Okay, even here in Florida, it seems the native plants may be taking a rest. I have some color in my yard, but a lot of things just aren't blooming like they were a few months ago. I could run out, spend 50 dollars and put tons of impatiens all over my yard, that is what most people do here in the cooler months. I am not doing that because they are water hogs. I spent yesterday,trimming, pruning and I am waiting for the next rainy day to throw down some fertilizer. The only things really blooming right now are the scarlet milkweeds. I am still getting butterflies, but not seeing quite as many. I know I had two huge caterpillars yesterday on my passion vines, and I have two so far unidentified ones on my dutchman's pipe. We are pretty sure they are some sort of swallowtail, because we read that the dutchman's pipe is a host plant for one species. We aren't getting huge numbers of birds, but we do seem to be getting more of the native doves and not the huge collared doves that were eating tons of bird food. Our native garden that is planted with the beach sunflower is attracting small birds to eat the seeds, and to catch any bugs that they can find. Today we did have a visiting ibis, but even he is blah looking right now, changing from brown to white according to my son. He did get a picture of him. We also think he was checking out the fish in the pond. I think our coolest visitor lately have been a painted bunting, but we haven't managed to get his picture.
