Now that it appears I may have safely lived through one of my worst summers (worst summers so FAR - insert hysterical, as in she's lost her mind, "laughter" :-o), I am going to try to catch the blog up with at least some of the actually good parts from the past few months.
I hate that I let the blog slip so far away. I did keep the Instagram feed running all summer and I'm extremely thankful for that, but I'd much rather have the higher quality photographs from the "big girl camera" and more stories. Even sad stories deserved to be told.
That being said, these next few posts may be more letting the pictures tell the stories, just in an effort to get them posted, but hopefully, as I get back into the routine of blogging, the rest will come back as well.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation - The Butterflies
I think it was around mid July when I first heard about looking for and bringing in monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars and raising them in a secure location away from mowers, chemical sprays, even predatory birds and other insects.
It took some practice to spot them, but as the summer progressed, I got pretty good at it and ended up setting up a pretty big butterfly nursery on the back porch. I lost track of how many I helped hatch, but there are a ton of pictures of the nursery and hatching butterflies on my Instagram feed.
Watching eggs hatch into teeny tiny caterpillars who then grew and grew into big caterpillars who then transformed into the most beautiful green and gold chrysalises and finally hatched into beautiful butterflies never got old.
The first to hatch here were actually brought in when Robin and Julie came to visit in August. Three hatched the first morning they were here. We gave them several hours to dry off and gather strength and then released them out by the Frog Pond.
This is a female. You can tell by the two thick black diagonal lines and the clean lines on the lower wing patterning.
This is a male. The diagonal lines are not as thick and there are two dots on the lower wing patterning.
The very next day, my first butterfly hatched :-).
It was very excited to get out and immediately flew up into a tree.
Is this a male or a female?
This is one of my favorite videos from the butterfly posts. See, it wasn't all bad, Sara :-).
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