These Gulf Fritillaries ate what? Not your normal thought for a butterfly's meal, that's for sure!

Candy Corn is a favorite for Halloween trick-or- treaters and Cloudless Sulphur butterflies. Flowering in the fall, these plants are covered in orange and yellow tubular flowers.

Introducing ... the Shady Oak Gift Card! Purchase a $20 card for $15 until December; that's a 25% savings for you or your friend!

Edible ... for humans and butterflies! Pineapple Sage is a garden favorite for both.

Website Directory ... until a search feature is added.

A car tire ended the life of this snake and provided breakfast for two Gulf Fritillary butterflies.

Although some humans eat snake, they eat it properly cooked and NOT rotting. Because butterflies can only drink through their proboscis, their food must be liquid. Or in other words, decaying. Bleah. Yuck. Gross.

Butterflies drink from several sources including flower nectar, salts, fruit, dung, and carrion.

'Candy Corn' is one of the common names for this fall flowering butterfly nectar plant. Cloudless Sulphur butterflies find Candy Corn to be a fall treat, just as people enjoy candy corn as a fall (Halloween) sweet treat.

What will these gift cards purchase? ANYTHING on the site from living butterflies to butterfly jewelry, rearing kits to butterfly stickers, host and nectar plants to butterfly coloring books, and more!

Spring will open with over 75 species of host and nectar plants available through our website. Shady Oak is certified to ship these plants into all 48 contiguous states.

During the fall and winter months, our website will be updated and a search feature added to the site. With over 200 informational pages on the site, it is a nightmare to maneuver and almost impossible to find all the pages.

Every host and nectar plant sold through the site will have its own webpage with growing information and photos. Spring will bring more improvements galore!

Note: Purchase as many gift cards as you wish BUT this $15 buys you $20 offer is limited to one per customer! The first card you order, $20 and up, will have an additional $5 added free.

Please order your gift card through email or by phone until further notice. Choose the amount you want to place on your card, $5 or more.

Pineapple Sage blooms in late summer and fall, a brilliant red that attracts Cloudless Sulphurs and other butterflies with a long proboscis.

Why a long proboscis? Simple! The bloom itself is a long tube with nectar at the bottom. A short-proboscis butterfly cannot reach the nectar!

Don't let the butterflies have all the taste! Use the flowers and leaves in YOUR recipes as well.

Until next time, Edith, Stephen, Ester, Michelle, and the gang