this is gonna be long and emotional so be ready,1840s my irish family settles in east central illinois jump ahead 4 generations to my dad as a 47 year old bachelor he marries and haves me.he works his butt off puts me thru college and turns 600 acres over to me to farm,during my youth we have planted 20 some apple,pear and peach trees.he has more time on his hands so after we get out of the cattle buisness he after 40 years of no gardens wants to turn the barnyard into a garden.he can remember some of the tricks his mom n dad did in their garden puts studys n studys old practices.he had some problems and had huge successes thats gardening,live n learn.my boys and i help on weekends ive lost half my acres that we rented so we move to indiana for other jobs,not enough left for two families to get enough income.he is up at 5 am. works till heat of day rests then goes back out after supper,he produces 5 times more than our families can use ,he loves to give it away, he gets a kick out of widows getting fresh veggies.hes well into his eighties now still going strong i help him he tells me pick out landscape plants he pays we both plant.we really had fun coming up with things he remembered as a kid.i take the master gardener program thru purdue university we try new ideas on things.i still remember picking strawberries with him my boys sitting in the patch eating ten one in container he loved it.skip to fall of 2006 one saturday he asked me and the boys to dig his potatoes for him he said his side and back hurt when leaning over new something was up he would have asked for a lil help but not the way he asked,he was taking chemo for his third round of prostrate cancer he did well the other two times not this time.in an out of hospital all fall early winter it had spread into his kidneys and stomach,he ate very lil,christmas dinner he skipped dinner only managed part of a piece of cherry pie for the day not himself,he relished having his family around him.that next weekend he passed away on morphinelabored breathing hardest thing ive ever seen.87 years old wow.so my tribute to him is i keep things going i still live in indiana,garden is in weeds now so ard to garden big on one day a week effort,tried it failed.he left things to my mom but i get the house and two acres free and clear and he left 200 acres of farm ground to my three boys to go to college on and come back and build a house on if they choose.mom gets income in her lifetime then i get it to help the boys then when i pass on boys get full title,wow roughly a 8000000 gift to my boys wow what a blessing in life.so here is the rest of my tribute im gonna expand the old garden its 90x100 now can probaly go 120x120 raised bed lasagna beds full of veggies,meet all my needs my boys needs and give all the rest to my local food bank.i want 0 income from this.if someone wants something specific as my dad did grow it give it away.god has truley blessed my life with great parents,fertile land,healthy kids,my future destiny is to pay back my blessings.no rewards,i dont even want people to know where there fruits and veggies come from god is keeping my scorecard.its what im supose to do.so a quick summary my dad has taught me everything about gardening and lifeand god has provided the means to do so.ty 4 your time

Linda, I completely agree. While I would love to share with her since I'm in CT, my tiny backyard really precludes the planting of most host plants, so I always concentrate on nectar plants which draw the greatest number of butterflies. Do you think she would be interested in the Connecticut Butterfly Association Garden at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, CT? I just got my newletter with a write-up about how successful it was last summer.( I have yet to get there, but hope to volunteer there this year.) Or is she only interested in backyard-type garden? Maryann

While it can be invasive under the right circumstances, butterfly bush ("Buddleia") will certainly attract adults. It may not want wet feet, but it's tolerant of many growing conditions and will probably grow close to the "wet feet" area. I completely agree about you planting Asclepias (milkweed) and Chelone. I think you can probably also consider Asclepias tuberosa. I think that will grow in damp conditions, but it will certainly also grow in drier ones, so it can be planted in any other flower gardens on your property. Monarda LOVES wet feet (but will grow very aggressively). Another plant you should seriously consider (although it will do more to draw hummingbirds than butterflies) is cardinal flower ("Lobelia cardinalis"). Unless I'm very mistaken, you have an almost perfect position for it! It's a beautiful plant when it's in bloom (& not ugly when it is not)!! You also can add Iris (just about any kind) for spring flowers. They won't really draw butterflies, but they will draw you! Oh, try looking into goldenrods (Solidago) to go with the Joe-Pye-weed. The flower colors of the two are complimentary (in my opinion) and there are godenrods that will grow in damp conditions. Butterflies LOVE them. Another flower genus that grows in similar conditions and also blooms in later summer/early autumn is boneset/snakeroot (Eupatorium). Some of the species are blue with a purple cast, but others of this genus are white. I believe you may be able to grow Scabiosa cultivars. They bloom profusely for most of the summer and also draw butterflies. As a final thought, I don't know what kind of lawn you have, but if you are vigilant about keeping all the weeds out of your lawn, you're ruining a perfect opporunity to have butterflies around! There are many butterflies that as caterpillars feed on things like the plantain weeds (both English & also broadleaf). There are also butterflies that as caterpillars feed on clover, and other lawn weeds, too. Don't deny yourself the pleasures of butterflies because of some artificial need to keep your lawn free of all possible weeds. As long as the weeds aren't overwhelming, you will only add to your enjoyment by permitting them to be butterfly caterpillar food. As a boy in the 1960's I grew up in a development way outside of Philadelphia on what once was pasture. Neither we nor the neighbors aggressively used lawn pesticides (my parents put down weed killer during the heighth of dandelion blooming season, but not otherwise, and even then only in the immediate vicinity of the house), and we had many species of butterflies visiting the flower gardens during the summer. I believe the trick to having butterflies around is to make sure the food plants of the caterpillars are present as well as flowers the adults will feed from. Even something as pedestrian and "weedy" as Queen Anne's Lace (ie., "wild carrot", for it is indeed carrot) is worthwhile to have nearby. Black swallowtail caterpillars will eat it, although they will eat your parsley more eagerly.

