Butterfly Gardening: New Blooms, Future Garden Plans & Caterpillar Cuteness

Welcome to Butterfly Gardening Inspirations where you can learn how to attract butterflies to your garden. This video is about exploring my butterfly garden. We take a look at a species of Florida native plants that ecologically important for butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and moths. I share my future plans for expanding my butterfly garden through my side yard and around to the front yard. We look at some plants that are about to bloom, observe some butterflies and then head inside my garden room to see all of the species of caterpillars I am currently raising in my butterfly enclosure.

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Hey y’all. I am so glad you’re here. This is my favorite kind of video to do. We’re just going to be hanging out today, exploring my Florida butterfly garden. And low edit, not cutting a lot out. I got some things I want to show you. But first, I want to show you the lipidarium because there’s a little butterfly in there flying around in the open space like that’s exactly what my redesign I had in mind for. So, it’s happening. See, look at it flying around all in there and has lots of space. This is a zebra longwing butterfly that he closed earlier today and I’m going to set it free, but I wanted you to have a chance to see how it is just it was earlier, of course, fluttering back and forth, but now we’re staying in the corner. But I love it. I love this lepidarium setup. Okay, here we are out in the garden and I have the coolest things to show y’all. Y’all know how much I love sweet scent. Well, my sweet scent that was in this garden right here died cuz they don’t live forever. I would guess maybe they’re annuals, but they recede and I remember when it had seeds on it. I took the seeds out and I stuck them in the bottom of this pot right here and that pot right there. Well, guess what? Look, I have sweet scent. Now, I saw these growing up and I was thinking, “What are those?” And Julie put the buds on. I remembered I dumped all those seeds in here. And so, I am so thrilled to have this blooming again in my garden. And the one over here is getting ready to bloom, too. So, that just makes my heart happy. And I wanted to share that with you cuz I know you would love it too. The love bugs are back in Florida. They have moved in. They love the golden rod, which is fine with me cuz it keeps them from fluttering around, getting stuck in my hair and stuck on my arms. And you know how they tend to do that? They just hang out there all day long. Just stay there little love bugs and that’s perfect for you. Look at these beautiful zenas. Look at the zebra longwing hanging flying away while I’m talking about it. There over there hanging in my sweet almond. So, for a while we had like day after day after day of overcast. Like totally not like my Florida. Oh, look at these two swooping in two giant swallow tails up there. Um, and so there weren’t a lot of butterflies and I was like, really? Are we losing our butterflies already? But no, they’re back. I’m so glad. And the sun’s back, too. So, I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about my my meadow. And I have blank vision. Thought I had a vision or an inspiration of what I wanted to look like and is completely gone. When I think Florida native wildflower meadow, but when I think extend my butterfly garden, perfect vision of what that could be. So, that’s the direction I’m going to go. Will there be tons of Florida native plants in there? Oh, 100% yes. But there’s also going to be some other butterfly favorites cuz what I want to do is hang on. I’ll walk around the garden. Let you see the garden so you don’t have to look at me. And I’ll tell you what I want to do. Here, we’ll look at these two. What I want to do is not only fill the sideyard, but I have a whole vision in my head of wrapping it around to in in front of my house and extending the small bed that the the house builder’s putting, you know, the basic front landscape bed and extending that deeper out into the front yard. less grass. Love it. And then um filling it with butterfly plants, native and like pentas and you know all my favorites, porterweed, all of them. Because then the people in my neighborhood will be, “Are you done looking at these butterflies? Shall I stay here or shall I move on? I wish you could tell me. I’m going to stay here a little longer cuz they’re just beautiful. Um, I want people in my neighborhood who are out walking or driving by to see the butterfly activity. I want them to maybe stop and ask questions um, and maybe inspire more people in my own neighborhood cuz I right now everything’s hidden in the back. Like nobody nobody knows this is here. So, I want people to drive by my house to see the butterflies flying all over my front yard and to