Butterflies

This is definitely a year for records from the extraordinarily warm winter to the blazingly hot summer. I've also had more and different kinds of birds since adding the new feeder. Now the butterflies are breaking their own records.

Normally, I will have one or two Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies fluttering around the flowers. Last year, which was cool and rainy, I had almost no butterflies. This year, with fewer cool and rainy days, has seen an explosion in the number of butterflies. Now it is not unusual for me to see three at a time tasting the flowers on the butterfly bush. This morning, I counted five and a sixth one was sampling the Aztec sunflowers. I've tried taking pictures of all this activity, but they just don't show up as well as they do in real life.

As long as we are discussing the weather, today was supposed to be hotter than yesterday. It didn't feel hotter. I thought perhaps it was the breeze but my car's thermometer said it was "only" 97 F(36C).