So much to catch up on, but, of course, I won't be catching up on most of it...ever. There are still a ridiculous number of Christmas cards to be sent and a few presents left to pick up. Thankfully, I'm mostly done with my shopping, thanks to Amazon and a couple of great post-Thanksgiving sales. The chocolates for the teachers are made, but there are still lots of cookies to go, at least in theory. Even the invitations for the baby shower I'm helping to plan went out in the mail yesterday...to my great relief!Long before Thanksgiving, however, a friend of mine asked me if I'd like to raise some caterpillars. She was on her second or third batch at that point and I thought the kids might have fun watching them grow. She mercifully gave me only five little 'pillars and I lamely forgot to take any pictures of them as they grew. But grow they did and sooner or later, they started hanging from the roof of their little Gladware home.
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the chrysalises were a beautiful greenish, metallic gold color until the butterflies were about ready to emerge, when you could see their black and orange colors through the "skin".
Of our five caterpillars, only three made it to full butterflies, the other two turning to chrysalis mush in the container. Still, we had some lovely little butterflies.
But after a week of seeing no sign of mating activity (suggesting maybe we only had one gender in there)...and realizing that it was going to become awfully hard to find hollyhock leaves for new caterpillars with winter coming on strong, we chose a sunny afternoon to let our three butterflies flutter away. And that was possibly the most fun part of all!
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