mail order butterfly magnet

i came home late this afternoon to find a small package waiting for me at my doorstep. i knew immediately that it was one of the plants i had ordered. this butterfly garden has been kind of an exotic journey (or at least it feels that way sometimes).... some plants have been difficult to find - but then maybe that's because i started looking in the middle of winter, right? who knows?... but in all of my infinite impatience, i decided to order some seeds online... and when i couldn't find seeds, i ordered living plants. one of the living plants was in the box i found this evening at my doorstep... and it's the first one i've received. it was fascinating in a rather ordinary sort of way. i had no idea how they would go about shipping a live plant to my house from Pennsylvania.... all of that wonder and amazement... and guessing... ended in a pretty mundane way. i opened the box, and found a little, ordinary plant container with a little, ordinary looking plant growing in it... all tipped on its side, with some crumpled packing paper wrapped around the plant part to protect it during the shipping process... that's it. nothing terribly different or unusual about it. there was a paper folded in half with instructions for what to do when i received the plant.... basically it told me to water the thing. (duh, right?)

nonetheless, i'm still totally stoked about it. i'm trying to figure out if it's ok to hike right on out this weekend and start acclimating it, or if the plant would prefer to coast along indoors with the rest of my seedlings until after the frost quits hitting us. it's a perennial, so it just might be ok.

i also got 3 new packets of seeds in the mail today (mail order is totally fun... because then i get something cool in the mail - and even though i know it's coming, it's still a fun surprise... especially compared to all of the bills that keep arriving in the mailbox. i way prefer it when the mailbox is a fun place to visit).

here's a little info about what i got in the mail today... the live plant i got is a red fortune hyssop... which i hadn't even heard of before i started planning my butterfly garden... i have a blue one on order too, from another nursery (couldn't find a single place that had BOTH in stock. go figure). the seeds i got are for Queen Anne's Lace, Butterfly Weed, and Pentas... none of which i've grown before, but all of which attract butterflies like magnets.

i'm waiting for 6 more plants to arrive in the mail... one of which is called 'orange butterfly plant' ...i currently have butterfly weed & butterfly flower... and all of them are orange. i'm not exactly clear about the differences between them. i ordered 2 online and found seeds for one in the store... there wasn't enough info available when i did the ordering to tell if they're all the same things, and are being called something different by different seed vendors... or if they're actually different from one another. i suppose i'll find out sometime this summer when they really get growing, right?

i'm also waiting for the blue hyssop, a blazing star liatris, swamp milkweed, joe pye weed, and a new variety of bee balm. again, none of which i've ever grown before. i'm so hoping that i can keep them all alive. i worry about things like killing seedlings. they just seem so fragile in the few weeks after they first come up. i'm sure it's rediculous, but i always worry that i'm going to do something wrong and kill them all. i've already managed to kill all of my sunflower seedlings. i think i kept them too moist, but who knows for sure? i have no idea! and then if i don't do something to kill them, mike probably will. he's notorious about leaving the door open to the room they're in - and when that happens, Akira sneaks in and eats them like he's a starving kitty at a seafood all you can eat bar. he killed all of my corn... which i KNOW i can grow, because i've done it before. i grew corn on my balcony last year! :) i've since replanted it, and i've got 6 new corn seedlings going strong.