Click on this photo to see her pretty face
This has not been an especially pleasant summer. Extreme heat and now flooding over much of the area has made life a challenge for most of us. Still, this summer has brought many wonderful moments. When I look back on the summer of 2010, I want to remember it as the summer of the sulfur butterflies.
In her own mysterious way, nature somehow brought together just the right series of events to create the perfect conditions for the clouded sulfur butterfly. I have never seen anything like the number of sulfurs in my garden this year. Hundreds! Three or four butterflies on the tops of each coneflower, more on each spire of the agastache. They are on every flower and the air is filled with their yellow fluttering.
Sulfurs always keep their wings folded showing only the undersides when at rest. When in flight, the pretty black markings on the top of the wings can be seen. In the first photo, the sun shining through the delicate wing tissue gives us a hint of the black pattern.
Not the largest or the most brightly colored butterfly sulfurs are often overlooked, but when their numbers reach into the hundreds, they are an amazing sight.
