[Fluffywelshsheep]

[HappyHippy]

Very pretty Peacock butterfly, they love nettles for laying their eggs in, funnily enough we've got a few - might be all to do with the half acre of nettles !!! 

[Fluffywelshsheep]

I can normally identify butterflies but i have real bad baby brain atm, So i couldn't remember what it was. This was about 2feet from my front door.

No nettles here but plenty of flowers to wander over !
background isn't great but once am not so tiered am gona play with it on my graphics prog.


Linz

[doganjo]

It looks fine Linz.  Shows up the flutterby just nicely.  (oops sorry, my kids used to call them that)

[Hardfeather]

Funny, I bought two new Buddlea (sp?) plants the other day.......I'd never had any before, but always wanted some. The flowers look very similar to your's Linz, mine are 'Pixie Blue'. Anyway, they were only out of the car about four or five minutes and a Peacock butterfly landed on one.

My eldest son (6) was sure the butterfly had followed us four miles from the nursery. 

I've planted mine near some Cotoneaster which has been a real draw for hoverflies, wasps and bees over the last six weeks (creating a constant drone on quiet days), and also near some spearmint which is just coming into flower, and attracts lots of butterflies too.


It's great to see lots of wildlife in the garden, isn't it, particularly if, like us, you have done much to improve the environment for them. Our garden was just rough grass when we moved here, with no shelter from the winds. There were three Laurel shrubs which wre about three feet high, and a stone dyke around the perimeter.

It's not a big garden........probably about thirty feet by forty feet, then a smaller bit nearer the house.

I planted a mixed hedge with anything I could beg or find, including Hawthorn, Privet, Oak, Ash, Cotoneaster Ceanothus, and the original Laurel, and they've all grown into a hedge around ten feet high which really shelters us from the winds. I trim it a bit on the garden side to keep the kids' area safe, but other than that it just does its thing.

I planted two Gean trees from wild seeds and the first one is about 18 ft high now, and lots of ornamental grasses, berry bushes, clematis, ivy, forsythia, and honeysuckle.

We have a phenomenal amount of insects now, and a lot more bird species too. From the original dunnocks, the bird population has expanded to blackbirds, robins, wrens, four species of tit, several species of finch, tree sparrows, wagtails, and even wood pigeons which are nesting in one of the laurels as I write. We feed them all a bit through the winter, but not in the summer.

Sometimes the local sparrowhalk sweeps through, but that's just part of the whole thing, I suppose.

I have dabbled a bit in growing some simple veg, but I need an education in that area.    We have horses here, and plenty of space outside the garden, so I really should get on and grow more veg.

[Fluffywelshsheep]

I have two budliers but the 1st one i got is an odd one it has multiply globe type headed flowers which the beas/ flying insect love, but the butterfly doesn't go near. But i noticed this one growing (can't remember if i got it via freecycle or somewhere else) but i've had to tye it back in to the conifer as it's falling on to the path and Hubby didn't want to spoil it moving the bin around. I have a plan to move it a bit later in the year but i can't really do much at the moment.

I've had loads on loads of hoverflies flying around (i think it was for the fact that the garden went 3 weeks without the grass being cut lol.)

It was funny as the hoverflies 'where attacking the neighbours' i didn't want to spoil their fun as i knew they wont hurt anyone lol. I must have had about 6 or 7 on a dandilion heads.