Orange Sulphur butterflies were ‘very common’ those 27 years that I lived in Pittsburgh. That meaning that my well-stocked garden might have a many as 4 or 5 Orange Sulphurs visit on a sunny summer day. They’d be seen on the zinnias, salvias and hosta in bloom.

In summer 2017 I relocated to Georgia Piedmont region. I’d visited Eatonton and its environs in 2015, 2016 and 2017 and I already knew that the Deep South had lots and lots of butterflies. My main destination was Virginia’s Butterflies & Blooms Briar Patch Habitat, it in the center of Eatonton. When you spent mornings there, as I did, you’d enjoy 20 or more butterflies like this one, a male Cloudless Sulphur, all busily flying from flower to flower. This one is enjoying the sugary nectar of a Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia) bloom.

As Virginia says, plant their hostplants and they will come. I did just that, in the closing months of 2017, last year, and now again in young 2019.

What happened last year, 2018? Last year I had, on any given sunny day, 10 or 15 Cloudless Sulphurs in my garden, at any given time. What’s that word, Ubiquitous? These large yellows are almost everywhere, from 8:15 A.M. to 8 P.M, nectaring, flying, resting, mating. They have several flights each year, and all this without any Senna (their hostplant) yet, in my garden!

You almost have to work to remember that just because they are common, does not take away from the acknowledgment of their own unique Beauty.

It reminds Boy Brooklyn of those many years when I worked in Midtown Manhattan, New York. The morning, lunchtime and late afternoon sidewalks were so packed with people, that you soon no longer notice individuals, you just saw masses of people. That, always struck me as unhealthy for the psyche, and I longed to correct that, for me and my Happiness. I finally did, and here I am, mobbed by Cloudless Sulphurs, and enjoying it.

Jeff