{"id":119,"date":"2008-11-09T13:46:37","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T18:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/?p=119"},"modified":"2010-02-25T12:27:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T17:27:21","slug":"butterflies-caterpillars-and-moonflower-seeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/2008\/11\/09\/butterflies-caterpillars-and-moonflower-seeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Butterflies, Caterpillars, and Moonflower Seeds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The gardens are alive with butterflies, bees, birds, and caterpillars. Yellow and white skippers are abundant, and swallowtails, monarchs, painted ladies, and fritillaries are frequent visitors as well. The front courtyard, which is visible from most rooms in the house, provides a picture window view to all of the activity.<\/p>\n<p>The Desert Checkered Skipper pictured below was attracted to the mealy sage in the beds on the west side of the house. I love the dark teal color of his body.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/desert_checkered_skipper.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Desert Checkered Skipper<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>This Pipevine Swallowtail seemed to prefer the French Brocade marigolds. It was difficult to get a really good picture of him in the late afternoon light, but his iridescent dorsal side showed up pretty nicely.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/pipevine_swallowtail.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Pipevine Swallowtail on Marigold<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/pipevine_swallowtail2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Pipevine Swallowtail on Marigold<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>There were several black swallowtail caterpillars munching on my dill plants.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/black_swallowtail_caterpillar.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Black Swallowtail Caterpillar Feeding on Dill<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The moonflowers have succumbed to the light freezes that we have experienced over the past couple of weeks, but the seed pods have set and some are dry and ready for seed collection. The first seed pod pictured below is not ready for harvest yet. The second one is dry and ready for collection.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/moonflower_seedpod.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Moonflower Seed Pod Not Ready for Harvest Yet<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"captionfull\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/imageshome\/moonflower_seedpod2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Moonflower Seed Pod Ready for Collection<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The drought continues here. We have only had 14&#8243; of rain this year which has made it a real challenge to establish new plants. Without the drip irrigation system we would have lost many plants. We have a chance of rain next week, and I am hoping we get at least an inch so our oak trees don&#8217;t go into a major stress mode and lose all their leaves prematurely.<\/p>\n<p>Peace.<br \/>\nCarol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The gardens are alive with butterflies, bees, birds, and caterpillars. Yellow and white skippers are abundant, and swallowtails, monarchs, painted ladies, and fritillaries are frequent visitors as well. The front courtyard, which is visible from most rooms in the house, provides a picture window view to all of the activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6,21],"tags":[203,150,202,201,204,122],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butterfly","category-flowers","category-propagation","tag-desert-checkered-skipper","tag-moonflower","tag-moonflower-seed","tag-moonflower-seed-pod","tag-pipevine-swallowtail-butterfly","tag-swallowtail-caterpillar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phuiL-1V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostvalleygardens.com\/LVGblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}