Red the travelling Dal visits Canada

[Alliecat]

I wish my milkweed farming were as successful. I planted two entire packets of common milkweed seeds this spring, and as of now I have one milkweed plant struggling to survive at about four inches tall. Not exactly enough to attract or feed a breeding colony of monarchs.

Those caterpillars are quite active. There's one thing they do even better than eating. Starts with P. Ends with P.

Haha, that's for sure.  It's unbelievable how much "compost" they produce.
Bummer about your milkweed!  But growing it from seed is kind of hard.  Did they sprout & then die, or just not sprout at all?  Did the packet have instructions about giving them a winter cold storage & then clipping off the ends to help the roots start?
Maybe you'd have better luck with seedlings.  Monarch Watch in Kansas sells them each year, I think.  
Better hope you don't get an egg-laying female, till you get more plants.  My neighbour across the road has a little milkweed in a pot; there are 2 caterpillars on it and I told him he'd better get them into a jar & get some leaves from the other neighbour, or they'll destroy it and starve.

The butterfly farm is so cool.  How many butterflies do you usually breed & release each year?

Technically I'm not breeding -- thought I'd try that one year when I was a kid, keep a pair in a flight cage & they could mate & lay tons of eggs for me... of course they flapped around & tried to get out, so that ex-periment lasted about 2 days
It really varies.  Last year I had 9 -- I think the neighbour had more.  51 the year before that.  Just depends how many eggs are laid & how many the neighbour doesn't want to bother looking after.  Since I brought home another dozen today that are nearly ready to pupate, it's probably well over 70 at this point.  There are more littles down the road.
When I was growing up I tagged them for years for a research program.  One year I tagged 300; I forget how many actually came through the house & how many were tagged in the wild
I got great mileage out of all this for school science reports, and Mom won some ribbons for her photos of them.


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More adventures with Red:

"Another beach.  We just made a quick outing Friday evening, and it was mosquito-free (well, until the end) so we could stay a little while."


"Oooh."












"Remains of a lobster."



"There was a cute driftwood bench across the road."



"We could hear the kayakers' voices in the fog long before they appeared. The shape in the water is a herring weir: poles and net to catch fish as they swim along the shore. It used to be a really big industry here."






"I'm not allowed to drive at night."

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Butterfly Farm Part II !

"I got to hold a butterfly!  Four hatched today."



"After they hatch they spend a little while in this box sophisticated flight cage, until Alliecat gets round to taking them outside they're ready to fly.  It's left over from when she used to tag them, and you have to keep them a couple of days to allow their wings to harden before you do that."






"Three of them took off right away but one stayed for a few pictures with me."






"Plastic hands are hard to hang on to.  She liked my hair better."



"Bye!  Safe travels!"



"There are now at least 60 more to come."



"Isn't this a great colour?!  There were too many mosquitoes and not enough light for more photos in the garden, but this is already my favourite flower anyway."








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I'm glad Red got to enjoy the flowers for a few minutes. She's going to be sad when I tell her the deer have destroyed half the front garden ones already and they'd barely opened. I was interrupted posting this over on Dal House, by a creepy little noise outside. When it became apparent that it wasn't a bug against the window screen, and creepy enough to go out and investigate, it turned out it was the *$^#$F%!#*!! deer MUNCHING on my flowers. Again. Every year.