Big Butterfly Count

A couple of years ago, for Mother’s Day, the kids bought me a buddleia. I planted it in our garden and it grew a little bit but nothing to get excited about.

We were in the process of moving house, just starting to dismantle the shed to be precise when I noticed it and said that I should dig it up before we start in case it gets damaged. Things were everywhere and I didn’t know where the compost or a suitable pot was so we decided it would be OK till later.

It wasn’t OK.

We just planted in the vegetable garden bit to get it back in the ground and then proceeded to forget all about it.

We planted it at the top of the garden, behind the apple tree and near to the greenhouse, It’s hidden most of the year by the apple tree, and I haven’t been using the greenhouse at all this year so it came as a big, but exciting surprise to see it blossom this summer and not only did it have loads of flowers, it was taller than me!

The best bit though is that it’s totally living up to the name of Butterfly Bush because today I counted at least 10 butterflies at any one time :0)
Protecting Britain’s butterflies is very important to us so I decided to download the Big Butterfly Count app and took part. The dates on the website were from July 17th to 9th August but you can still submit counts until the end of August so I sat for 15 minutes and counted butterflies while also zooming in on my camera and getting some photos!