Last week’s rain has made me a lazy gardener.

Rain is such a rare event here during the summer that when it rained as much as it did last week, I thought I would get to take a week off from watering and doing anything in the garden other than enjoying all that the garden has to offer.

Nope, and I should’ve known better since I live in one of the driest place in the continental US. It took less than 2 days to dry everything out and by day 3, the plants in the garden were screaming, “I need water!”

Thankfully, I silenced the screams by giving it almost half of the rain water I collected from the gutter. After watering the back garden, I moved to the front garden but immediately, I was distracted by this gigantic bee on my gigantic sunflower head.

Last night, being lazy again, I watered the garden with drip irrigation as opposed to hand watering but I wasn’t sitting around doing nothing. I was sowing seeds for the fall garden. I was about to amend the soil in the front garden when something fluttered in the corner of my eye.

This was truly the first butterfly to visit my garden. Before this, every butterfly I’ve ever documented turned out to the evil cabbage moth, which not only ruined 6 heads of napa cabbage this spring but it basically decimated my brassicas.

Seeing this butterfly, however, gave me a sense of triumph like I’ve finally brought wildlife to my garden. I mean, this is the famous Monarch Butterfly, is it not? Everyone’s trying to save it by planting Milkweed. I tried to plant Milkweed this year but none of the seeds germinated.

This butterfly wasn’t the first wildlife I’ve seen in my garden. I’ve also seen quite a few hummingbird flutter about after dark but they were too fast for me to take a picture. I discovered hummingbirds like my petunias.

Anyway, seeing the butterfly and the hummingbird made me feel like I’ve achieved my goal for gardening. I started my garden, not for the sake of growing food but to save the wildlife. When I see things like butterflies and hummingbirds in my garden, it gives me a sense of achievement.