stop and ask, “How’d you do that?” or whatever. And I can I can tell them or help them or give them plant cutings, you know? Did you That just happened. That just happened. They flew right into the camera. They have one thing on their mind. they need to pay attention to where they’re going. Okay, we’ll go walk around some. So, that’s kind of like my new goal. And when I have that vision, the inspiration is absolutely 100% clear. And I kind of like that’s how I like do things in my garden. if I have a blockage, like I can’t visualize anything and then I’m just supposed to hold off and wait until something comes along. And as soon as I thought, no, we just need to extend the butterfly garden, it it all came together. So, I’m super excited about that. And it it will still be like a meadow, but it will be intentional for butterflies. got to show show them off in the front yard too and the sideyard. And it’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s going to be fabulous. And it’s wonderful that we are coming into fall. The weather here is already getting cooler. We’ve already had our first cold front come through and lower the temp a little bit and knock out the humidity. And that usually doesn’t happen until midocctober. So my father-in-law told me last night, he said, “Well, the farmer’s almanac predicted an early winter.” So I immediately said, “Is there going to be an early spring, too?” Cuz I want an early spring also. I don’t want an early winter that extends long. I want early winter. I wanted to come and go and have spring and no freezes. No freezes. And because these cold fronts came through, like they’re knocking out the chances of hurricanes. I’m just feel like I’m tiptoeing through the rest of September and October to avoid a hurricane cuz we’ve just had them year after year after year. And we need a break. I need a break. My garden needs a break. Butterflies need a break. I got them all built back up. They’re little populations in my garden. And no, no hurricanes. Look, my Georgia aers are starting to bloom. My favorite elephant’s feet foot elephant’s foot feet plants. Oh, look. There’s um love bugs on them, too. They’re all blooming. And I really haven’t done much work in this garden except what I did previously when I told you I was going to start moving in some butterfly flowering plants. So I have more flowers in here all year and with the starry rosinweed. But right here is my little patch of roa sunflowers and they’re coming up. Look. So, I’m going to have those to share with you soon. This one down here is going that way. I don’t know why it’s like I want to stand it up, but I also don’t want to break it. Wonder if I put this little pot right here. And then let’s just help it there. We’ll see if that doesn’t help it go. Look what’s coming up right here. Are you Oh, look. There’s a hole. Pass the floor incense. I mean, I love it, but I don’t want it there. See if there’s any caterpillars on it. Next, I want to show you all my adorable little strong bark plant. It is growing up so well and I just want to share it with you and maybe inspire some of you to try and find it because it is an endangered plant in Florida. Well, it’s endangered in its natural setting. So, us putting it in our backyards doesn’t really help that, but it does help because it’s an important plant to Florida flying things, wildlife, flying wildlife. I feel like flying. Well, I guess they’re insects, but insects, hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, all those guys. It’s important to them. Pollinators 4 hours later, she says the right word. Let’s go see it. Of course, the other day when I was looking at it, it had its little flowers blooming. And today, not so much. but we’re still going to look at it. So, this is called uh little strong bark and it get these really cute little white flowers. Oh, here’s one down here. You can see. Look at how adorable these are. So, it gets covered in those and then it makes these little oranges. Look, it’s like a little miniature orange tree. Look at how cute they are. Why doesn’t everybody have these in their gardens? So, look at all the buds up in this one that are going to be blooming soon. Okay, so this is a shrub. It’s evergreen. It can get I think 7t tall, four 5t wide, but you can shape it and trim it. But it attracts hummingbirds. The birds eat the berries. It attracts zebra longlings, skippers, sulfers, sphinx moths. It’s endangered and it is ecologically important. So, let’s all get these going if you can find them. You probably have better luck in South Florida. And I got mine at the Nectar, but I remember Katherine said she might not be able to get more cuz they’re not easy to find. but she’s really really good. Katherine’s the owner of the Nectar and and a friend of mine and um she’s really really good at finding cool native plants to bring in. So you can always