Raising Monarchs

I must apologize for the lapse in blogging; going back to work has thrown me for a loop.  It's amazing how out-of-contact one can become with one's job when one isn't there for almost 4 months!  Returning part-time wasn't bad; I was able to rest when I got home around 1:30, but the return to full-time has been difficult.  Because I still have fluid buildup at the surgery site, my back starts to burn around 4 PM every day, and I don't get off work until 5:30, so it's a grin-and-bear-it late afternoon for me.  Ibuprofen helps, but it really takes rest for me to feel better. 
I miss my hummingbirds while I'm at work, and I think they miss me!  TRULY!  When I get home and go outside, the little birds are soon flying around in front of my face, seemingly asking me where I've been.  I'll miss them even more when they head south for the winter.  While they're gone, I'll fill our bird feeders and enjoy the birds that winter here.  Currently, we have a lot of American Gold Finches feasting on the zinnias that splash our gardens with color.  The birds perch on the flowers and pluck the petals out, then eat the soft seeds at the end of the petals.  Flowers with missing petals, and there are many of those, are easily spotted when I cut flowers for the house, but there are so many zinnias that I don't mind sharing with my feathered friends.  The finches come in early morning and evening like clockwork. 
I'm happy to report that the monarch butterflies returned to my yard and laid eggs on the butterfly weed, and I've watched the caterpillars grow as big as my small finger.  Curious to keep a chrysalis to watch it hatch, I placed a large caterpillar in a huge glass vase, added a very wet paper towel to the bottom, cut a large piece of butterfly weed, stuck it in the paper towel, and finally covered the opening with a piece of netting.  As I hoped, the caterpillar is on its way to becoming a butterfly.  When I got home one evening earlier this week, the caterpillar was hanging by his back end (it actually is a small, very strong connector made of silken thread), and in the morning, it was hanging in a J position and getting darker.  When I came home that day, it was totally transformed into its chrysalis, or pupa stage.  This is the most amazing process, and if you search the internet for raising monarch butterflies, you'll be able to find sites that have amazing photographs of the entire process.  The chrysalis is jade green surrounded by a necklace of golden dots -- amazingly beautiful.
Encouraged by my success, I've "caged" two other caterpillars which have chrysalized and have put the two chrysalises into a butterfly house made of netting.  (I found another crawling on the deck, and I've spotted one more chrysalis hanging from a flower pot.)  Moving and bumping them should be minimal, so I've placed them in our screen room so they can be in the natural air.  Unfortunately, not all caterpillars make it to the chrysalis stage; I found one dead on the butterfly weed, and another started to chrysalize on the side of our fabric-covered gazebo top, but at the end of the day, it was dripping -- not a pretty sight.  The other caterpillars on our butterfly weed have wandered off and chrysalized (they are very difficult to find), but I found one chrysalis on the cup holder of one of my lawn chairs  I placed it in the sun room to join my other four babies, but left the chrysalis where it was.  After being gone to my son's house for dinner Saturday evening, I checked on it, and the wings were clearly visible through the now-clear chrysalis.  This morning when I got up, I checked again, knowing that it would soon emerge (see photo attached), and when Bob got up a while later, I told him that the butterfly would certainly emerge today, and when he went to look at it, it had already done so.  Wings soft and pliable, it readily climbed onto my finger.  I took one of my vase of flowers outside to grace the table in the gazebo while we were eating breakfast and placed the new butterfly on the flowers.  Later, I put them in the open air, and when we returned from church, our new baby had flown away.  This butterfly, and those that will be emerging soon, will travel to Mexico to overwinter before mating and returning to the US.  It is only the generation born now that makes the trip and lives for 9 months; summer generations live a mere 4 - 5 weeks.  In the spring, they will mate and return to the northern states, laying eggs on butterfly weed and milkweed as they go. 

I hope you enjoy the attached photos -- from tiny caterpillar to Monarch butterfly -- and marvel at the process of metamorphosis that God has created.