Thanks Debra for alerting me to the plants database. I looked at it and it is indeed very thorough.
I can see myself using that for all sorts of things!
Becky--I can tree-mail you my county and state, that website sounds interesting! 8-9 varieties of butterflies is impressive! I have only seen about 3 different varieties of butterfly in our garden. Monarchs, swallowtail, and one other that I didn't recognize. We had a big butterfly plant right outside our house last summer and there were lots of monarch caterpillars on it, but a strange bug would come and jab them and they would die. I found the bugs and killed them several times but we only got one chrysalis to form and hatch. Then I found the bugs killing the potato beetle larvae in the garden so I decided to let them be as maybe they are a good bug after all. This year I hope to plant lots more of the butterfly weed as I would imagine the more weeds there are, the more butterfly larvae there will be and there will be more survival. The kids love to run out and look at all the caterpillars every day!
It is funny how we have about the opposite problems here--here it is more a case of trying to keep herbs alive (well, except for mint--that can be invasive) than trying to keep them in check. Hah!
