Butterfly Garden

A Monarch Butterfly on a Zinnia in our Backyard

There is something magical about a rabble of butterflies fluttering around beautiful flowers—creating a picturesque scene.  But these scenes are far and few between and rarely seen in my backyard.  My daughter loves to chase and capture what she mistakenly insists are butterflies but are in fact white moths—the primary lepidopterans that enjoy our landscape.  In the photo above, I managed to capture one Monarch Butterfly enjoying our Zinnias.

We are slowly unraveling the mystery of creating our own butterfly garden with the impetus of an advertisement on t.v. for “My Butterfly Garden.”  We ordered the kit and then ordered our butterfly larvae and waited expectantly for several weeks for delivery.  What finally arrived was a vial of about 5 chrysalis which showed little, if any, movement.  We were skeptical that anything would emerge alive but it didn’t take long to see signs of life.  One butterfly emerged, wet winged, the very next day and another butterfly followed the day after that.  When the butterflies were dry and able to fly, we opened the vial inside a covered terrarium.

Painted Lady Butterflies in a Terrarium

Our two Painted Lady butterflies are doing well.  They enjoy the water and sugar solution that we poured into a shallow dish.  It has small rocks in it for the butterflies to perch on while drinking.  They seem to be flying around more each day too.  I bought a hollyhock hock plant and put some leaves in the habitat, but I’ve found no evidence that they are eating the leaves. 

At one point I saw movement in another chrysalis.  I can see wet orange and brown wings have formed and little legs were moving.  I find myself poking at it occasionally to get its legs to move again—reassuring me it is still alive.  I hope the butterfly will emerge soon. 

We are really drawn to the terrarium to see if the butterflies entered a new stage of metamorphosis.  We are waiting for the mature butterflies to lay their eggs and begin a new circle of life before we release them outdoors.