At the behest of my elder child, I planted a black knight butterfly bush several years ago, and was dismayed this spring to find it was dead. However, the sport seedling I'd moved to the front yard was fine, and the younger kid, upon seeing this swallowtail on that, thought I ought to photograph it. Butterfly wasn't thrilled with the clicking of the shutter (which I think I finally wised up & turned off, since the camera is mirrorless anyway) but it tolerated my presence for a surprisingly long time, even circling back; so I guess buddleias are indeed enticing.

swallowtail photographed mid-day/afternoon, f2.8 1/14,000sec. Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX100

And as a bonus, I discovered my backyard butterfly bush wasn't dead after all; it just had winter-kill all the way to the ground. It ended being just as big as it normally is. Even the deeply unhappy red sweetshrub, which I moved last fall, and pulled out of the ground had some pale shoots below ground, so I shoved it back in, and it's got a couple of leaves at the base of the plant showing now. Provided something with similar leaf shape isn't just parasitizing the dead wood of course.

This was taken within seconds of the one above—just before, actually.

The front yard has also developed a collection of echinacea, though they wax and wane with the various other perennials, notably phlox (which I notice took a big hit this year, probably because we lacked the extravagant rain we had last year ...I think?; at any rate, the purple coneflowers certainly died off less from lack of water). I took —and cropped!—this picture back in 2014, but I can't find any evidence I ever posted it on the site, so here is again. If I'm not mistaken, this one is female, whereas the other, with more orange and blue markings along the bottom of the wings, is male.^[1]

This was taken with my now alas-defunct sony rx100 in 2014. Click on any image for the full-size version.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.