Monarch Farm

No, I am not talking about a pastoral compound where the children of royalty are raised far away from the stinking peasants, being groomed to take over the ceremonial duties of state with aplomb and inbreeding.

I'm talking butterflies!

A few days ago, I saw my first monarch of the season, a couple of days ago, I found some eggs, and this morning, a friend posted a picture of her wee caterpillars going to town on milkweed. In the comments, someone mentioned that she had brought in eggs just that morning, and a discussion followed that included parasitic wasps, exploding caterpillars, and joy-filled children handling sleepy, damp butterflies.

I poked around a (very) little bit on the oracle, and found a page that tells you how to raise these little guys and gals inside your house. This was appealing to me for a number of reasons. For one, my common milkweed comes up everywhere, including the driveway, and I try to get those out before the eggs show up. Bringing them inside meant that I could both remove the giant plant and save the eggs. Everybody wins! For two, in the past, I have grown very attached to what I come to consider My Caterpillars, and have experienced great sadness and rage when they are, say, attacked and devoured by vicious little evil red ants.

For three, in the past few years, I have noticed a great decline in all my usual butterflies, and I have not seen any caterpillars, so the idea that I could finally show the boy this whole process was perhaps the best part.

The blog I was reading suggests that you can put the leaf bearing the egg into a plastic container, but we chose to dig up a few whole plants, as we have a tall butterfly pavilion (which is not necessary, it was just laying around here at the house), and I wanted to remove the plants anyway. I will probably seek out other eggs and use the leaf-removal system from here on in.

Finn and I stepped out and examined many of the common milkweed plants that are poking their noses into undesirable garden spots and found three or four eggs. We dug up the plants and put them into used plastic containers and put the whole set-up into the butterfly pavilion. The whole operation took less than 15 minutes, and I was treated to an impromptu song from the boy about working together, doing things together, because we love each other. He also exclaimed "I love that we are doing this!"

Yeah. That pretty much melts my cold heart of stone.

So here I sit, at my kitchen table, a butterfly pavilion full of milkweed at my elbow. And I can already feel my maternal protectiveness setting in. I'll probably be checking these plants ten times a day and worrying about the eggs and subsequent caterpillars when I wake up in the middle of the night.