This is the first page since moving into our new home in St Charles, Illinois.  We found an old, old (1916) home not quite on the Fox River but only about a "block" away.  It's a very riparian community :)  If we had a boat we have "dock access" :)  We've been here 4 years now and this year the milkweed came in like gangbusters!  4 different kinds I think.  But, there was a definite lack of monarch butterflies.  Not just here but around the country I have heard.  I only saw a couple and didn't think there were any eggs until I found an empty chrysalis shell on a twig on the other side of the driveway. That little soft green body crawled across all that gravel and dust! Always amazing to me :)
This summer I have made a half-hearted study of the different "weeds" springing up. I want to keep the ones that provide sustenance for the pollinators.  My favorites are of course the Goldenrod and Common Blue Wood Asters : )

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