check there with her to see if you’re local or you can try online maybe like an Etsy seller. I haven’t looked so I don’t know but fabulous fabulous plant for a butterfly garden. I mean, it it ticks all the boxes. It’s just not a host plant, but you know, we we can’t have everything. There’s a monarch up. Every time today I start to talk about a butterfly, it flies away. Okay, I see you. Look, there’s a polyama swallow tail. Oh, good. It stayed. No. Oh, okay. It came back. No. All right, I give up. Let’s go look at another plant. Okay, we’re over here in my tropical garden. You know how I love this space. And my tractor seat plant is doing something. Look at this. I have never seen it do this. And it looks like I’m going to finally have blooms. So, those of you that recommended I get this told me you have butterflies all over your blooms. And I cannot wait. I cannot wait to see to see this bloom. And I hope I see butterflies all over it when it does. So, it’s like got this separate stock that came up. And at first I thought it was just going to get taller, but the leaves are different. Look, they’re not the tractor seat. They’re like this. And then I thought there’s some other random plant growing up in here with my tractor seat. But now it’s connected. It is coming up out of the base of the plant. It’s a new stem. So, I’m just super excited that this is going to do something cuz let me tell you, the little guy next door, this I always say it backwards, Jamaica Fatsia or Fatsia. Um, no, Japonica. It’s japonica fatsia or fatsia japonica. This is all it ever does. I have yet to see it flower. And it’ll put these little things out and I think, “Oh, look. It’s doing something.” But no, that’s just a new leaf coming. Now, my Malaysian orchid on the other hand. Mhm. Look at that. Oh my gosh, it’s spectacular. And one of my red fire spikes in the back. Look, is back there blooming. See it? I love it. Okay. So, we’ll be checking back with that tractor seat plant when it blooms and hopefully I’ll be getting some video of it with butterflies on it. That’d be fabulous. Okay, next on my list of things I want to show you y’all. When I’m out here gardening and I see this stuff like something blooming, I make a list. So, I can remember cuz I don’t remember things to show you. So, I have the most bizarre cosmos growing up in my raised planter where I have all of my swamp milkweed. And I my um my members saw it cuz I did a little tour for them of the whole garden and they got to see it. But I don’t think I’ve shared it on the main channel yet. And now it’s starting to put up these little things that look like they’re going to be blooms, but they don’t look like cosmos flowers. I’m kind of like, what’s what’s this? What’s going on? Okay, so right up front outside my garden room door, I have this raised planter and I have my swamp milkweed growing in here. There’s also some mountain mint and there is some twine vine growing up in here. There were caterpillars out here. Oh, yep. There’s still caterpillars out here. Well, that’s good. Pure adorableness right there. Pure adorableness. That’s not why we’re here, but you know, we always pause for caterpillars and butterflies. Okay, let me show you the cosmos. It’s crazy. All right, so over here in the back corner, do you see the stem? Look at that. It’s like a tree trunk. It just came up. I did not plant this in here. It just came up. Okay, you ready? We’re going to go up the stem. Look how tall it is. It’s like a tree. It’s so tall. It’s almost to the level of my roof of my house. Now, granted, it isn’t a raised bed, but it’s like maybe a foot and a half off the ground. So, what is this thing? And so, here’s what it’s doing that make me think, I don’t think you’re a cosmos, unless there’s a cosmos variety that blooms like this that I’m unaware of. Look at these. cuz these don’t look like cosmos buds. And these are starting to form at the tips of all of this whatever this is. But the leaves look like cosmos. Isn’t that something? I just can’t get over how thick the trunk is. and just came up on its own in my raised planter. I mean, how does that even happen? Where did this thing come from? It’s a curious thing, that’s for sure. Now, we haven’t explored the whole garden. I do have some projects I am working on, and you’re going to see those on Tuesday. It’s going to be real casual like this, but I’m just going to show you what I’ve been working on and hopefully by then I will have finished a few because my garden is growing faster than I can keep up. And as soon as I get like one garden bed looking good, another one’s like all overgrown. And I’m just doing one bed at a time and then, you know, moving on. So, you saw the beds that look decent, but there are some beds in this garden. Mm- that are a hot mess. But hopefully on Tuesday you will see them and they will look lovely. Now I have some