After a fun filled summer of surgery, recovery, a mammogram scare and turning 50, I have returned.
Yes, indeed.
Getting older is not what I expected.
But let me catch you up on some of the summer fun we had.
RAISING BUTTERFLIES
We successfully raised and let about 200 Monarch butterflies go.
I collected tiny caterpillars (and eggs, too once I learned what they looked like) to prevent the marauding ants from devouring them.
Bad ants.
Then I raised them in screen cages with plenty of fresh milkweed for them to eat. They eat A LOT. And they make a lot of poop.
It is called "frass". It comes out of their (fr)a**.
When the time is right they crawl off the plant, hang upside down and then somehow morph into the most beautiful chrysalis.
Before on the right, after on the left.
Sometimes if the caterpillars escaped, they would find an odd place to put the chrysalis, like on my rosary squirrel. Or the ceiling. Or underneath a rocking chair. If I found them first and relocated them they did fine. If the cats found them first when they were emerging, well, then not so much.
When the butterfly is ready to hatch (the correct term is "eclose") then the chrysalis turns very dark and you can see the wings easily.
And then in a blink of an eye (or a trip to the bathroom) the butterfly emerges. It stays in the weird shriveled state for about 15 minutes and then the wings unfold and it spends another few hours drying.
This is one of mine, drying.
By the end of summer I was ready to be done with them. It was a labor intensive, endless, thankless job. There was no end to the eggs and tiny caterpillars that appeared every day. Sometimes twice a day. But I could not just leave them to be devoured by those bad ants.
Just when I thought I was done for the summer one of my good friends brought me some swallowtail caterpillars on some Italian parsely he had been growing. And under the guise of "We are going out of town", they foisted a whole herd of caterpillars on me.
Eventually they, too made chrysalises. But they make ugly ones. If they are near something dark, the chrysalis is dark.
If it is near something green, the chrysalis is green.
And then they hatch into a gorgeous butterfly like this.
But mine were late in the season so they will "overwinter" and hatch in the spring.
Now I have about 40 squatters out on the screen porch.
Great. More things to take care of.
GETTING A GREENHOUSE
I have wanted a greenhouse for a long, long time. I found a frame for a very reasonable cost on the internet and without doing any further research I bought it. And then the fun began.
I had no idea it would be such a money pit.
The tempered glass panels it needed cost more than the frame.
The concrete pad it sits on cost more than the frame.
Having professionals install it cost more than the frame.
But it is done and I love it. All my big summer plants and butterfly plants are overwintering in it. I will start all my host plants in it early so there will be plenty of food for the butterfly caterpillars next summer. The shelves are not in it in this picture and the plants had not been moved yet, but you get the idea.
This is the special variety of Asclepius that I am growing for next summer. Stay tuned.
