Love butterflies? Plant some herbs.

Herbs draw all kinds of butterflies and are host plants (main food source) to several.

Host plant? Dill in this case.

This is a  Swallowtail caterpillar chowing down on the last of the dill in this container.

They are piggish caterpillars and will demolish your umbel family herbs, but they are truly gorgeous butterflies.

I just plant extra herbs. Some for me, some for them. It works out nicely.

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Here are a bunch of little orange skipper butterflies on mint flowers.  I count five in this picture alone, but the peppermint bed is nearly 50 feet long so you can imagine how many of these little guys flit around in there.

Whenever I water they will all fly up in an orange cloud and scatter, then flutter back down until they find a spot to feed again. They’ll take little sips of water from droplets on the peppermint leaves with their incredibly long, curly tongues which makes me wonder where they store those things when they fly.

I also get lots of shiny pollinator flies in the mint, but they are not nearly as pretty and entertaining as the butterflies.  I also suspect my blog readers would wonder why I am photographing flies. I mean for all you know  just be just barn flies…and although I have herds of those, too they don’t hang out on things as sweet smelling as mint.

We really don’t need photos of what they do hang out on. Know what I mean? Let’s just stick to our butterflies and herbs.