Skipper + Agastache

Did you know there are a ton of skipper butterflies? I sat down yesterday to try to identify this one flitting about on this anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) the other afternoon and and I came up empty handed on an identification. There are a couple that look similar, and man, I lost patience pretty quickly with it, wishing I was flipping through a book instead of the internet. We have a butterfly book for Florida, Butterflies Through Binoculars, and it is helpful sometimes but the different region definitely makes it difficult to figure out solely from that book sometimes.

I really love the anise hyssop for the sole fact it is pollinator friendly and *crossing fingers* the deer have not chomped it down yet. Maybe they aren’t hungry enough? I thought they didn’t like lemon balm, according to internet sources, but they do. They’ve kept the lemon balm nice and tame this year instead of its usual cascading-over-the-bricks-and-into-the-path manner. Also, the anise hyssop spread easily by seed so it can fill out an area of the garden if you want it to. I’ve seen several people mention other varieties of agastache on their blogs and I’m very interested in possibly diversifying with more cultivars around the garden because of both of the reasons listed above.

We are definitely hitting the height of summer where we want to hibernate inside for a lot of the day. You can look outside and feel the humidity and heat from the comfort of the A/C and know that you’d be sweating in a few minutes without doing much other than sitting.

I’m trying to drink it all in, this summer, but we got a taste of fall the other morning when a storm front came through—darker than typical at 7:30 am and in the low 70s—and it had me yearning for early October.