A checkered white butterfly nectaring on Canadian wild garlic looks completely white from a distance, but closer in has not only gray markings, but a furry blue body. In this wet season, the wild garlic stands higher than the grass, with clean white flowers and red "nutlets"--very pretty, and attractive to butterflies as well.	Another not-quite-white butterfly that looks snowy from a distance is the white-form female of the orange sulphur...here contrasting with a freshly opened gaillardia.
This pair of very fresh variegated fritillaries are mating--on a cloudy day, not showing as orange-and-gold as they can, but still very beautiful. The female has folded her wings.
Lemon horsemint, or Monarda, is just starting to bloom on our place, and here it's decorated with a pipevine swallowtail.	Lemon horsemint flowers come in several color patterns: this is the all-purple one. In some, there are alternating "stacks" of white and purple, and the intensity of the purple varies as well--almost a dark rose in some, a definite purple in others.
The color of Roseate Skimmer males varies with the individual's age and level of excitement and with temperature. One afternoon week before last, three Roseate Skimmer males were skirmishing with one another over the water behind the #3 gabion...all of them intensely colored. This one perched briefly.
With water everywhere on the place, finding damselflies and dragonflies is easy. This is a male Citrine Forktail, Ischnura hastata. I first saw this species last year, a single individual at the edge of the west woods. This year, they're in the secondary drainage as well.	I'm finding damsels I can't identify, as well. This one was perched only about an inch above the water flowing across the near meadow.
Until this year, only the Great Spreadwing and Southern Spreadwing had shown up...but now I have spreadwings by the dozens all up and down the secondary drainage. I haven't a clue what most of them are. They're much smaller, more delicate looking, and I think there are at least two differerent species.
We went out between storms to check on things, and Richard spotted this little fellow floundering in a puddle not even two inches deep, about ten yards from the edge of the creek woods. I think it's a Northern Cricket Frog (it's the right size and looks a lot like the one I photographed last month on mud near the creek).

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