Lovely October days, in and out

Amazing, in our close to 80 degree weather, to know that our Canajun colleagues have already celebrated Thanksgiving, and I hope it was a happy one for all of you.  Ours is nearer our actual harvest -- farmshare doesn't end till mid November -- but a bit too near Christmas and New Year.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd celebrate Indigenous People's Day yesterday with a stroll out on the Preserve, this having been Lenni Lenape territory long ago, to honor them.

And found milkweed, which, after this pic

I blew at and scattered the seeds far and wide, in hopes of feeding future monarch butterflies, which have been very scarce this year.  Most butterflies have been scarce -- a couple of monarchs, a few tiger swallowtails and dusky swallowtails, more Red Admirals, the usual little whites and blues and sulfurs and browns.

But I was blessed yesterday, with a sight of two American Ladies, a first for me, on the field in the Preserve, near where I used to see buckeyes a lot.  At first I thought this pair were Red Admirals, but too fancy a design for that.  Then I wondered Painted Ladies, but not the right pattern for that either.  

And my good old Golden Book of Butterflies explained my confusion, after it identified them as American Ladies.  They are all three in the Vanessa species, and there's another on the west coast, so that's why I was uncertain, many points of resemblance.  Beautiful but impossible for pix, very very flighty and arguing amongst themselves.  But that flourish of orange color on the upper wing is pretty identifiable. So if you want a pic, since my link didn't work, google on American Lady Butterfly.

Then this morning, this is what I saw on waking, among the houseplants in the bedroom, the duncanus domesticus

lurking and gazing steadily in the hopes of waking me early to give him breakfast.