I LOVE NEW " YORK " GARDEN

I have created a garden to help save/attract bees and butterflies. My garden consists of cosmos, buddleias, Asclepias incarnata/curassavia/tuberosa and some sedums for now. I also have two large sections of raspberries, a blackbery bush and a cherry tree that produce a lot during the summer. Next year, I will add aster, phlox, purple coneflowers, dianthus, ageratum and some marigolds to attract more honey/bumble bees and butterflies. During the summer season we had swallowtails, orange sulphurs, painted ladies, silver spotted skippers, a ton of cabbage whites, snowberry clearwings, etc and that is when we were home. Since the 3rd of September, we counted 19 monarchs that visited/spent the day in our new garden, the last being seen on September 16th. Among them was a tagged monarch but the tag was too faded to read and I didn't want to harm the little critter. I also have 30-40 brown birds that live in my tree at the back of the yard and visiting squirrels that munch on bird seeds. We were able to observe, twice this summer, the presence of yellow rumped siskins in my cosmos but they did not stay very long.