Random Sunday Butterfly
I’m going to go babysit my brother’s new baby for the first time today! Although technically since he’s 6 months old now, he’s not all that new. So expect the random pictures, I promised, plus new and updated baby pictures, throughout the day as I add this new thing into my Sunday of football, work, and posting. Our dinner was very nice except we forgot that they had the lighting/parade/Christmas thing downtown (in Chicago–in case you want to look it up) and we got caught in a million people’s attendance and traffic. No joke. I heard the news last night, they said one million people were estimated to have attended. If I research and confirm this factoid, I will let you know. But I probably won’t. I won’t research. I won’t confirm. Or refute. Heck, I probably won’t even ever speak of it again. If you want to keep it real, feel free to comment with the correct number and facts, otherwise, let’s just all agree we were downtown with a million other people last night and leave it at that! I will post pictures of anything food/fun related the kids took as soon as they send it to me. I am also planning on a lot less words to go with the rest of the posts I put up here today. Consider this all the reading you need to do for the day! I have to shower and gather my things. Time is a ticking. The kids are going to their dad’s and I think the BF is staying home. It’s individual Sunday. That can totally be our new thing! Later.
My One Summer Butterfly
Hello and thank you to all my new friends and followers! I’m not sure what has changed in these last few days but I am glad for the chance to expand my world and to become a part of someone else’s. Maybe all those storms that blew through the middle of America shook up the airwaves somehow and blew out the dust of our random lives and we all ended up in fresh spots to wait out the winter that’s looming ahead. Maybe it’s just a fluke.
Either way, here we all are and it’s good. Now on to my picture story: All those wild flowers in front of the house, that everyone else calls weeds, and I only managed to attract this one, big, beautiful, patterned butterfly. And he was late to boot. Showed up in August/Sept. But look at that photo. It’s nice, right? Perfect American image. Not planned, I swear. We keep the flag up all the time, and I was taking pictures too fast to frame this on purpose, because he kept flying around and landing anywhere that was away from me and my phone. Oh yeah, did I mention that picture was taken with my phone?? Just a smidge more bragging on the G4 even if I have to do it myself. Here are some more pictures of that butterfly below. All the flowers are gone now and it’s too cold for flyers. I’m just gonna start posting all my pictures as fast as I can without any central theme. Maybe I will just start at the first one and run down the line. I know I’ve said this before, but this time, this time, I swear I mean it. My time is really tight now because my new job is trying to kill me with paperwork. Nursing at it’s finest I swear. And I suppose I really really have to go back to school. As usual I find myself to be the least educated person in the crowd. Again. I swear, I keep saying I swear, and FYI for the kiddies out there: School NEVER ends. Love it. Tolerate it. Keep at it. You will be a student forever. Even when you work you still have to keep plugging away at the next big thing. Or little thing. It doesn’t matter. Forward roll. Oh Geez. As usual, I have run off the thought track and I wanted to, needed to, get some sleep tonight. Like I was saying, about the pictures, I can’t even remember why I took some of these or if I had any idea of what to write, so this should actually be kind of fun. Random. Just like me and my life and my personal beliefs. We live in a random world and I am good with that. Now, what was I talking about again? Butterflies. And flowers. Later.
New Flower Alert!
New chance to take an extreme close up with my fancy phone camera. Thank you to all who are “liking” my pictures and following along here every day! I am trying to like back and follow you too! There is so much good stuff out there in this big big world! I will try and make my words and pictures as interesting as possible. This is one small life, living. And sometimes it is just about doing laundry and taking a picture of some flower in your front yard. Simple stuff. Anywhere on Earth. That sounds like Sunday philosophy not Friday fun, so let’s get the boy’s pics up here before I go to work and bring down the whole day. One more shift and then I am off for the weekend. I am tired. But not tired enough, apparently, to stay in bed instead of walk around the outside for hours inspecting the greenery. Here’s one to start us off. Taken at Land Between The Lakes. It’s an ironic picture.
And Now Back To The Cutting Edge
The butterfly blooms are finally coming in. It’s not just a patch of weeds if flowers are visible and butterflies hover. Looks like I may have sprinkled the seeds pretty evenly this year too. No gaps or thin areas. Texture and color variety. Cutting edge. As promised.
The Tall Weed
6 feet tall. I shouldn’t have even let it get that tall, but they grow so fast. Like body hair. Yuck. Sorry to have to go there, but I like to “de-hair” on Thursday’s because it’s usually my day off and I have lots of time to tackle the overgrowth, if you know what I mean, and I always notice that it seems to grow so so fast. If the hair on my head grew as fast as the hair on my body, I’d have long, lustrous locks in about a month. So there’s your smooth transition to the point I want to make about my flower/weed situation. Yuck again. And I do apologize. I planted wildflowers in my front dirt strip a month ago and I am just now getting plants that don’t look like weeds. I even spotted some tiny yellow flowers. The bag said they will attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Well, they were half right so far, because there are actually those small, white, butterflies always hovering over the pre-flowers. Maybe the leaves put off some kind of smell or something. I don’t know. If I feel very flexible later I will try to take a picture of the yellow flowers. I will probably have to lay on the ground to photograph them so I’m just going to wait and see. Kids are almost ready to actually leave the house. In the meantime I will leave you with the green view of what I have right now in the front that passes for “flowers”. Later.
