Awww.....toady love. You are blessed and I am sure you will get a frog in due time. Great pics! Lisa

MeMo...my squash plants are just about in my flower borders, and so that doesn't seem to have helped. Last year and the year before I got zucchini squash so this is the first year I have had this problem. I just noticed yesterday that late in the day, my Butterfly Bush was covered with Bumblebees! I was so excited..I just have hardly seen any all season. I wonder if they spent the whole season repopulating their hives? Now I am keeping that Butterfly Bush well deadheaded to keep it blooming as long as I can this year. I just can hardly believe how many bugs are all over that shrub all day and night. Butterflies and bees and wasps all day...at night I sometimes go out with a flashlight and the last time, I saw some strange looking moths with laser beam eyes..lol. I added another butterfly bush this year. Nothing else in my yard is so full of bugs. Edna...thanks for the directions for building the mason bee houses. I am going to try that. When is a good time to hang one up? Do they hibernate or die for the winter? Should I try to put one out this fall or wait for the spring? Thanks! :-)

Milkweed is the food plant for Monarch caterpillars, and the flowers are nectar sources for many types of butterflies. If you are located in the suburbs, where there aren't many Monarchs, and you want to attract Monarchs to a clump of milkweed, you will have to create a large enough patch of milkweed to gain and hold the attention of the Monarch. A few isolated plants may not be enough to trigger the "here is a place to lay eggs" switch in a Monarch's brain. Similarly, a small patch of blooming milkweed might not be enough to cause a hungry passing butterfly to stay around for long to feed - most animals seem to instinctively look for larger patches of habitat, which in the case of a hungry butterfly would be nectar-prodicing plants. So, I think you need to create a large patch of milkweed or other nectar plants to attract feeding butterflies. If you live in an area where there are lots of butterflies then a few isolated flowers might see lots of use by butterflies. However, in the suburbs, which are pretty sterile as far as butterflies are concerned, you'll need a much larger patch to attract and hold butterflies. I think you should work on a patch of at least 50 square feet of milkweed - that is a 5 ft by 10 ft rectangle (could be any shape, of course). I would be surprised if a 50 square foot patch didn't attract Monarchs to lay eggs within the first year or two. For nectar plants a patch of 50 square feet should also be adequate to attract butterflies and encourage them to hang around a while. In both cases, more is better. Monarchs travel long distances and their travels take them to all sorts of places, including cities and suburbs. Idoubt there are many spots within the range of the Monarch that aren't at least occasionally visited by a passing Monarch, so you will have butterflies passing by your garden. All you need to do is create enough habitat to keep them there a while. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a good larval plant for Monarchs and a good nectar plant, but many people prefer Butterflyweed (Asceplias tuberosa) or Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) because they have showier flowers (but lack the nice smell of the flowers of common milkweed, in my experience). Also, Common Milkweed spread rather vigorously in the garden, which can be a pain. I am talking about milkweed species that grow well in the eastern US. You might have different species native to your area, althoguh I am pretty sure that Butterflyweed will grow well across almost all of the US and much of Canada. There are many different types of nectar flowers. One easy way to discover which nectar flowers grow native in your region is to visit the woods or countryside and look for butterflies feeding at flowers. I think it is nice to have nectar plants that bloom throughout the summer and fall, so you'll need more than one species of plant. Good Luck

Hi Suzanne. I have a few other questions. 1) What do you want to accomplish with your new bin? If you want to produce much vermicompost for your garden, then you will have to add composting worms to the system or wait a LONG time for them to show up and breed to the numbers you need. Your wild herd is likely earthworms. 2) How large of a bin do you want, and what do you plan to feed with? If you have any manure piles, they will attract native composting worms and be a good feedstock. I would think any outdoor system in Montana would have to trenched into the ground and well insulated with straw, ect. in the winter. Check out redwormcomposting.com for good info on cold climate vermicomposting. Hope this helps. Pete