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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve been spotting Monarch caterpillars in my butterfly garden since the beginning of the summer.\u00a0 I didn’t see the mama that laid the eggs but have been lucky to have seen caterpillars here and there all summer.\u00a0 Yesterday I was lucky enough to spot one of those caterpillars as a newly eclosed butterfly in the garden.\u00a0 It’s wonderful to see the process play out in nature from start to finish and a wonderful motivation to keep up with all the work that gardening entails to keep those butterflies and other native pollinators coming back.\u00a0 I neglected my butterfly garden for a full summer and invasives took over – especially Japanese Stiltgrass… so this summer has been a lot of work to get it back to weed free (well… not sure “weed-free” is a real thing… but I’m battling the weeds nonetheless…).\u00a0 There are only a few milkweed plants left (though I know they will spread) and yet with only a few – the butterflies are finding them.\u00a0 It doesn’t take a huge area or a lot of plants to benefit our native species.\u00a0 Whatever we can do – one plant at a time – does make a difference.\u00a0 If you spend some time in your garden, after you plant, observing or taking pictures, it doesn’t take long to see the difference a plant can make.\u00a0 So, don’t think you need a big yard. Start with whatever space you have.\u00a0 Reach out to others local to your region for seeds to swap to save money.\u00a0 You can make a difference, one plant at a time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been spotting Monarch caterpillars in my butterfly garden since the beginning of the summer.\u00a0 I didn’t see the mama that laid the eggs but have been lucky to have seen caterpillars here and there all summer.\u00a0 Yesterday I was lucky enough to spot one of those caterpillars as a newly eclosed butterfly in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,443,1192,922,923,1001,11,300],"tags":[482,1193,446,15,955,294,832,293,447,1215],"class_list":["post-6989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-butterflies","category-butterflies-of-loudoun-county-virginia","category-in-the-garden","category-insects-in-the-garden","category-macro-portraiture","category-nature","category-portraiture","tag-animal","tag-butterflies-of-loudoun-county-virginia-2","tag-butterfly","tag-garden","tag-gardening","tag-insect","tag-insects","tag-macro","tag-monarch","tag-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6991,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions\/6991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}