My favorite!

More photos

Today it was 76 degrees and sunny--a truly gorgeous day!  We were visited by at least two dozen monarchs on their way to Texas.  They enjoyed the zinnias and butterfly bush plants in the butterfly garden as well as the other flowers my fellow gardeners had in their gardens.  What a sight!

The black swallowtails were so much fun to raise!  However--please note never to buy "organic" parsley from the store to feed the caterpillars.  It appears that organic farms are permitted to use a pesticide that is deadly to all insects (wonder what it does to us?) and the parsley I purchased ended up killing most of my caterpillars.
This one, however, was on one of my homegrown plants:

Great news!  I raised and released 145 monarchs this summer as well as 15 painted ladies and 5 black swallowtails.  Unfortunately, I saw no swallowtails after I released them, but the painted ladies stayed and I've seen them all over the zinnias!

Often your caterpillar turns into a pupa so quickly you miss the whole thing!  Someone with more patience than me caught the "wiggle" in this video.  Note that the caterpillar wiggles and squirms right out of his skin.  The last thing to pop off  is his head!


http://i.imgur.com/3OEY4Xn.mp4

Busy summer!  We've released 50 monarchs so far and currently I have 6 growing.  I also found 6 newly laid eggs on some of the new growth milkweed.  If you trim your milkweed plants throughout the summer, the plants will send out new shoots.  These are highly favored by the female monarchs as the plants will provide better nutrition for the growing caterpillars than the older plants.  In fact, some believe that the milkweed plants that have been growing all summer provide insufficient nutrition for the "super" generation which flies  on to Texas.