Hatching Butterflies

When planting our vegetable garden this year, our first, we decided to add some dill just for the butterflies!  Black Swallowtails use dill as a host plant.  I only planted one plant, thinking we'd be lucky if any butterflies found it.  Would you believe we had 14 caterpillars all on that one plant?  Needless to say, they decimated the plant and ate it down to absolutely nothing.  We plucked a few caterpillars off the dill and placed them in a safe place on our patio to go to chrysalis and hatch to butterflies.

Gorgeous, huh?  Needless to say, next year we'll be planting more dill!  We placed her out on the black-eyed susans to dry her wings and find her way around the garden.

I LOVE butterfly gardening!!!