Tag Archives: butterfly house

Sulphur galore

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The temperatures have been a little cooler, by that I meam a few degrees – still 90s/80s, and a nice, a bit cooler wind, so I’ve gravitated back into the garden after apparently ignoring it for way too long. All of the rain has made everything double, if not triple in size, including the weeds.

So, I’ve decided to tackle the farthest point of the garden and move backward. This area includes a section near my candlestick cassia. The tree is growing in every direction and is crawling with sulphur caterpillars, both orange barred and cloudless sulphur caterpillars.

When cutting back my scorpion tail, I found quite a few chrysalis, which have been moved to my butterfly house.

Magnificently beautiful

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The giant swallowtail butterfly always makes me stare in awe. The size of these magnificent butterflies is truly breathtaking. I had four butterflies emerge this week and it was so neat to release them into the garden.

The wild lime tree, one of its many host plants, is growing a ton with all of the Southwest Florida rain, providing plenty of food for the caterpillars – the hope is there will soon be more eggs.

The giant swallowtails forewing span from 11.7 to 17.5 cm for males and 13.5 to 18.8 cm for females. This butterfly can be found throughout America from New England to Florida and the Caribbean, as well as Mexico and South America.

“Special”

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Butterflies and my daughter have been connected since before she was born. It never fails on the important days something memorable always seems to happen. Yesterday, my daughter turned 8 years old and had the opportunity to release, not one, but three polydamas swallowtail butterflies into the garden.

We, always think, butterflies appear when angels are near. Sure enough, my sweet girl said one of the butterflies was someone we recently lost, an amazing woman who was incredibly important to us. It made that moment that much sweeter.

The polydamas swallowtails are having an incredible year in the garden. We have raised and released 135 so far. 

Moving around

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I put a fresh branch of the wild lime tree in the butterfly house, which got the giant swallowtail caterpillars moving around. It’s fascinating to me to see this, as this little head pops out under what appears to be their protective armor, their bird poop appearance.

In love

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It doesn’t get any sweeter . . . our three month old golden retriever puppy, Lily, saying hello to a newly emerged female monarch butterfly before she took flight into the garden.

The monarch caterpillars have not been constant this summer in the gardens, but we have definitely had influxes from time to time. Today, we had six butterflies emerge taking our count to 571 successful releases over the years.