Larry, My garden started small, and I added to it every year until about 2005 when we started having more persistent drought and our family started spending a lot more time fighting grass fires, brush fires and wild fires. Since then, my expansion efforts have been hit and miss. Every now and then I've added a little more growing space, but I've wanted to add a lot more. This year, I am adding a lot more. I don't know just yet how much more we'll add this year, but the area we just rototilled and fenced adds about 2000 s. f. more. However, that doesn't necessarily mean I will have 2000 s.f. more than before because we are abandoning a lot of the west and north end of the original garden because it has become too shady to grow many veggies. It might be that if I measured the area we are abandoning to the shade (I will grow shade-loving flowers there and maybe some herbs there), it will just about equal the size of the new gardening area out back. My expansion plans include another area of about 1200 s.f. north of the garage. It is the worst possible clay in the world and there is no way we'll be able to rototill that very deeply, so we'll likely build above-ground using hay bales to build the outline of the raised beds and filling in the interior like a hugelkulture bed topped off with compost from our big compost pile. Then we'll put down cardboard on the remaining area around the two long raised beds and cover it with spoiled hay and chopped/shredded leaves. If we don't have too much rain the next couple of days, this is the area where we'll be working this week. I've always let my pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble throughout the entire garden which makes it hard to harvest the other stuff at times because the vines are everywhere, so I'm looking forward to being able to let the pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble without having the vines bury the rest of the garden. If the vines grow outside the fence, I am sure the deer will prune them back as they do when the vines escape the big garden. Then there's the lily pond......which sits right outside the sunporch, in between the house and the detached barn-style garage. You walk right past the lily pond as you go back and forth from the garage to the house to the dog yard. I love my lily pond, but ever since we started having more persistent and long-lasting droughts, it has been hard to enjoy it because once the creeks and ponds dry up, the water moccasins move to the pond. We never had water moccasins in the pond regularly until the drought of 2008-09, but we've had them for part of every year since then. For the last couple of years we've contemplated taking out the pond. After one-too-many close encounters with a water moccasin being a foot or two from a human being, dog or cat, we've decided to fill in the pond this spring. I'll miss having the little fish, frogs and turtles there close to the house, but I sure won't miss the water moccasins. We can't fill it in until enough rain falls that our one remaining pond that still holds water has enough in it for us to move the fish and the water lilies there. Once that happens, we'll fill in the lily pond and plant some sort of a garden with raised beds on top of it. It might be a garden of strictly ornamental plants, or it might be a small potager filled with herbs, flowers and just a few veggies....likely a couple of tomato plants, peppers, and some greens. If we get all this done this spring, that will give me three new growing areas to make up for the northern and northwestern edges of the current big garden where the shade from the adjacent woodland is taking over. Then, there's two more areas I want to develop into new gardening areas, and I also want to do something to change the Peter Rabbit Garden. Maybe I'll take it out completely. It sits directly north of an adjacent cow pasture and is a snake and bug haven throughout the warm season. I've always worried the neighbor's cows will reach through the barbed wire fence and eat the Peter Rabbit Garden's plants, though they never have. In its early years, the Peter Rabbit Garden didn't have those issues with snakes and tons of bugs migrating into it, but as the droughts have worsened, all the wild things have, naturally, flocked to any area still green and moist. This is a year of many changes on our property, and it sounds foolish to be making all these plans and new areas when we are in Extreme Drought, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I always say I'm cutting back, I'm simplifying things, etc. but I rarely do it. I also would like to plant a lot more fruit trees and grow more than just peaches, plums and figs. I now have my eye on a new area south of the new garden we're building. I haven't checked its soil yet, but it looks like it might have some fairly decent soil there. We could fence it off and plant a small orchard there. For the last few years I've put a lot of gardening plans on hold because of persistent drought. I've been waiting for better weather. Well, I don't know that we'll ever have better weather, so I'm just going to go on and expand and do the best I can with whatever weather we get. Dawn