Date: 03/02/2005

Number: 1

Prairieville is just east of Baton Rouge and 60 miles northwest of New
Orleans. We had a couple of hard freezes (as low as 25 - 30 for 2-3
days) around Christmas but nothing late in the year. It's been fairly
wet until the last month.

The milkweed is about 2-3 inches high from the base. Generally the
newer plants are larger - especially the self-seeded volunteers that
showed up last year.

Milkweed died back completely, lantana died back completely. We seed
a lot of zinnia. The garden relies on natural watering.

We had visits last fall from only a few very large monarchs. We
figured that the hurricanes caused a change in flight patterns. We
really missed our caterpillars though - we're hoping for some this
spring. We are a primary school. We use the garden and a large
aquarium to teach butterfly lifecycle.

We also have passion vines to attract Gulf Frittilary butterflies -
it's an interesting contrast: food preference, caterpillar appearance
and chrysalis appearance.

Prairieville, LA

Latitude: 30.3 Longitude: -90.9

Observed by: Cheryl
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