Oh, it’s sad not being able to look out the back windows and see the wildflowers blowing in the breeze. I took a machete to them a few weeks ago and now have mowed down the bed. I’m going to get out there with a hoe and work it over again. I need to add a few bags of topsoil, a bag of compost, then wait until October before I’ll sow some more seeds. I liked the wildflower bed so much, I decided to expand it. The wildflower bed is about 30 feet long by 1 1/2 feet wide. I’m going to expand it to two feet wide. I ‘ve also decided to expand it down the other fence line where I’ve already stripped sod two feet wide by over fifty feet long. So, I’ll have 160 square feet of space to put in a lot more wildflowers.
But I also want to do other things … I want to expand the butterfly nursery and plant a dozen each of fennel, parsley, and dill plants as well as all of the milkweed I have started. I want the butterflies to see the 80 foot long buffet line from a mile away!
Wildflower bed, minus the wildflowers. 😦
The other end of the yard showing the length of the addition.
The milkweed in the native beds are doing pretty well. I started about six of them from cuttings a couple of months ago. Meanwhile, the butterfly weed is looking beautiful. I have half a dozen more butterfly weed seedlings started, as well as fifty common milkweed from the seeds I received free from LiveMonarch.org.
Common Milkweed
Another milkweed plant
Common milkweed and Butterfly Weed seedlings
The milkweed and Butterfly Weed grown from seed probably will not bloom this year (although I expect the cuttings to). Usually it takes growing a full year before they do. But, next summer will be a treat for the butterflies. Hopefully, I can start raising Monarch and Queens along with the Black Swallowtails!
A Round Rock Garden 
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