Your patience and persistance is paying off. I also have a yard in the Green Valley area of Arizona, which is completely bare of any flowers of any kind. I would love to make a butterfly garden there someday. I'll go back in October and see what can be done, and possibly make a compost area such as you have done.

Suz

Awesome!!! That is really cool that you got a peice of earth to cultivate.

Well, the palamedes swallowtail, also known as the Laurel Swallowtial, lives in parts of Mexico.

I imagine that you will be stimulating your mind learning all the new plant and butterfly species!

Here is a link that might be useful: Mexican Palamedes

The butterflies are starting to show up now in large numbers -- not in my "garden" but in the meadow outside the fence. That's fine with me. The birds like the garden, so I set up a birdbath for them. It's a large, flat clay pot on top of a tree stump. I put some pots of begonias around the base, waited for rain, and voila! Of course, birds don't really need the birdbath this time of year, but they love it in the dry winter.

Meanwhile, I've been delighted to see several species of butterflies that are familiar to me from my Alabama garden, and quite a few that I've never seen before. I have not been able to identify all of them, and I am not 100% sure of the IDs I've come up with. I will be most grateful if any of you recognize some of them and can set me straight. I'll include a few of the pictures from this week.

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Texan Crescent

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An old friend, American Painted Lady

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Mexican Dartwhite

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A cat I found on a thorn bush. Could be Mexican Dartwhite.

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Mexican Fritillary

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Cloudless Sulphur

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Checkered White

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Mountain White

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Funereal Duskwing

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Pale-banded Crescent

Here's the whole collection:
{{gwi:446936}}Butterflies and Moths of Michoac

I still haven't been able to get a photo of the elusive large yellow and black swallowtails. However, on Sunday, I did get a close look at some large yellow and black longwings, which may or may not be the same thing. I would love to see some Palmedes, as I never have seen them before. Thanks for the link, BTG. You know, one of the sites I've been using is the NABA South Texas page. It's amazing how many of the Mexican butterflies are there.

Suz, October will be here before we know it. I'll be back in Alabama and you'll be in Arizona -- perfect timing for both of us. I am a long-time advocate of composting. It adds organic matter and loosens the clay soil in my garden(s) and keeps me from wasting all that vegetable "waste" from the kitchen. It usually takes a year or more in Alabama, but here everything seems to decompose in a matter of weeks once it's buried. It's amazing.

Thank you both for your comments. I hope you can help me ID some of these butterflies.

geni

I think the last image in the second set is incorrectly identified -- rather than a Pale-banded Crescent, I think it is another Texan Crescent. I have seen Pale-banded Crescents, but not as often as the Texans. I'm pretty sure this one is a Pale-banded Crescent:
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I have been comparing pictures on the NABA South Texas gallery with pictures on MariposasMexicanas.com and Google's image search, but I still am having trouble identifying the butterflies. The whites and sulphurs are especially hard to distinguish, but there are others as well. Here are a few. If you recognize any of them, I would love to know what they are.

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There's a definite nip of fall in the air here. Seeds are ripening and leaves are starting to turn. We are heading back to the States in a couple of weeks, and I have decided not to plant anything else here until we return in January.

geni

Things I did not accomplish in this garden:
1. Did not attract butterflies. Not enough flowers, too many birds, and a tall fence made the yard unattractive to butterflies. Fortunately, the meadow outside the fence attracts lots of butterflies.
2. Did not get the lantana growth I expected. There was plenty of sunshine, so maybe there was not enough heat. Lantana plants grow huge there, but perhaps it takes several seasons. I'll protect them from freezing this winter and see what happens.
3. Did not see whether Zinnias will lure butterflies inside the fence. They were about 10 inches tall but had no flower buds when I left Mexico Sept. 10.
4. Did not identify all the butterflies I was able to photograph. But I will eventually!
5. Did not photograph Monarchs, a Queen, or any of the huge yellow and black swallowtails.

What I did accomplish:
1. Got a healthy stand of the yellow-orange daisies established and blooming.
2. Got several strong starts of native four o'clocks established.
3. Planted a fig and an orange tree and saw significant growth of both.
4. Planted two bougainvilleas and both looked healthy when I left.
5. Potted three hybrid begonias and a palm.
6. Established stands of native salvias, spiderwort and cassia. They all look scraggly, but I think they'll get better.
7. Found two large plants of a native milkweed at the back of the property and collected 4 seedpods.
8. Carved a walkway through the meadow behind the house so I can get to my compost pit (moved from the side to the far back of the property as sort of a landfill) without risking snakebite.
9. Photographed and identified several butterflies I had never seen before. It's hard to choose a favorite, but I have a soft spot for the Mexican Dartwhite:

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Your pictures are always so lovely. That's an amazing photo of the American Painted Lady. She looks so regal. It sort of reminds me of a Las Vegas showgirl wearing a tall headpiece.

hi,

your photos are beautiful.
i just started a butterfly garden. this may be a very simple qestion for you, but can you please identify the names of the yellow flower, and white inflorescence for me? purple is salvia i am thinking.correct me if am wrong thanks.

