Return of the Monarch's

Just a few days ago I noticed that the milkweed plants that were stripped bare earlier in the year, had grown and sprouted new leaves.  And then, just a couple of days later I walked by and all the milkweed plants were nothing but a bunch of sticks coming out of the ground !

Milkweed stripped down by hungry caterpillars

Sticks with a multitude of hungry caterpillars chomping away.  This is a good sign because it means we'll soon be seeing a bazillion new monarch butterflies on the Bee Farm.  They are good pollinators and will work with our Honey Bees to keep the gardens well pollinated.  Plus they're relaxing and entertaining to watch while they go along on their day to day business.  Good Stuff.

Ravenous caterpillar chomping away on milkweed

Pure bliss

The Bee Farm is like a full time job for me.  One that I get a great deal of satisfaction from.  The to do lists are never ending and a lot of triage goes into the mix to determine which tasks get priority.  And of course my attention deficit disorder (ADD) is always kicking in throughout the day to pick off other less important tasks.  Oh and this will be my official excuse why I haven't blogged much lately.  The ole too busy excuse.  Hopefully there will be more time in the future for blogging because it's enjoyable going back in time to see how things progressed.

So the other day when I went out in the late afternoon to get a few things done at the Bee Farm.  Then, I found a nice spot in the shade back by the butterfly and bee garden and just relaxed.  Taking in the butterflies and bees of all types enjoying the garden flowers.  Very relaxing, almost like meditation when your mind is calm and focused on the flowers, butterflies and bees.  And then the most delicious smell in the world started wafting my way.  The fragrance of wild honey / nectar from the hives.  It's my favorite fragrance of all and it's hard to describe.  It's heavenly.  With a slight breeze blowing every so often that wonderful fragrance would put a smile on my face.  So very grateful for all of it.  Living life in gratitude is one of the best ways to achieve happiness and internal peace.  It's so easy yet so many people struggle to find it.

Here are the views from where I took in the Bee Farm in this moment.

View in front of me

View to the left

View to my right

To top it all off, the morning was spent walking the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and swimming with my beautiful wife.  Talk about a perfect day.  Just one of many reasons I often refer to myself as the "lucky guy".

Butterfly Love

While gardening today I kept watch on the monarch butterflies which seem to be attracted to the bee garden.  As I mentioned before they seem to always be zipping through the heavy flight path of the bees by the hive entrances, even getting occasionally banged into by bees while flying through their congested traffic pattern.  Several theories have played out in my head why they do this and my number one theory was because I thought they love the heavenly smell of honey that emanates from the hives.  But today the real reason for this mischievous behavior was discovered.

Another butterfly phenomenon that was observed is how two are always zipping around together to where it looks like one may be chasing another.  Which indeed was the case.  While taking a break this morning and wondering what they were doing it all became crystal clear in a moment.  That's when I noticed two butterflies locked in capitulating bliss in the butterfly garden.  I never really considered where baby butterflies came from but now it's abundantly clear.  It explains the buzzing of the bee hives by the butterfly.  Of course it's the guy butterfly showing off in front of his girlfriend.  He's probably shouting in butterfly "Hey check this out ... I ain't afraid of them steenken bees" as he swoops through in front of five very active beehives.  And apparently it worked because they finally did hook up in the end.

I took a video of the two butterflies in the heat of the moment but decided not to post it as we're a PG-13 blog and posting x rated butterfly video just didn't seem right.  So you can just let your imagination run wild ....