Surprise!!!

Imagine my surprise and delight when I went out the door to get in the car and spooked a MONARCH on the last of the butterfly weed.    I have not seen a monarch this whole year and so here it is, the coolest day of the fall and it came by.  I went back in the house to grab the camera and luckily it had the 300mm lens on it.   I spooked it again but it flew off onto the cassia and then down to the dianthus.   I was totally still on the porch waiting and hoping that it would come back to the butterfly weed and it did.   Made my day!   

I knew I kept those straggly buggy leafless stem plants in the flowerbed for a reason.     Hoping it will tell its friends so they visit next summer or fall.

 A much better blip than the Halloween decorations that I was going to post!     A couple of other shots in the extras.