Southern yard. This was, to me, one of the selling points. The yards came complete with huge, old azaleas, a gardenia shrub, large trees and shrubs of various varieties and, in the front yard, two planned flower/shrub beds. While this is a good start, there is work to be done. Little or nothing has been done to the yard in any real fashion for the past couple of years. And, to quote one of my colleagues, the yard's a hot mess.

I'm one of those obsessive types that can't stand the idea of the yard looking so unkept. It's more than just the grass being mowed (which I've also done several times), but also the beds and shrubs just look pitiful. Even though we are essentially still walking around and amongst boxes in the house, every few days I feel the compulsion to do some landscaping.

The first major project was a bed of lantana. "My" lantana is the ornamental, hybrid type with the yellow flower clusters that can (thankfully) have the wood cut back when the foliage dies away in the fall. Of course, in late May when the flowers should have started their leafing, they looked scraggly and awful. Frankly, the whole bed was one long and tiresome exploration in Southern gardening gone wrong. The end of the bed closest to the street is anchored by a Sago palm (apparently expensive, definitely unsightly), the end farthest by a pine tree and some odd crepe myrtle trees I've never encountered before (and that's saying something). Around the bed are about a dozen lantana plants. None of this had been cared for. All needed pruning, shaping, fertilizing, mulching and whatever else I could think to throw at it. That would be after I raked out all of the pine straw and cones, not to mention the old pine bark used as mulch and bedding in a former life. So, I got to work. Raking was my first task.

After raking out the mounds and pounds of straw, cones and bark (not to mention screaming like a girly girl on more than one occasion when accosted by gargantuan palmetto bugs - this is why everyone should use cedar mulch), I had what resembled a clean bed. This is also when I discovered that my lantana bed was so much more. It was also an Iris bed (at least, that was my thought at the time). And, too, it was a daylily bed. And, it was where someone decided that a few clumps of random liriope should go. I'm still not sure what the thought process was here. These others are INSIDE the bed, and when the lantana is at full-steam-ahead strength, you wouldn't really be able to see them. But, before I just started randomly pulling out plants, I decided to let sleeping dogs, and all that. I'll give everything a season to change my mind, and then I'll do the random ripping (with the exception of the Asiatic lillies by the mailbox, but that another story).

At any rate, I trimmed up the myrtles, cut away as much of the deadwood on the lantanas as possible and, resisting my inner 5-year-old, left the Irises and liriope alone (even though the Irises have YET to show bloom stalks!). As for the daylillies, I decided to make that one work for me. I went and purchased another 6 or 8 more, and created a decided daylily area. I gave everything a good dose of mushroom compost, laid the cedar mulch, and left well enough alone. Okay, I do water a couple of times a week with the soaker hose. But other than deadheading the daylillies, I don't do anything.

The lantana have freakin' exploded all over the bed.

Now I have some guests of the pleasant variety. Butterflies. It's actually rather cool. It all began with a Tiger Swallowtail. I didn't get a picture, as I wasn't expecting to notice anything like that, but after it dive bombed me as I was walking past the bed, I ran inside for the camera. By the time I got back, the Swallowtail was gone, but it started my slow decline into Lepidoptery obsession. I spend several times a day circling the bed taking shots of the various butterflies that hit the lantana for their daily nectar fix. I'm sure I'm creating a lot of gossip for the neighbors. "There she is again, Ed. Out there with that camera, shooting pictures of that lantana bed, or at least, I think it's a lantana bed, since I can't see around that Sago palm. What can one woman want with so many pictures of lantana anyway?"

While on my search to identify my first true, recordable sighting, I discovered that not only are there butterflies, but also skippers and moth-butterflies (not to be confused with moths). This led to another round of shutter snapper about the bed.

Identifying these critters is an Herculean task. I've got a website or two that I'm using at the moment, and I've ordered a couple of field guides to help, but goodness, it's a complicated process. Sometimes, it's not what you see on the 'color' (or dorsal) side, but what's on the 'under' (or ventral) side. Which means, I'm trying to time two different shots: one with the wings open, and one with the wings closed. These are also usually two different angles that I'm trying to get before the thing decides to take off and land again. I'm definitely learning patience, perseverance and frustration management.

Part of the this is illustrated by my new least favorite game, a rather weird nature version of hide and seek. The butterfly flies away from the lantana, I do my best to visually follow it and watch it land whereby I try (usually in vain) to get my camera to figure out what it is, exactly, I want the thing to focus on. Yes, I know I could use manual focus, but by that time, the thing wouldn be not just gone, but dead. Frankly, that's just beyond the ability of my skills at the moment. Not only that, but for every one decent photo I get, there are the 10 I delete as total ca-ca. It's a good thing I have a digital camera. Film would be totally cost prohibitive at the rate I take crappy photos.

And, in the vein of frustration management, here's a photo of a longtailed skipper that I ALMOST got in frame in flight. Almost.

Other than the unidentified insect at the top and the bumblebee, the critters are, from top to bottom, the Common Buckeye, the Pearl Crescent, and the American Lady (dorsal and ventral). The bottom photo is of a Longtailed Skipper, which I did get while feeding. It has a really cool blue body. You can check it out on my Flickr photostream along with some of the other skippers I photographed.