Monarch Butterfly article appears on Homeschool Montgomery Blog

I'm excited to announce that Homeschool Montgomery and Homeschool Frederick, two great online magazines in the area, have published an article of mine about monarch butterflies!

The timing was impecable. As soon as I finished reading my emails this morning I looked out the window and saw two monarch caterpillars on the milkweed. We also found several large black swallowtail caterpillars when we were cleaning the vegetable garden out last night.

Forget the Robins, It was the Monarch Butterflies that Suffered this Winter

Everyone has been asking me about the robins, but it seems it wasn't the orange, black and brown birds that suffered. It was the butterflies of those same colors.

Reuters reports this morning that the same storms which brought so much snow to the US this February brought unusual, drenching rains to Mexico. The wet weather had a very damaging effect on the monarch populations which reside there each winter.

Depressingly, one of the researchers says he fears he may outlive the entire species. He is already 78 years old.

For the full story, go to:

http://planetark.org/wen/57236

With hopeful thoughts I'm pasting a picture of one of the monarch caterpillars we found in the back yard last year.

I guess in the US one of the best things we can do is provide a home to those monarchs that remain. Keeping planting that milkweed everyone.

Monarch caterpillars have "arrived" in the garden

Every year around the end of August, we find large numbers of monarch caterpillars in our garden. The butterflies come and go all summer, but we only see the caterpillars at the end of the season.

I always wonder if the ones we are seeing are heading off on the long journey southward. I always intend to research it a bit, read more on the topic. According to some of what I've read, it is possible. I would need to read more to be able to say that with more authority. But every year school starts and the butterfly reading gets lost in the shuffle.

I know that monarchs hatch all summer, but only the final brood or instar will head south on the long migration. Hard to know if this is the final brood in my garden , though, and I'm always left wondering why we only see the caterpillars now and not earlier in the year, too.

We never forget to watch for them, though, and their arrival is a big deal in my house. We climb out through our fake meadow (which is no more than a few feet across)... over the air conditioning compressor fan... around the basement window wells to the area where the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is allowed to grow free and tall. We watch them eat, we witness their growth, we search for their chrysalises elsewhere in the yard.

Finding one of those jewel-like sacs hanging upside down from a place like the coiled up garden hose is a bit like finding an Easter egg. I can't help but yell to the rest of the family with excitement.

Yesterday was the first day we saw the caterpillars out there, crawling around gorging themselves on the milky leaves. So far we've seen only three. We'll keep monitoring it, hoping to break the record of 2005, when we saw more than thirty in one day.

It never stops amazing me that our little city yard can host so much wildlife. I like to think that the monarchs will grow wings and head south. I like to imagine them floating up over Georgia Avenue, over the beltway, and across the streets of DC. I like to think of them months from now, hanging like garland from the branches of Mexican trees. Worth hoping for, anyway.

(Note: the photo above is a monarch, but the insect is not hanging from common milkweed.)

What's Blooming: Butterfly Weed

The Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is putting on quite a show in our yard this year.

This plant is easy to grow in all kinds of soil, and thrives on neglect. In fact, you need to neglect it in order for it to thrive. That's because this plant emerges from the soil very late in the season. Many years we don't even see it peak out until about Memorial Day. The tricky part of growing this plant, then, is remembering where you planted it the year before. If you happen to disturb the roots or the little shoots before they come out of the soil the whole plant suffers and whithers away. The last few years I've been marking mine with the cut off tops of old nursery pots. Right after Halloween, I mark out the plants with these rings, and then don't move the rings until very late in May.

The pay off for this elaborately planned neglect comes in the form of butterflies and bees. Although monarchs seem to prefer many other types of milkweed as caterpillars, they will gladly land on this plant for nectar in the butterfly stage.

All the bees love these blooms, and the native solitary bees (which are often docile and friendly) love to stay all afternoon drinking hungrily at this plant.

Needs loads of sun.

Besides the the blooms, you get lovely seed pods which follow. Let them turn brown and then have the joy of making endless wishes on the seeds when they crack open. The pods themselves look like fairy wings, and make great craft material.