Radha.

Genie - I've been wanting to contact you because I want to move to Mexico for 6-12 months to observe the roosting Monarchs, and other tropical butterflies. I need lots of info on what and how to do so, including agencies I might contact for rental housing; visas; and tons more. Would you be willing to e-mail me back and forth as I try to figure out how to accommodate my goal? I would like to bus from OKC to Mexican border, and then what, I don't know. Don't know yet if busses cross the border or not. I've joined some online discussion groups on housing in the Michoacan state of Mexico. Seems like rental is fairly cheap IMHO. I can pay between $500-1000/month and have my own income (SSD and private carrier supplemental), so I have enough $ to live there for awhile.

I would also like to take my cat with me, and my daughter, who works for a vet, is checking into requirements for him. He's a sweetheart, declawed, and loves everyone, so I just can't be without him. Seems like I recall that you left your cats in the US?????

I want to do this so badly. Am approaching 60 years, and before I get too old, this is a dream for me. I can achieve it financially at this point, so just need to know where to go.

Please e-mail me so we can discuss. Thank you so much.

Susan

We arrived back in Las Cuevas in late December. Although it was early in the dry season, the ground was already hard and cracked. The brittle stems of purple cosmos told me that I had missed a beautiful autumn. Meanwhile, the end of the rain and the onset of cold nights had taken their expected toll on my butterfly garden. The property owner had done a lot of work inside the fence, so everything was trimmed and neat, but one of the lantanas appeared to be dead and the other was severely reduced and sprouting a few new leaves. The fig was leafless, and both bougainvillea had suffered and may die. Everything I had growing in pots was dead. Of the plants I introduced, only the orange tree had thrived in my absence. Of course, the natives looked fine.

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Lantana

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A late wildflower and dry seedheads of a different wildflower

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One of the last of the cosmos

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Bougainvillea trying to hang on

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Dormant fig

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I moved 10 of these little bushes from the back yard to the front, and 7 of them are healthy. They have pretty yellow flowers in the spring and summer.

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This little groundcover attracts a few butterflies in winter.

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My little orange tree shows off its new growth.

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We've been working on clearing the back yard. It was a solid tangle of weeds, thorns and cacti. We found a little apple tree among the weeds, along with three little native eucalyptus trees. Once the whole area is clear, I'll plant milkweed, tithonia and cosmos in beds, and put in more oranges, figs, pomegranates and avocadoes.

Bummer, Geni, about the plants that didn't make it. Reminds me of my garden at school. That view of your backyard is spectacular, though, and I'm certain that you will soon have it all back in spit-spot shape! :) Keep those pictures a-coming! :)

Geni, how's the gardening going and how are the butterflies down in Mexico? I keep checking back to see how your progress is going. I am really excited to see how your are doing. I am redoing my flowerbeds this year to improve my butterfly attraction factor. Please keep us posted and as tdogmom says "keep those pictures a-coming!"

Ms. Faith

Well ... since you asked ... (big grin)
We've finished clearing the brush on the back and sides of the house, except for a little pruning on some bushes we decided to keep. Here are before and after shots of the west side:
{{gwi:446976}} {{gwi:446977}}

We discovered the septic tank hidden in all that cane, and while we didn't really want to expose it, we found that it needed a little work to close off some openings. I'm working on leveling off those berms, and when I have them down about halfway, I'll plant Mexican sunflowers, milkweeds and maybe angel trumpets (from cuttings) on the hills. I'm trying to decide whether to start them in pots or just scatter seed, because when we go back to Alabama in April, they'll be without water until the rainy season starts in June. They're all native here, so they can survive, but I don't know the seasons well enough yet to know the optimum time to plant. A lot of the brush was the remaining stalks of a native purple Cosmos. I collected a lot of seeds, and I will broadcast them in places where I want them, but thousands more will grow where they self-seeded. I have some seeds of tall orange Cosmos to add to the mix.