adorableness to share with you. So my workt has slowly becoming is slowly becoming um like a um incubator, a hatchery. I instead of putting eggs that I found in the lepidarium, they’ve just been sitting out here on my work table and that way I can keep an eye on them, see if they’ve hatched because the way the lepidarium so open. If the babies leave their plant, it’s hard to find and get them back there. So, I’m kind of like leaving the tiny babies out here and then I’ll move them in when they get bigger and they’re easier to spot and see. So, who all is here? Well, that’s a good question. I have a collection of wild lime stems with giant swallotail eggs. Not a lot, but enough. It’s better than none for sure. I have a bunch of tiny baby zebra longwing caterpillars. I just hatched. I still have some eggs, too. I have a few little golf fiddleary caterpillars. They’re still pretty tiny. So, they’re just going to hang out out here. I’m trying to raise more of these cuz I’m still seeing them in my garden, but not as many as I’d like to. So, just going to raise a few. Give them a little boost. I have some cutings of private senna with some tiny baby sulfur caterpillars and some eggs. There’s another tiny one right there. And you know, I’ve got a good number of each of them. I’ve got multiple floral tubes of cutings of um private senna and wild lime and paffllora incense. So, lots of babies in here. Now, what I also have is I posted a picture in the community of this, which these are um pipe vine seedlings. And there were three little baby polyama caterpillars that I put in here because like they weren’t eating and they didn’t look like they had any interest. It was like they’re like, I don’t know what to do. I’m just going to sit here and no longer be. That’s what they did. I tried moving them in here thinking maybe there was all this fresh baby pipe vine cutings like they’d be inspired to do something, but they didn’t. And it’s so bizarre to me because I find it fascinating that the polyamus fall tail butterflies lay their eggs all in a group. So, they’re all the same eggs, same DNA combinations, and yet when they hatch, some of those baby caterpillars come out and they’re like, “Yes, this is what I’m here for. Show me the buffet.” And they go off and running and just start eating away and they get big quick. And there’s other ones that just kind of sit there like, “What am I supposed to do again? this is what you want me to eat. What if I don’t like it? And it’s like, what what what is the difference that some of them are just driven and know exactly what they want to do and other ones they’ll just go sit there and just not do anything and not thrive. I just find that quite fascinating. So, those three little babies did not thrive. And I only have two in the leopardium. There’s a leaf out here in my garden. Let me show you. Oh my gosh, they’re being adorable right now, too. I can’t I can’t even stand it. These guys are all doing well, and I’m tempted to take them in. I mean, look. Look at their little faces peeking over the side. It’s pure adorableness. And these are the only ones I haven’t seen any eggs laid recently. So, I think I should take them in. I only have two inside. My pipe finds doing a nice job growing back. I mean, look look at all this here. Growing back nicely. Oh my gosh, they’re so cute. Oh, look at the one. Did you see him peeking over the top? I can’t stand it. Okay, you know, you know, y’all know what’s happening. I mean, you know, you know me. You know what we’re doing. How many are there? Two, four, six, seven, seven. I can I can feed seven. I mean, look at those faces. I certainly couldn’t pick one or two and leave the rest out here. I mean, who who has a heart for that? Not me. Okay, let’s just Yeah, let’s just take this whole leaf off. Because if I came out here one day and they were gone. Well, and here’s the other thing. Like we’re coming into October. I mean, we’re tomorrow, we’re halfway through September. And at this point in the year is when I start to wonder by the time these guys pupate, will they will they eat clothes like or are they going to overwinter and be like, “We’ll see you in the spring.” And really, I want as many overwinters as I can. So that way I’ll have them ready to go and ready made in my garden. Look. Oh. All right. I’m going to move them into the leopardium. I’ll be right back. Okay, they’re in. Look, there’s still three of them peeking up. They’re all still on their same leaf, but they’re in a floral tube now. all going to live the good life while we’re here. I mean, look. Look how cute. These are all eastern black swallow tail caterpillars. That one’s getting ready to do the grand transformation. This one here looks like it should be ready soon, too. And then look at these guys. Little sulfur caterpillars munching away on their private senna. And then here, look