Monarchs visiting!

At last!

So many of us have been worried because we had seen only very few monarchs throughout the summer.

And now they are making their appearance.

Our native, potted milkweed plants were thriving in the spring after all of the rain.

However, it didn't take long for them to wilt and shrivel up, even though I watered them regularly a couple of times a week. So I knew we wouldn't have any monarchs visiting to lay eggs.

But I did plan ahead, and planted for the monarchs different kinds of sunflowers, Coyote bushes Baccharis pilularis and Pacific asters Symphyotrichum chilense. Both of these bloom in the autumn, providng nectar for monarch butterflies.

I also planted a Torch sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia as a seedling, because I heard that pollinators love it.

Here is proof.

In both photos, two different monarch females are sipping nectar from the Torch sunflower.

They spend a long time on each blossom, sometimes five minutes at a time.