{{gwi:446979}} I've started some cool weather crops in pots: English peas, lettuce, basil and fennel. I've also planted Datura, Dianthus and Rudbeckia under plastic domes made from 5-liter water jugs cut in half. So far, so good.

Meanwhile, Larry and I have been improving the front yard too. It has a rather formal arrangement of cedars and roses along the sides, with peach trees, black cherries and an apple tree across the back. I am trying to soften the straight lines by introducing some curves and breaking up the expanse of grass.

{{gwi:446981}} The landlady didn't complain when I planted the orange and fig trees in the middle of the yard (but then, she never talks to me since I can't understand much of her Spanish and she doesn't speak any English). She has a lovely garden, so I think she must be pleased that we are doing so much work here.

{{gwi:446983}} One of our American neighbors offered me four Bougainvilleas he had in pots. They weren't doing very well, but they were a whole lot healthier than mine, so I took them. I still have a vision of the back fence covered in Bougainvillea, so today I took a hoe to the grass in that bed. Larry grabbed a shovel and dug down about a foot and then widened the whole bed another two feet.

{{gwi:446985}} We amended the soil and lined the edge with some old terracotta roofing tiles, the kind that are tapered to overlap on the ends. Then we rolled huge rocks into a line right on top of the tiles to form the border. We had brought in the rocks a year ago to mark a deep gulley across the yard and as a backdrop for potted plants. Since then, the landlord filled the gulley and grass has covered the fill, so the rocks were no longer useful. I was glad to repurpose them. Similarly, we had scavenged the roofing tiles last year to encircle a fire pit which we now use as a base for a bird bath (a big clay pot also rescued from the scrap heap outside the fence).

After a morning's work, here's what we had accomplished:
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Oh, and there are a few butterflies here in winter. I've seen several Queens, but strangely enough, no Monarchs.
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G-
I am really enjoying the progress of your butterfly gardening in Mexico. Thanks for the update. I am re-vamping my flower beds here in OK and trying to add more butterfly plants for this area. I will try to take pictures and then try to learn how to post them (this should be good LOL)

Ms. Faith

Spring came to Las Cuevas during the past week. Anticipating a trip to the coastal resort town Zihuatanejo, a couple of hundred miles southeast of here, I pushed to finish lowering and smoothing the piles of rocks and clay surrounding the septic tank so I could plant seeds and soak the soil. All the watering may not be sufficient to carry seedlings through the rest of the dry season, but it had one immediate benefit: It attracted butterflies.

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I think this may be the first Monarch I've seen in Las Cuevas. Although many millions are in the sanctuaries to the east, hardly any come here except maybe during the migrations. I'll be here late enough this year to see whether they come this way as they head north.

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At first, I thought this flash of orange was the Monarch, which had left the Lantana and headed to the puddling station at the septic tank. But when it opened its wings, I realized it was a Queen. The Monarch was drinking a few feet away.

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This Texan Crescent also stopped by for a drink. Within a few minutes, I also saw a small blue and a couple of small yellows, but they were too quick for me.

geni

This is the last butterfly I saw in my Las Cuevas garden before returning to the States in late March. I could see that it was a large black swallowtail, but I could not get close enough to identify it. When I got back to Alabama and took a close look at the photos, I was surprised to discover that it was my old friend, the Eastern Black Swallowtail, whose range extends into central Mexico.
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Gwen,

Don't know how I missed this wonderful thread. I love the step-by-step explanation of your work and trials and tribulations. It makes me think about all the ups and downs many of us have experienced in developing and maintaining a butterfly garden. Please keep up the reporting and best of luck to you and Larry. It sure helps when your important other is involved and interested in your gardening.

mike

Thank you, Mike. Your timing is impeccable. We just arrived back in Mexico July 2, after spending the spring in Alabama. We found significant changes.

Cows had found their way inside fence and chewed off some branches of my orange tree and part of a cedar, but they caused no real damage. The landlord dug a new septic tank adjacent to the one I worked so hard to beautify. He completely removed the berm where I had planted thousands of seeds and distributed the dirt in the back yard. I've walked around looking at the seedlings coming up, but I don't recognize anything that I planted. Overall, it's a big improvement, but it was not what I expected to find.

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New septic tank to the right of the old one; berms flattened, seeds who knows where.

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The new bed inside the fence. Behind all the grass, the bougainvilleas are doing well.

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Believe it or not, there are three lantanas in this corner.

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This was a surprise -- I didn't plant this tomato. It's in the bed with the bougainvillea and lantana.

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I was pleased to see the lantana at the front of the yard had grown.

