The kids and I saw a Monarch butterfly flitting around our new butterfly garden today! It was flying around and I’m not sure what it was doing, but it touched every milk-weed plant in the garden. Then it went behind the fence, there are milkweed there too, so I need to do a good check to see if it had a chance to lay some eggs. It’s so amazing the connection between the butterflies and the milkweed, things like that always make me marvel at God’s creation. Now I didn’t get a picture, first off because we still haven’t replaced our camera that broke and our old camera would never catch a buttefly in flight! Too bad.
But the garden is coming along. I had pulled everything out that didn’t belong and I’ve planted a butterfly bush, a new little purple daylily (Little grapette) and some zinneas, which are all flowers that adult butterflies love.
My next goal is to transplant some other flowers that I have in other gardens, but it’s been way to hot to garden. Hopefully I’ll get a chance this coming week.
And our caterpillars are growing like crazy. We had the three hatch last week and one is already over an inch long! Then we found 2 more tiny baby caterpillars on a milkweed that had accidentally been pulled up, so we had five. One didn’t make it (he died) and when I check with our Monarch expert, Mrs. McCaw, she said this was normal. So we had four. Then I found yet another caterpillar outside so we were up to five again, but then today I noticed that another one was missing. It was our tinest baby, I think he must have crawled out of his cage. I should have had netting on the cage, so we’ll be careful next time… but we found 2 more eggs today, so we’ll just keep going!
Here’s another little something I found growing in my garden… I can’t believe my baby is getting so big!
But my baby caterpillars seem to be filling up my need for babies… maybe that’s why I’m enjoying them so much? I do feel like their parent, but thankfully I’ve never lost one of my own children… haha. Babies and caterpillars, what a great combination!
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My babies are inside and I have to give them milkweed every day. Wishing I had a few of my own plants but I think maybe I’ll get pods and plant them (and try to remember where they are) to protect them for next year.