Our Garden Residents

Dear friends,

since some of the news right now isn’t very positive and many of you here in the forum are feeling concerned or even worried, I’d like to show you something truly beautiful today—our enchanting garden residents. Perhaps you, too, can find joy in the sight of these fluttering, gorgeous butterflies and take a brief break from everyday life. My husband took these photos—he just walked through the garden and captured so much beauty...

I wish you many beautiful moments when life feels as light and carefree as it looks with these butterflies :-)

Warm regards
Sonja

Oh, how lovely, Sonja! Just yesterday I was thinking about taking pictures of all the butterflies. We have a butterfly bush with lots of colorful species on it, as well as blooming marjoram. There are also lots of bees flitting around there. It’s just beautiful! We really enjoy it, too.

Thanks to you and your husband for sharing!

How lovely, unfortunately we see fewer and fewer of these colorful butterflies around here these days. Thanks for sharing.

Best wishes, Inge

Beautiful photos, thank you so much! I recognize the peacock butterfly and the swallowtail, but the third one? Even my field guide doesn’t help me identify it right away.

You’re lucky to still have so many species of butterflies. Here, their numbers are dwindling. Oh no, this topic is actually making me a bit sad. And you just wanted to cheer us up with these pictures. Your husband has captured some truly beautiful, delicate works of art with his camera. Thank you for sharing them.

Warm regards, Ina

Thanks for sharing.

Butterfly number one flutters through our garden, too. I don’t recognize the other two.

Number 3 is gorgeous.

Yesterday we had a brimstone butterfly, and we were so happy to see it. 

That’s true—you only see a butterfly every now and then. So your lovely snapshots of them are all the more delightful, of course. I love colorful butterflies.
Thank you so much for sharing them.

What amazing photos!
You hardly ever see butterflies here anymore, but two years ago I managed to snap another photo of one in a balcony planter:

Great photo of a bee

🐝

I also enjoy seeing the many butterflies in the garden every day. Over the last 2–3 years, their numbers have increased significantly again. We hadn’t seen them for a long time.
Maybe it’s also partly due to the many bee-friendly flowers we plant.
When you see this, it really warms your heart.
There are bees, bumblebees, butterflies, as well as flies and moths fluttering about.

Yes, it’s definitely because of the plants in the area. Our neighbor’s property lay undeveloped for years. There used to be gardens there, but then it just grew wild—only a few ancient fruit trees hinted at the former garden. It was a true paradise for bees and butterflies; there was always so much going on. And every year it looked a little different, depending on what was blooming more at the time—it was really great.
Last year, the land was finally developed, and now we have a neighboring house. And the garden at the back consists of a closely cropped lawn and a cherry laurel hedge....

That’s so lovely to look at.

I have bumblebees visiting right now.

Unfortunately, we don’t have many butterflies here either. We have a large butterfly bush and a hibiscus hedge on one side; on the other, we have only bee- and butterfly-friendly plants such as scabious, mallows, Jacob’s ladder, bellflowers, and wildflowers. In the front yard, I have sage, thyme, oregano, Iceland poppies, a lavender hedge, and many other plants and shrubs. Three pairs of peacock butterflies, a few cardinals, brimstone butterflies, and cabbage white butterflies have made an appearance, but then the tits spotted them, and now I hardly see any anymore 😢
But there are plenty of bumblebees and bees here.

Taken during a walk in the woods.

Wow, a butterfly and a bee at the same time. Great snapshots :-)

What a lovely collection of wonderful photos has come together here by now! Thank you all so much :-) How about everyone who enjoys it simply posting photos of such natural beauties here again and again? And if you’re looking for a bit of lightness, you can come back here and treat yourself to a little break while looking at the beautiful pictures.

By the way, our three butterflies are, first of all, a peacock butterfly; the one in the middle is a swallowtail, and in the third picture there’s a silver-washed fritillary. I didn’t know the latter one either. It normally seems to live along the edge of the woods. We are a little way away from the woods, but it still seems to like it here.

Here are a few more pictures. I wish you all a lovely evening!

Those are truly impressive photos, Sonja. Great job. Marlene’s photo is great, too.
We have that orange butterfly on our butterfly bush as well.

I’m going to take a stroll through the garden over the next few days and try to capture a few of them on camera.

By the way, this morning a baby common toad was hopping around right at my feet. It was totally cute. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me. Now I walk through the garden very mindfully, especially in the mornings.

You have some great pictures. Sonja, that shot is absolutely fantastic.

Silver-washed fritillary… what a beautiful name for a butterfly.

I had this caterpillar in my garden in 2020. 

Even though some of them are considered pests, they always look sooo pretty, don’t they?

Petra, your caterpillar is so cool 😀 Do you know what kind of butterfly it turned into? From the pattern, it looks like a swallowtail caterpillar, but those are green, aren’t they? 🤔

Yeah, when all that’s left of the arugula you planted are just a few scrawny stalks, it’s not so great...

Sonja, this is the caterpillar of a mullein moth. Also called the brown monk, from the owlet moth family.

This is what it looks like in our garden—or rather, on the flowers. It’s just a small glimpse—and we look forward to it every year. I’ll take another detailed tour of the garden and see who else is making an appearance.

Today I was amazed… there was a new butterfly to admire in the garden. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me because I was holding the garden hose at the time. It was quite large, with a velvety dark brown base color and beige edges. There were small blue spots between the dark brown and the beige.

As I just found out by Googling, it was a “mourning cloak.” It doesn’t need nectar from flowers; instead, it feeds on the feces and sweat of certain animals, as well as overripe fruit. And it especially likes the sap from trees. I saw it under the sour cherry tree. There are a few fallen cherries lying there, rotting away in the sun. So that’s probably what attracted it.

Best regards, Ina

The world is full of surprises—I would have thought that all butterflies prefer nectar from flowers.

That’s interesting, Ina. I think we had a butterfly like that visit us once, too. Right now, hundreds of bees and bumblebees are buzzing around our raspberry bushes. They’re busy working there—the bushes now stretch for an estimated 12–15 meters.

The photos all look great.

I can’t compete with that. But I did get some help hanging up the laundry recently.

Great photos, Monika! Do you know what the second butterfly is called?

Warm regards from my vacation at Lake Constance 🌞
Sonja

Oh Sonja, how lovely—you’re at Lake Constance. I’m sure the summer weather is absolutely fantastic there right now. Have lots of fun there with your family.

I just looked up what kind of butterfly that was. Imagine—it’s… a red admiral! There’s a website where you can identify butterflies, and it immediately caught my eye. I really did spot a magnificent specimen there.

Yesterday, butterflies appeared on my flowers for the first time:

The peanut feeder is very popular with tits

There’s such a colorful variety here in this thread.

We always have red admirals in our garden, too—lots of them—and they absolutely love our fermented, alcohol-rich blue farm plums. Our old plum tree always drops a lot of plums because they’re wormy or have been bored into by bees or wasps. We always toss those into the tree pit. The summer heat causes them to ferment there. The sugar in the overripe fruit ferments into alcohol. The butterflies really love that. I wonder if they get a little tipsy too—and can they still fly properly?

Best regards, Ina