By John Baumann

Spokane, Sept 3, 2025, approaching 101° F I’d just finished lunch and was walking a bucket of vegetable stuff back to our compost when I spied a fritillary flying slowly and low to the ground in a weedy patch of our yard we call “the north 40”, where native shrubs and volunteer weeds and wildflowers have the run of the place. Following the butterfly’s movements as unobtrusively as I could, I soon found that she was here on a mission to bring a brood of young 2026 Zerenes into our yard next spring. The attached photos show the lady straddling a tough old dandelion leaf to plant a young ‘un in the duff beneath. To witness this rebirth taking place in my own backyard during a day of record heat, during the driest summer ever recorded in Spokane (0.26 of an inch June 1st to August 31st) has done my heart as much good as anything else I’ve seen in a lifetime of watching butterflies. We join Mama Frit in hoping for cool, damp autumn and winter seasons to support her children.

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