This year has been an active Butterfly season, I have seen many multiple species of different butterflies this season enjoying my garden. I want to share some recent photos in this post.
Monarch 
Monarchs Mating 
Giant Swallowtail 
Giant Swallowtail 
Polydamas Swallowtail 
Polydamas Swallowtails Mating
Those are a few of my daily Butterfly visitors along with different species of Skippers and Sulfurs, White Peacocks and more!
This season has also brought additions to my garden, we built and added a new Butterfly House for Caterpillars to transition into a butterflies. So I currently have 3 butterfly houses within my main butterfly garden.
Also added new garden pathway with added fence line and gates into the garden. I had a flood which caused chaos for a month but we are back on track now with new plants, active caterpillars and butterflies.
I started growing plants from seeds which has been a learning experience but that will be a future post. Along with adding a greenhouse for the growing plants and expanded garden areas to include wide variety of host, nectar, shelter, attractor plants for different types of Butterflies.
We awoke in Morelia, Mexico to a delicious breakfast at our hotel with in their beautiful garden courtyard. You can hear the birds singing with blue skies and cool morning air.
Our Travel day took us sightseeing to local villages as we traveled to Macheros, Mexico for our next day journey to our first Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, Cerro Pelon.
We traveled to a village called Santa Clara del Cobre that was filled with Shops that sell and make Copper items. We entered one that gave us a Copper demonstration, the copper is transformed with extreme heat and then hammering the copper into an item like a pot or vase.
Copper Shop 
Hammer..Hammer 
Melt Copper
We walked around this magical, artistic village and shopped until our tour guide said we had to travel on. But we all found copper treasures to take home like butterflies, jewelry, bowls and vases. We also found a Mexican Candy shop for a sweet treat or two.
We headed off to Lake Zirahuen for a delicious lunch with a plate full of Authentic Mexican Quesadillas. On our drive, our tour guides tells us about this Folklore of a Mermaid living in the Lake(there are different versions of this folklore but here’s a summary of what I remember)…. There was a Princess who fell in love with an Spanish captain but her father, the King disapproved so her kept her captive. The story says she cried and cried and cried until a lake was formed…..she became a mermaid in the Lake and may appear to those with “evil hearts” today….and so the folklore says..(check it out online or go visit the Lake yourself and take a look)
Quesadillas 
Lunch Cafe 
Drink Up 
The Lake 
The Lake
We then set in for a long SUV ride across Mexico enjoying the villages along the way. Our travel time was just over 4 hours to reach Macheros. We arrived late in the evening at a B & B , ate a quick bit and settled to bed for the night.
As my previous post says, I went to Mexico last February on a Monarch Overwintering Tour! We visited 3 Butterfly Sanctuaries in the Mountains of Mexico: Cerro Pelon, El Rosario and Sierra Chinchua. They all were the same yet different which I will explain on future blog posts. When I got back home from Mexico I had another trip planned which brought me home Mid-March ….for the start of shut down for the Covid-19 virus.
With that said life had lots of twists and turns and I have been designing and creating this video during my free time. And Finally I am proud to say I’m publishing my first you-tube video! Check it out and leave me a comment or two!!! Share the link with your butterfly friends
Please enjoy this video and follow along on my blog for more details of my adventure and more!