Birds, Hummingbirds, and Butterflies

I haven’t seen the hawks in 2 days. They went from hanging out every day for a week to nothing. I really enjoyed watching them so close. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good picture, I’m too slow. Low and behold, I finally saw a hummingbird at our feeder! I’m so happy. Another one came along and they both took off. That is what they usually do. I still haven’t seen any butterflies. The Milkweed has gone to seed pods, that is good. I did read that when the butterflies leave and go to Mexico, that the forest they usually go to winter, used to be 15 acres, is down to only 7 acres. It also said that the Eastern Butterfly population shows a decrease of 53% from last years count! (biologicaldiversity.org) This is very bad news.

Last night I finally got outside to do some weeding. Luckily, my husband helped. It was still hot but the sun was down and there was a slight breeze. I cut spent roses, sprayed with Neem and fed with some granulated rose food, all organic. It’s supposed to rain tonight, so that is perfect. Checked out another bed and cut dead flowers from another Butterfly Bush, cleaned up iris’s,

We moved to the front yard and weeded some more, tied up some flowers, and cleaned up more iris’s and left over daffodils.