who. Let me get a light. That’s better. This is one of the eastern tigers swalllettail caterpillars. I have two. The other one’s smaller again. Same mama, same egg laid at the same time. And we got the size differences. Here’s the littleer one. He is green now. He did another molting. It says, “Hey, lots of zebra longwing activity. There’s a eastern black swallow tail j hanging or what did I say? Crescent moon. Oh, look at this little face. So cute. There’s a big golf fertilary there. Yay. Lots of little crystallides hanging out. And then my giants chill. Look how slow he’s moving. They They’re in no rush to do anything. I love them. Look at these two hanging down here. Little zebra longwing crystallides. Lots of life going on in here. I love it. Look, there’s a little baby. Giant swallow tail caterpillar. I have one last thing to show you. You all know my stickers, right? Well, I made some new ones and my sample stickers came in. So, I’m going to open them with you and show you the new stickers. They come shipped nicely in a wrapped like wrapping a plastic bag shipping bag and a nice sturdy um cardboard packaging with one of those easy tear things which I love. Let me go easy tear it. Okay. And here we go. Zebra longwing. Giant swallow tail. Eastern black swallow tail. Pipe vine swallow tail. Look at this white peacock. I love that photo. [Music] Monarch. Another eastern black. I love that photo, too. Look at this Mr. Adorable. Look. Don’t you all need a salt marshm moss sticker with a little dew stuck in his little spikes. I love this one. Here’s a monarch and a queen. I think it’s so weird how the type Look at that. Looks like a Z. That doesn’t seem like a Q to me, but that was a Q. I typed it like four different times. Make sure I was touching the queue. Golf friddleary. Oh, I love this one, too. Look how beautiful. Eastern tiger swallow tail. Another eastern tiger swallow tail. Oh, I love this photo, too. Cloudless sulfur. Look how pretty that is. Gulf fridillary. These are, I believe, a $1.99 each if I’m not mistaken. Am I saying that right? And there’s like a little shelf below my videos where you’ll see some of them. And if you scroll them, you’ll get to scroll over and see all of them. And you can order them. Right there. It’s my spreadshop store. Look, Mr. Adorable. Oh, look. These two are adorable. I love my own stickers. There’s an Nala. Another Mr. Adorable with his osmaterium up. And look at the sweet baby sitting on top of his egg. Little baby giant swallow tail. These are all photographs I took. And I turned them into stickers. I designed the stickers. Like I cut out the shape of it so that like when you peel the sticker off, it’s gonna have a shape like this. And I design all of that. And I choose the photos that I think will work well. And they’re on my spreadshot. $1.99. So I hope you’ll buy some. It supports my channel a little bit and every little bit helps. And I love it. Oh my gosh. Where is he? Where is he? Where’s the Where is Oh, you can’t find what you’re looking for when you’re looking for it. Oh, he’s over here. There. Look. So, I will stick these onto um laminate and laminate these. So, I’ll show them to you again in the future. you can see what the actual shape of them is. Go buy stickers. I’ll also um pin a comment. So, the top comment will have all my links. The link to my spreadshop store where you can buy stickers, um the link to join the Milky Crew, my Joyful Butterfly uh affiliate link, and my Amazon storefront. And I think that’s everything. You’ll see in the pinned comment. So, I hope you all have enjoyed this video and make sure you have your notifications on and you’re on the lookout for Tuesday, sometime Tuesday after 5. That’s as close as the time as I can get cuz I film like right up to the last possible minute. And sometimes my videos upload like that and sometimes it takes forever. It all depends on like YouTube and what’s going on with with it. And so as soon as it’s all ready to go, I post it. So sometime Tuesday after 5 and all the little projects I’ve been working on, we’ll be chatting about those. And until then, I hope you have a great day, great evening, great morning, whatever time it is you’re watching this. Please tap the like button, and chat with me in the comments. Post pictures of your garden, your flowers, the butterflies you see, what’s blooming now, anything you want to share in our community. I love seeing your posts there. We were like going strong and now we’re kind of slowing down a little. So, let let’s get that going again. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye, everyone. Oh, I’m still here. Here’s a look at my garden. Yes, I got a little bit of butterfly footage. And yes, there’s music coming right now. Here we go. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] up [Music] here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]