One of the great things about converting our lawn into a patchwork of vegetables and flowers is the wildlife that thrives in our little ecosystem. It's a living and breathing space of birds and insects and bees. This is the most active year of wildlife I have seen and a big part of that is the maturing of our perennial flowers that we planted three years ago.

So yesterday I was out watering and I witnessed an unexpected garden wildlife wonder. A monster monarch butterfly like the one shown above was dancing wistfully around a cluster of purple coneflower plants and day lilies. Out of nowhere a hummingbird, with all the fury and intensity of whirling wings, dove into the scene and looked to be telling the butterfly to bug out. It was a turf war and I was pretty certain that the delicate butterfly would back down to the chopping propellers of the bird. But in this battle the butterfly blustered and confronted her foe and the hummingbird backed off and headed to the friendlier flower patches.

Who knew that butterflies were such bullies and that hummingbirds were such wimps.

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