Ever since we did our little experiment with the Live Butterfly Kit from Insect Lore - the kids and I have been fascinated by our garden inhabitants...
We literally have dozens of painted lady butterflies hanging out in our various flower beds in our yard...
(Whether or not it is a direct correlation to the Butterfly Release we did in May, I'm not sure, but it sure is awesome!)
And today...
Today we discovered that we have dozens of THESE GUYS too!
Monarch Butterfly Caterpillars! They LOOOVE the milkweed I planted in the new garden - (and I'm glad because I was thinking I didn't so much like it and was going to try and pawn it off on someone else!) I am soo happy I planted that! There are also some other really fuzzy little caterpiller guys hanging out on the same plants - not sure what those will turn into -
TWINS! We have soo many of these caterpillars! This is so exciting!
We've seen a few Monarchs flying around the yard - we'll have dozens if all of these caterpillars make it to butterfly stage...
I've done some reading up on the Monarch Butterfly - I had no idea so many of them had died off with that killer weather that had been going around - Who knew?
Turns out you can get some *free* Milkweed seeds to plant - Check it out if you are so inclined - or do like I did and head to your local nursery for some discounted Milkweed plants!
3 comments:
When I was little we use to go to Lake Harriet, find a juicy milkweed plant with teeny tiny caterpillars, and take the plant home. We'd put it in a coffee can with water and watch. In no time at all we had our own monarch butterflies! Probably not great to cut the plants down but so fun for us as kids...
We have some of those too, and they kids keep finding them and freaking me out they are so huge.
I love all the butterflies that are out this year! The rain sure helped them a ton.
That is really cool! Those catepillars are awesome!!! :)
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