Black Swallowtail Butterfly Larva

Have you seen these caterpillars in your garden?

These are pretty Black Swallowtail butterfly larva  that recently hatched on my dill and fennel, which are both primary food plants for this species. Without these specific plants, the caterpillars will die and no butterflies will be produced.

To preserve a colony of black swallowtails in your yard, consider planting a patch of dill or fennel away from the main garden as food for these flying flowers. That way, you can relocate destructive caterpillars found on garden crops to those in the butterfly plot.  If you like butterflies, you might also like to read my article Flying Flowers: The Beauty of Butterflies.

Enjoy!  ShowMeOz.Wordpress.com

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Floating an Ozark River

By Jill Henderson – Show Me Oz –

This morning Dean and I were having our morning coffee and watching the news, when the weatherman casually mentioned that the temperature today will be dangerously hot with a heat index of around 105° F.  Dean looked across the table at me scratching myself bloody from all the new chigger bites I acquired this week and thoughtfully suggested we hit the river for a cool, bug free day of floating.  I was up and in my bathing suit before the last words came out of his mouth.

Get Back to the Garden

By Dean Henderson – Left Hook –

Urbanization could well be the most dangerous trend on the planet. Cities are designed by the matrix, for the matrix and of the matrix.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited different countries and witnessed the misery and plight of the urban poor in sharp contrast to the lives of happiness and relative ease I’ve seen among the rural poor in those same developing nations.  It’s the same here in the Ozarks.

Perceiving Patterns in Nature

By Sara Firman – Diving Deeper

“The failure to perceive order and structure in and unknown city can upset a visitor in the same way that an apparently homogeneous forest can be completely confusing to an unobservant wanderer.” – Landscape: Pattern, Perception and Process by Simon Bell

The Birth of Summer

By Jill Henderson – Show Me Oz –

June is the traditional, astrological, and physical birth of summer.  In June, you can witness the stately elderberry unfurling its huge white flower umbels to the blue sky, or wander through dense blackberry thickets filled with ripening fruit.  Somewhere in the deep, shady woods the wild turkey hen lays her clutch of eggs in a neatly cloaked bowl of leaves and sticks, female deer give birth to spindly spotted fawns and golden fox kits are born in shallow dens.  June is the month with the longest day and the most violent thunderstorms.  It is that unique combination of warmth, moisture and long sunlit days that stoke the fire of creation.  In June, life rushes to complete yet another circle in the endless journey of seasons.