Tattered Beauty...

Can I first just say ... yeow!  It's hot out there!  Temps in the mid-90's (F) today and while the humidity remains relatively low, it's stinkin' hot.  When the cicadas start "singing" by 8 in the morning, you know it's the dog days of summer.

Anyhooo, I made a number of quick sorties out to see what was flying.  I also plugged in the second fountain because the birds were looking deflated, poor things.  Even the hummers weren't their usual argumentative selves.  About the only things flying today were butterflies, wasps and some clearwing moths. 

So today you get a very tattered male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeding on my new pink buddleia.  I got one of the ones that is non-invasive (won't reseed itself) so I am feeling pretty virtuous.  And, it is producing lovely long pink stalks of flowers which the pollinators seem to love.  It's in a pot on the patio, on a wheeled thingie, so I can move it around.  

Thanks for sending yesterday's hummingbird for a brief visit to the first page of Popular - that was a nice suprise.  And, if you (like me) can't get enough of the hummers, I posted a shot from this morning HERE on Flickr - it was going to be my blip today, but I decided that I liked the butterfly a little better.  And speaking of which... if you'd like to see the black-morph of this same butterfly, click HERE.  Only the female eastern tigers can show the black coloration and they can sometimes be hard to distinguish from the Black Swallowtail.  But I digress...

Thunderstorms and slightly cooler temps tomorrow (89, which isn't really much of an improvement.)

And, as a spoiler alert, in about 10 days I am going to have the great pleasure of hosting two well-known blippers (and their spouses) for a weekend of hummingbirds.  Stay tuned...

Ciao,
Debbi