Invisible Pagan: butterflies

I love all things nature and earlier this year took part in the big garden bird watch. Then, a friend tagged me on the butterfly count and suggested I participate in this too, so I did!

My garden is a project that is ongoing, it is pretty sparse with just a few pots and a few of plants, a Buddleia, a Yucca that after being heavily cut back is regrowing much healthier than before and a Holly tree, that has been given a serious manicure. Many of my pot plants die over winter, I'm not the worlds best gardener and I do what I can but inevitably each spring sees me buying more plants to pot in place of the dead ones.

This year I have some empty pots because I wasn't well enough to replace all of the dead plants BUT the ones I did replace, *touches wood and hopes not tempted fate* seem to be thriving. New this year is my herb garden too ~ many of the herbs are flowering at the moment, my chives are flowering for the second time this year which is awesome.

The big butterfly count is open to everyone and you can participate and log results more than once. All you have to do is sit in your area of choice, whether it is a meadow, nature reserve, your garden or wherever you may be, and over a 15 minute period count the number of butterflies you see.

I positioned myself for half the time by my lavender pot plants and the other half by my Buddleia bush and noted what I saw, checking the identification chart to be sure I identified the butterflies correctly.

For the first time ever I spied a Common Blue Butterfly (should be named uncommon blue because it was the first time I'd seen one) on my lavender. I was mesmerised by how beautiful it was, the colour of the blue/purple wings was so vibrant and it's body so very blue. It was also really pretty small which surprised me, so I suppose very easy to miss.