Butterfly Party! With cake!
So the party was a success. We had food and drinks and cake and butterflies! What more?
I do have some sad news though. It appears that we may have lost three of our little caterpillars. The ones that were still hanging never opened. It’s been 21 days and the temps have been brutal. For our very first time taking care of butterflies, I would say that eight out of eleven is pretty darn good!
The pics below are of the last three chrysalis. On the 18th and then today. There seems to be a hole in the side of one, and it looked hollow inside.
The pic above is the cake.
The video is the last two butterflies being released. The camera is a little jerky, and once they go, you really can’t see them. Also we are all talking way too loud and over each other. It can be annoying. But stay with it.
When the first butterfly actually picks up and flies away, the kids’ reactions are worth the time.
Still look viable.
And now, 5 days and 90 degrees later, not so much.
We did a good thing.
More Butterflies!More Butterflies!
In a giant burst of 84 degree sunshine and blue skies, is how we left our box of caterpillar chrysalis’, just hanging there looking like nothing was going on.
The single butterfly that emerged on Sunday fluttered around a few hours, hunkered down for the chill night, and waited for dawn. The sun rose and our butterfly flew. Literally. He wanted the hell out of his box by 9:30 am. We opened the top and he was gone. The video is below. I tried to catch it all very cinematically, but the butterfly was too fast. By the time I knew which way he went he was gone. In the video you can see a black blob flying over the roof of the house. That was him.
10 more to go.
Fast forward to 3 pm. It’s Monday. Seriously, 84 degrees. Warm. Outside in the butterfly box…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Holy Hell! Seven more butterflies! And these don’t look all weak and wet. These look big, healthy, colorful, strong….just so amazing. I have never seen anything like it!
If you ever get the chance to birth butterflies, I say try it out. It really is an incredible force of nature.
Anyhow, so we have 5 butterflies hanging out at the bottom of the bin, and 2 still in the milk jug. We tip that over so they can crawl out and then remove it. There is only three more left and those are hanging from the top of the milk jug my neighbor had cut for escape. Crazy butterflies.
So we add more grass and leaves and flowers and I call my daughter. At the rate the butterflies are emerging, she’s never going to make it home to see any of them. As suspected, she wants to come home. She says, “Mom??? Can you come and get me??? Hurry Mom, I’ll get all my stuff packed…hurry…I’m going to miss them.” Within the hour she was back. All seven are out now, fluttering around looking really healthy.
We took out the milk jug and studied the chrysalis. We had been really worried moving them around because we didn’t want to knock the chrysalis off the side. We figured they had to be pretty secure seeing as normally they would be outside somewhere, hanging in the wind and rain with animals, etc. But they just look so fragile. Up close and empty we tried to get them off, and they are on there with super-glue. Impossible. You would kill the caterpillar before you could unstick the chyrsalis.
As soon as we started fixing up the butterfly box, one flew away. Up and out. Just like that. Then another. And another. And another. Now we only had three! It’s fun to watch them go, but hard to see them leave. We only had them a few hours. You want to keep them forever. You can’t of course, because they will die. They need to go and fly. Our box isn’t big enough for the long haul.
My daughter and neighbor planned a Butterfly Party for Thursday. That’s tomorrow. Just a small gathering of our family, sisters, nieces and nephews, collectively, to celebrate this amazing bit of nature. We tried to time the birthing to hit 15 days. But we didn’t really understand what that meant. The party is still going but we might not have any left!
While we were deciding what we should do…try and keep any? Let them all go and hope the last three emerge by Thursday? What if they don’t?
Another one flew away. Now we have 2. This last one perched on the neighbors gutter for awhile, just absorbing all that freedom, before it finally flew away for good.
Seven was too many, but two might be ok for a day. The internet said they can be kept for a day or so, but then they have to go.
It rained all day yesterday and was cooler. The butterflies we have kind of just sat around. It’s funny, they’re just like people! Rainy=Lazy. The chrysalis’ of the remaining three just hung.
Today is Wednesday. It’s overcast and barely 70 degrees at 10 am. The sun looks like it wants to shine. If it warms up more the rest should emerge and that would be perfect! I think we have to let the two go. Three days seems too long.
So far we are 8 for 11. We were seriously hoping for just one. So I’d say we did pretty good! This is the 15th day of the 10-15 range given. We’ll keep it updated as it happens.
Of course there are pictures. You can really see the blue dots on these. If I can get the video uploaded in a decent amount of time that will be here to. And now…butterflies!
2 out and 2 emerging. The red liquid underneath must be what is in the chrysalis with them.
Fresh from the chrysalis!
Four in the flowers.
One on the other side.
Two in the milk jug.
just shy of pretty 