An Unexpected Gift

One morning in August, I opened the shades to the back door and was surprised to see a monarch caterpillar crawling along the top of the door (a surprise, because my butterfly garden was a joke this year, lingering somewhere between life and death most summer long).

My son and I admired it, and then I got crazy and suggested we catch it and keep it in a jar. We found a suitable jar and then filled it with grass and a stick (a must for every bug jar). We named it "Antennae", and the jar spent the rest of the afternoon on the floor where my son was playing- so the little caterpillar wouldn't be lonely. Get this. I even I printed out a coloring page of the Butterfly Life Cycle and had my son color it (Whoa, girl!). I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Antennae. I figured he would go the way of every other bug that gets put in a jar. But then something miraculous happened. That evening, Antennae spun a platform and hung from the top of our jar.

The next day he became a cocoon (I learned their cocoon is actually their exoskeleton) and there he hung for the next 10 days. My son and I regularly checked up on him and talked about how exciting it would be to see him turn into a butterfly. That day came quicker then we expected. One afternoon, I checked on the little guy only to find that he had emerged from his coccon a full grown butterfly. We moved him into a bigger jar, and waited for Daddy to come home to release him.

My son was a little sad to see his "pet" take flight, but we were grateful for the time he shared with us. I felt like Mother of the Year for providing such a hands on learning opportunity for my son, esecially because it was such a spontaneous event. We just caught a bug. You have to be grateful for gifts like that.

You Can Lead a Paperwhite to Water...

Towards the beginning of December, I was motivated by this article to force some paperwhite bulbs for display in our home. I have always wanted to do this and was excited to make my dream a reality. There's not much to it. You just buy bulbs from your local nursery and place them in a dish with gravel and water. It's pretty exciting that such little effort can produce such a beautiful display.

picture from Design*Sponge

It takes about 2 weeks for the bulbs to develop a root system, but once they do, they really take off. (You should actually probably start these in November, for them to be ready by December).
After about 6 weeks of care and anticipation, you will be rewarded with a beautiful floral display that did not cost much money to create at all.


And the blooms are just exquisite!

My Ant/Wasp/Butterfly Garden

One of my favorite places in the world is the Butterfly House in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a huge conservatory filled with butterflies. It is landscaped like a little jungle, and you follow little windy paths as all sorts of tropical butterflies flit above and around you. (If you are lucky, they will even land on you). This place seriously fills me with glee (yes, glee) and makes me feel like a little girl. It's a great place to beat the wintertime blues.

Since I no longer live close to the Butterfly House, but do have a backyard, this summer I decided to try my hand at a making a butterfly garden- meaning planting flowers that attract butterflies. This is something that you could dedicate acres of land to or even just a few containers. I went the container route. Perhaps I can ease my husband into the idea of eventually making our whole backyard a butterfly garden. But then, I would probably never leave our back window.
In planning a butterfly garden, you can plant flowers that only attract butterflies as a food source and/or plants that butterflies use to lay there eggs on ("host" plants). I did some Google searches to find which local flowers are known to attract butterflies in my area. I also learned that milkweed is the ONLY plant that Monarchs will lay their eggs on. So if you want to see Monarchs, plant milkweed. I decided to try one nectar plant and one host plant. So I planted some milkweed and some lantanas in a large container. And I waited. And I waited. And every day I watched my back window waiting for even one butterfly to pay attention. Nothing happened. Upon closer inspection of my milkweed, I found that I had attracted a whole colony of ants to the little blossoms. Apparently, they like milkweed too. A week went by, and nothing but ants. And then one day, I learned that wasps like milkweed too. Another week, and moths had found my lantana. I was attracting all sorts of friendly insects to our back porch, but not one butterfly.
And then one day it happened. I looked outside and a huge monarch butterfly was drinking deeply of the nectar that I had provided for it. It was seriously getting drunk off the stuff! It probably spent 10 minutes floating around the plant and landing to drink. I was so excited. It even allowed me to step outside and watch it.

Since then, a few more Monarchs have graced our yard with their presence. Then we went out of town, and my garden kind of took a dive. But, I am inspired to dedicate a plot of actual yard to my butterfly garden next year. I am hoping to be able to show my son the whole metamorphosis process. This is something I can not get enough of.
If you're interested in giving it a try, here are some websites to get you started: The Butterfly House, The Butterfly Site, and The Butterfly Website. It's helpful to do a specific search on butterfly gardens including your city or state.