Brad, I'm glad to hear that all of your milkweed are doing so well. Since you mentioned butterfly weed, I'm going to have to check all of my containers that I winter sowed seeds in to see if my butterfly weed came up. I started some to replace the ones in the gardens that have died out. It seems like every year I lose another one or two. I'd like to have that section full again; the flowers are so pretty, and the butterflies love to nectar on them. I've had the best luck with winter sowing over starting seeds inside over the winter. Mostly all of my 50+ containers have seedlings in them now. Since I mark the names on the bottom of my containers like is recommended (because of fading making the writing illegible eventually), I have to go through all of the containers now and see what's up and what isn't since I can't see at just a glance. Just the other day I planted my Russell Lupines out in the garden...those were the first plants to come up of the ones that I sowed. As soon as I see plants big enough to plant out in the garden, I want to do that to keep on top of things. Last year I got behind and ended up having to transplant a lot of things because they got so big before I had all of the garden spots ready where I wanted to put the plants. That's great that you saw the first Eastern Tiger Swallowtails of the year! I know that we always have them here every year nectaring on the lilacs, which are ready to bloom soon. I think that the tigers are so pretty. So I guess I can expect to start seeing them soon...I'm also in central PA. So far this year the butterflies I've seen are Mourning Cloak, Cabbage White, Eastern Tailed Blue, and Question Mark (that one was flying around here a lot just yesterday). The leaves on my small hackberry tree in a container are just starting to open up and so I suspect it won't be long until I have QM eggs on them...I have them every year. Best of luck with your butterfly garden, and let's hope that this will be as good a butterfly year as last one was. Cathy

Hubby is a hunter so I am used to him being gone. He was in Kentucky for a week the first of the month. Had a wreck with his new truck. They fixed it and he went back down to pick it up over the weekend. He has only been home 4 days in the past few weeks. Now he is gone again for 13 days. It is a man thing. Lots of his buddies are going, too. We have an old school house that we redid and it is heavenly to go down. It is close to the famous French Lick area. The house will be loaded up with a bunch of guys so we women just do our own thing.. I am also doing some remodeling so I will be quite busy. Love doing this type thing when he is gone and I don't have to keep cleaning up the messes each night. They are calling for rain the next few days so I will work inside and then out when the sun shines.. My hubby really doesn't care what I do when he is gone. We both just kinda do our own thing. We wives can go down and see the men anytime we want. Sometimes we just go down for overnight. Just enough to get them some good food. A couple years ago we had to put in a bedroom upstairs to sleep everyone.. What can I say, life is good!!!

Congrats, Jenny and Claire!!! Jenny..the males are alot more skittish and shy than the females. They are also usually the ones guarding the feeders and flowers (at least until they migrate). My females will get within 2 or 3 feet of me to feed and are the ones that do the "buzzing". I am so glad that you guys are having great visits. It's amazing how addictive they are. Linda Disclaimer: I do not agree with nor endorse the use of "Sponsored Links" possibly impeded in my posts by the owner of this or any other website.

these are a few options for you that can really help out with using a laptop especially when used to a desktop, use it as a laptop for portability when needed that way then when used at home get a wireless mouse and a keyboard which you likely already have and plug those in and use them if you have your monitor plug it in and use it too then you have the best of both, my husband has the docking station for his laptop and anytime he is at his desk it is docked and his monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers, are all connected and ready to use, people walking in and looking would have no idea he is using a laptop, when he has a meeting to go to he grabs the laptop out of its docking station and puts it in his laptop bag and goes. If I only had a laptop it is definitely how I would go about using it.