July was hot and humid, but we got plenty (and then some) of rain so the grass grew and nothing turned soul crushingly brown and crispy. I already know it's going to be hot. I can live with the extra humidity if it's from rain. I'd prefer it didn't flood the barn, but we can deal with that.
The B Garden has been a real treat this summer. We've had several monarch appearances already (usually not until August) and have seen several caterpillars! I'm not sure if this is just going to be a good monarch year all over (finger and toes crossed) or if we've just added enough habitat that our farm has made their map.
Our year supply of hay and straw is in the barn. The Tour de Fleece was fun and productive. I pulled the big girl camera out and enjoyed taking some nice pictures. Archie only nearly fell off a couple of things this month, Possum has fully embraced the air conditioner life, and Bea has learned what a "pup cup" from Dairy Queen is.
I've never before been able to spot a chrysalis out in the "wilds", but I have found two this year! Both have been on the milkweed in the raised beds, but I'm suspicious there was one in the B Garden as well as I found a newly hatched butterfly out there one morning a week or so ago.
This chrysalis was on a rapidly browning leaf and as I watched the leaves around it drop to the ground I decided to pluck this one and put it somewhere safe until it was ready to hatch. They have to hatch in the air so they can dry their wings as they expand. Opening on the ground it would not have survived.
My original plan was to move it back to the raised bed just before it opened, but as I carried it out there I saw a bunch of birds and decided to keep it on the Wool House porch, about 40' from where it was laid. That worked out okay for the butterfly as no predators grabbed it and good for me because I was able to watch and take a time lapse video.
For the hatching time lapse I found out I could use iMovie to edit the speed and I may go back and edit this video as well. I think it's fascinating!
Welcome to the world, little girl. You can tell it's a girl by the thicker black lines and the lack of two black dots on her lower wings.
I have picked up the other chrysalis and attached it the the drying rack on the porch as well. The old milkweed is fading fast. Next year I'm going to "mow" it after it blooms so it sends up new growth before the late summer butterflies arrive.
I've seen way more monarch caterpillars this year than last...but I'm still not sure they are making it to the chrysalis stage. I've yet to find a chrysalis in real life. This is not just for this year, but ever, so maybe they are just really good at hiding them. I hope.
I've toyed with collecting them and putting the porch nursery back in service. I kept all my supplies. Watching the caterpillars grow and change was really fun...but it was a lot of work keeping fresh food picked for them. Providing habitat was my go forward plan, but if they aren't actually surviving, then it's still not a great plan.
While I'm stewing on what to do, here are some fun pictures from a couple of days ago. The greens are turning brown rapidly, but there are a few younger plants that can hopefully keep everyone fed.
The B Garden is in a yellow phase right now, but the zinneas and a volunteer cosmos are keeping things colorful. I'm starting to see a few monarchs and and few swallowtails. I haven't seen any caterpillar activity, but maybe soon.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the caterpillars this year. I feel like most of them, maybe all of them, were predated last summer. I'm thinking about putting the nursery back in play this year. I'd rather they lived a natural life, but if they don't make it to maturity, that's not helping anything :-/.
While we think on things, here's a fun new puzzle :-).
Well, one. One monarch. But more are surely coming!
How could they resist this buffet :-D.
Last year I planted milkweed seeds in two of the raised beds and my cousin and I transplanted 10 plants from the back field into the lavender garden. Nine of the 10 plants came back this year with extras on the side and one of the raised beds is so packed with milkweed plants that I haven't even had to weed it all summer.
I also planted plenty of buckwheat and scattered several packets of seed mixes for butterflies, bees and birds. There are still a few lavender plants left after three years of way too wet winters and a few volunteer sunflowers have popped up as well. I'm just now seeing some mixed flowers and I can't wait until the whole garden is blooming!
This picture shows how many milkweeds are packed in the raised bed just outside the lavender, now known as the butterflies, birds and bees garden.
This picture maybe better shows how tall they are.
I tried (once again) to plant some vegetables this spring, Victory Garden style, and (once again) in the event of a zombie apocalypse, we're going to be some of the first folks out. But, hey, we'll have lots of pretty flowers ;-).
Here's a new puzzle that ought to keep you busy for awhile. Enjoy!
The first porch butterfly hatched this morning. I knew he (watch for the two black dots on the lower wings) was close to hatching so I hurried with the barn chores and came back to the house to watch. While I was killing time I decided to wash the dishes...and missed the first 30 or so seconds. Housework...
While the weather is just as ugly as it could possibly be (way too hot and humid for a September morning!), it's perfect for a newly hatched butterfly and his wings were dry and he was ready to release in just a couple of hours.
I carried him out to the zinnias and carefully turned the hamper over so the top was open, gently set it on the bench, grabbed my camera...and zip, he was gone! This was the only "release" picture I got.
He immediately got to drinking...probably because he was dehydrated because it's 9 million degrees...well, 90 degrees...
He had lots of company. I thought this delicate butterfly (moth?) was very pretty.
And a swallowtail! I usually don't see many of those, but I'm hoping after all the caterpillars I found this summer there will be a big influx in the next week or so. I need to look up their hatch schedule.
