Pollinators are happy!

I spent a while out in the vegetable garden yesterday - watering, picking cabbage worms, watching all the little insects flitting around, and becoming enamored with the swallowtail butterfly that kept visiting my Mexican sunflower (torch tithonia). I was commenting to someone at work that I had seen so few butterflies this year, I was beginning to think something was wrong (I guess I meant something besides the copious quantities of pesticide that are used in this agricultural region).
But all it takes is some time out in the garden and a pair of open eyes. The pollinators LOVE my torch tithonia - this is an annual plant I grow from seed. Usually I have difficulty growing it from seed, at least here in Colorado. But this year I tried a different technique: I sowed many more seeds in indoors starter pots than I usually do, so had many more surviving seedlings. I even had enough plants to give away a couple. Along with being a great pollinator attractant, the seeds will also attract birds later. It's also a beautiful plant.

I harvested my first brusselsprouts yesterday, along with green beans, one red cabbage, and some cherry tomatoes. I also removed the last of the row covers from my cabbage-family plants; I figured any damage that occurs from cabbage worms I can mostly nip in the bud from there on out. Turns out the moths had gotten under the row covers, since I did have some damage already. Had to go on a killing spree in search of cabbage worms . . .