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My crotolaria hedge is filling in. I'll add a few more plants to this line soon.

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This experiment turned out well. I planted seeds in March and let the rain bring them up in June. This bed is full of radishes, okra, tomatoes, cosmos, Mexican sunflowers and native wildflowers.

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The biggest difference between March and July is that now everything is green.

I've started weeding the beds inside the fence and raking the dirt in the back yard. My neighbor has given me two pots full of tomato seedlings, so I suspect a lot of the fresh dirt will soon be supporting tomatoes. I have to inspect my seed supply to see what I have left. There is much work to do ...

g.

I'm so glad I found this thread - don't know how I missed it!
Your plants are looking good, Geni, and the mountains in the background are amazing!
It's interesting that there are so many eastern NA butterflies there, but I think my fave is the Mexican dartwhite.
Sherry

Geni,

I'm so happy that you liked my timing and message. You have brought us all so much enjoyment with your many FANTASTIC PICTURES ( including your butterfly Christmas tree). I agree with MissSherry, your plants are looking good-better than I expected after all the drought problems in your area over the fall/winter.

I guess you or Larry is going to have to take a crash course (Rosetta Stone?????) in the local Spanish so you can better communicate with your landlord.

Can't wait to see the evolution of your Mexican garden over the next few years.

mike

Geni,

How about an update on your gardening? I'm anxious to see the progress that you and Larry make on this grand project(and wouldn't mind a few more of your wonderful pictures)!

mike

I have delayed posting an update because I have not had much visible progress. I did get all the beds in the front yard weeded, and that makes it at least look a lot better, even though the butterflies don't care. Most of my effort, though, has been in terraforming the moonscape in the back yard. Larry's been in charge of cutting the grass and recurrent canes, which is no easy task since it all has to be done with a gas-powered string trimmer. I'll try matching up some before and after pictures to provide an idea of the changes we've made.

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East side, last winter and now.

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Patio before clearing and now.

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Back yard cactus last winter before and after clearing, early July and now.

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Believe it or not, this is the same view, looking west along the back fence last winter before clearing and now. The bare dirt is the "moonscape," where the landlord put the dirt he dug out of the new septic tank.

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The west side last winter after clearing and now.
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Crotolaria hedge in progress.

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The Lantana is finally filling its bed.

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New Bougainvillea bed in February and now.

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I finally found plants that may have grown from the seeds I scattered around the septic tank last February. Then, again, maybe not. From left, a native milkweed vine; orange and purple Cosmos, Nasturtium, Mexican sunflower (I hope).

For all this, I have not seen many butterflies in the garden this summer. Even Lantana does not attract them.
Still, I know you want pics of butterflies, and I have a few. I have not identified them yet.
{{gwi:447056}} {{gwi:447057}} {{gwi:447058}} {{gwi:447059}} {{gwi:447061}} {{gwi:447062}} {{gwi:447064}} {{gwi:447066}}

The work continues.
g.

Geni,

I wondered what had happened to you. WOW! I'm so glad you did the before/after pictures and arranged them to highlight all you and Larry have accomplished. Your house is rapidly becoming a home and you must sometimes sit back and wonder 'how did we get all that done?"

Keep the reports coming.

mike

We've had so much rain that I haven't been able to do much gardening until Friday and Saturday. Late last week we got a break -- three full days without rain. We've been averaging about an inch a day since we arrived in early July. Even after three days without rain, the ground was still saturated, and we got another half-inch this afternoon.

However (and it's a big HOWEVER), we made full use of the sunshine and were grateful for it. I had contacted Sue Sill, the executive director of the La Cruz Habitat Protection Project, and she brought me some trees -- three Oyamel firs, the trees that the Monarchs roost in all winter -- and seven native pines. We got them all in the ground Friday and Saturday. They are tiny, but eventually they will provide some shade and high roosts for butterflies and birds.

After planting the last four pines on Saturday morning, we took a hike up the ridge behind the house. I had intended to take only the camera, but Larry suggested taking along some collecting bags and a trowel. It was a great suggestion, because I found four types of flowering plants that I wanted to bring back for the butterfly garden. The only one I could identify was a begonia. All of the flowers were growing in profusion alongside a cow path, so I don't think I committed a crime against the environment by moving them a few hundred meters into my yard and away from danger of being trampled.

