A freaking Blog

A blog a blog, what the hell to do with a blog. As I sit and look at this I think "What the hell were you thinking when you set this up? You got this thing up and rolling a while back and did jack shit with it." So what do you write about in blog? "You've seen other blogs. Heck some of them are quite good!" Yeah that's true. Anyway what to "blog" about.

We have a Butterfly Bush that was planted by the previous owners of our house. The butterflies go nuts over this. With the help of my Dad we planted milkweed in the vicinity of the bush. The Monarch Butterflies feed on the butterfly bush, see the milkweed and lay their eggs on it. The eggs hatch and you get Monarch caterpillars which eat the milkweed.






All the caterpillars do for a living is eat and grow. Once they get to be a good size we then "harvest" them and eat them. Yum! No, just kidding. We collect them and put them into cups with more milkweed leaves. The cup contraption (Two plastic cups taped together one with the top one having a couple of air holes as seen below)







The caterpillars either eat all the food available or just get to be a good size to go through metamorphosis and climb to the top of the cup where they change into a chrysalis. That's those tiny green things at the top of the cups.

After approximately two weeks, in the morning, the chrysalis will be darker. What happens is the outside shell is now clear and you can see the butterfly inside all compacted down. Its wings are folded up and the fluid to pump out the wings is in the stubby body. The butterfly will hatch that morning and and pump up its wings.