I planted a bunch of milkweed seeds and plants this spring in hopes that the caterpillars could all grow up out in the "wild" this year and I could just walk out and enjoy them without all the set up and care...and what I think I did was plant a flashing neon sign that says "ALL YOU CAN EAT CATERPILLAR SMORGASBORD!" :-(
This is mostly what I see. There was obviously a caterpillar here not too long ago. The leaf has been eaten and the green balls on the next leaf down are caterpillar poop...but there is no longer a caterpillar.
My first thought was birds, but I think a bigger culprit is wasps. I see them swooping in and around the plants all day long. There are apparently several that are known to eat caterpillars. While I am a firm believer in live and let live in situations like this and that maybe surely wasps have a productive purpose in life, my fun trips to the milkweed gardens...have not been fun.
Frequently I see this - a baby caterpillar happily eating away on a fresh leaf, just the way nature intended. I have yet to see one make it to maturity. They are now coming in to the nursery where they are probably not as happy...but they have a much better chance of staying alive and turning into beautiful monarch butterflies.
In order to put the cut stems down in a water bottle or container, I have to pull off the two lowest leaves. I almost missed this super tiny baby on one of the discarded leaves. Into the nursery he goes! At least I'll have easy access to plenty of fresh leaves this year.
It's been a week since I last posted...and it's been a week. We're all okay, basically, but the summer has taken a toll on everyone around here...except maybe Saint Tim...who's a summer loving freak...and that's all I'm saying about that...freak ;-).
Hank has had issues with the heat and also has an ulcerated lesion on an elbow that doesn't want to heal. Salt ended up with an abscess on a foot that is slowly healing. Tilly still has her ongoing band aid butt. Renny got an infected hair follicle on a foot that had to be lanced. Big Moose got a cough that needed doctoring and now Frankie's got a hitch in his get-along. I'm getting a hitch in my get-along just trying to doctor on everyone :-o.
So it's raining AND pouring...but not actually rain...which we could use. How about some pictures of some of my birds, bees and butterfly plants?
Sunflowers.
Pink buckwheat.
White buckwheat - flowers and grains.
Milkweed mixed in with the white and pink buckwheat with some phlox from a friend in the background.
These are the short sunflowers. Somehow I got some packets that were supposed to grow to 12' and 15' feet tall. These are the 12's, but they are probably only 10' tall.
The 15's are probably only 12' but that's still a pretty darn tall plant and kind of fun.
I planted milkweed, dill and parsley for monarchs and swallowtails this year. The birds and the wasps are getting all the caterpillars :-(.
I guess I should start bringing them in to the safety of the porch when I find them, but honestly...I am mentally and physically maxed out right now...and I feel bad about that...on top of everything else. Maybe things will settle down this week and operation caterpillar rescue can commence.
A friend posted on IG that every day there is "one less day of summer". We (except Saint Tim) are feebly counting it down to ZERO.
Or actually, this should be Part One now that I think about it, because without this part, we wouldn't have had yesterday's post :-). Some shots from the butterfly nursery:
This tiny caterpillar is actually a couple days old. I thought I'd posted a picture of an egg somewhere, but I can't find it, but in looking for it, I found a picture of a just hatched caterpillar. Oh my goodness, teeny tiny! So, yes, the one in this picture is a couple days old at this point.
A day or so older and the big one at the bottom is maybe four or five days old.
A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on
They eat and eat and eat and eat and then one day they stop, find a spot they like, attach themselves at the back end and let the front end hang down in a "J" and they hang there for a day or so and then, if you are lucky, you may notice some movement and before your eyes they'll turn into a chrysalis. Literally before your eyes. A matter of minutes.
Or you'll more likely walk out of the house and just find a beautiful green pendant. They start just plain solid green but with a bright gold "necklace" and over the next 10 or so days you can start seeing a hint of the wings forming.
And then one day you'll notice the green turning black and then you'll see the brightly colored wing markings and wonder how on earth a big butterfly could be packaged up in there!
Here's a closer look.
And then, if you are lucky, right before your eyes the shell will crack open and a butterfly will drop out and hopefully grabs onto the shell as it falls. If he or she falls to the ground, quickly grab a leg and hold it up in the air until the wings fully open. They can't open up on the ground and if the wings don't open, the butterfly will die.
And how do those tiny crumbled up wings open into a full size butterfly? Notice the fat abdomen.
They pump the fluid from there into their wings and you can watch that happen, again, just a matter of minutes!
Almost done.
The gold "necklace" remains on the chrysalis shell.
Once the wings are fully extended, they hang on for another hour or two depending on the weather and will periodically open and shut, or fan, their wings to fully dry them off and I'm assuming gather some strength for flying and then poof, they're up, up and away :-).
It was sure nice to see so many butterflies this year. I'm thinking it was just a good bug year (there were more of everything, good like fireflies, and bad like all the nasty biting bugs that chewed on me all summer), but maybe it is a sign that everyone's efforts to protect the monarch butterflies is paying off.
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 :-).