Even better than the flowers today were the butterflies. Mexican Fritillaries and Texan Crescents danced from flower to flower just beyond the fence; three or four different species of Sulphurs attacked red tube-shaped flowers growing at one end of a mountaintop cornfield; a Gulf Fritillary floated over to investigate; and a Monarch (a big surprise this time of year) went by just above eye level, just passing through. The gigantic Tiger Swallowtails have been a little friendlier lately, but apparently I don't have any flowers yet that interest them. They come into the yard and wander around, but they don't stop. A pretty little hummingbird that has claimed possession of my lantana, but he's way too fast for me to get a picture.

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Mexican Fritillary

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Texan Crescent

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I have not identified the Sulphurs yet. They really like these red flowers. I dug up six.

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The flower is hard to see. The 2-foot flower spike grows out of a cluster of broad leaves like a tulip or a hyacinth. The flowers are pale yellow and shaped like 6-pointed stars. Only two or three flowers are open at a time. The seedpods and the leaves make me think this is a lily.

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A few ferns came up with the begonias, and I was happy to have them.

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The begonias I found are pale pink.

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About 10 days ago, we planted a pomegrante tree. I've been watching this bloom open.

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Spiderwort began blooming this week. It blooms in March or April in Alabama and is tall and rather leggy. Here, the plant is much more compact and robust.

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My prize find -- I noticed seedpods sticking straight up out of the top of what I was sure was a milkweed plant along the highway to Patzcuaro, and for two weeks I worried about how I was going to get my hands on them. In late July I saw the first fluff as we were driving by. Larry didn't hesitate or complain -- he just turned the car around and found a wide place on the shoulder to stop. I ran across the highway and found not one plant but three with mature seeds and I collected them all. The only thing I had to wrap them in was my checklist of stuff to bring to Mexico. I don't know the species of Asclepias, but maybe I can identify it once the seeds some up.

geni

We are now halfway through our summer in Las Cuevas, but it still feels like an Alabama springtime. Mornings are sunny and warm, afternoons are cloudy and/or rainy, and nights are chilly. This morning, my neighbor, Larry Russell -- the same one who gave me the bougainvilleas last fall -- knocked on the door and presented me with several packets of seeds. There was no mistaking my delight when I saw labels for Cosmic Orange Cosmos, Butterfly Flower (a milkweed that looks like it's probably A. tuberosa), Alyssum, Nasturtium, and mixed wildflowers. He had bought them several months ago but later decided his yard was too shady (not to mention full).

I had just the place for them: The moonscape across the back of my property that I have been raking and shaping between rains for the past six weeks. The soil there is a heavy, dense clay, yet the native Cosmos and Nasturtium seem to thrive in it. I planted the Nasturtium seeds along the rockline in the front and the Cosmos along the back fence. I scattered a package of wildflower seeds over an area where I had hoed up clumps of crabgrass, and put the milkweed toward the front, just in front of one of the pine seedlings. I'm sure they will have time to germinate and start growing, but I don't know whether they will bloom before I leave six weeks from now.

The whole time I was hoeing, raking and planting, butterflies were all around -- Mexican Fritillaries, Cloudless Sulphurs, Texan Crescents, male and female Tiger Swallowtails and a Question Mark -- but as soon as I exchanged the tools for a camera, they disappeared.

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The wet area shows where I planted seeds today.

Hmmm ... I must have deleted the wrong photo.
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The seeds I planted are not germinating very enthusiastically in this clay. Yesterday I found three Orange Cosmos seedlings and one Nasturtium seedling. I found three Nasturtium seeds that had gotten uncovered, so I pushed them into the mud. However, I do have some of the native milkweeds growing in pots and I will be able to transplant them in the next few days.

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Romero or Pine Leaf Milkweed, Asclepias linaria

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Seedling milkweed from roadside seedpods. I'll have to wait a bit longer to ID this species.

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And the Brugmansia cuttings appear to be taking root.

I took my tools outside without any clear intention, thinking maybe I would transplant the milkweed seedlings, do some terraforming in the wildflower garden, or weed the beds in the front yard. But my eye fell on the little apple tree I discovered when we cleared the back yard last winter, and I decided to improve its bed. It was right in the path of the rainwater runoff and had gotten weedy.
{{gwi:447096}}From A New Butterfly Garden

I cleared out all the weeds and reshaped the rock border to attach it to the wildflower garden, then partially filled the bed with compost. Finally, I transplanted the begonias and ferns I had scavenged a couple of weeks earlier.
{{gwi:447097}}From A New Butterfly Garden

This is my first Orange Cosmos in Mexico. These were blooming in Alabama before I left in July and will still be blooming when I get back in October. Their season will be considerably shorter here.

Fantastic pictures, thank you for sharing! :)