Bloggin Butterflies

The coolest thing happened today....well if you like butterflies and gardening and irony that is.

I had two parsley plants and several basil growing in pots outside for the last few weeks.

The basil was growing wonderfully, as you can see - I had already made a couple of batches of pesto out of it, but something was wrong with the parsley; it was yellow and dying. Since I don't have a green thumb and know I can get parsley for next to nothing at the store I wasn't too concerned.

A few days later my neighbor Joe, who pays much more attention to the plants then I do (he thinks next to nothing is not cheap enough to buy more parsley) told me there was a caterpillar on the parsley plant. When I looked there was a striped caterpillar and was left of the second parsley plant...absolutely nothing (you can see from the picture above) but the last piece of stem he was crunching on !

For someone that travels far and wide to look at butterflies hoping to catch a glimpse of them or their caterpillars, this was great news! The caterpillars were of the black swallowtail butterfly....one of our most beautiful butterflies. The caterpillars are striped and I discovered that when you touch them these little red velvet-like antennae emerge as if to say..."hey keep your hands off..we just met." What was best about this whole thing was that I didn't have to travel anywhere to see them but right outside my door and so far it only cost me 2 parsley plants!

Off to the store I went to buy some more parsley for them to feed on (purchased for next to nothing at the store). When I came back one was crawling on the boat hull and the other had fallen into the water (I guess they were searching for someone else's garden to feed on). I rescued them, put them in a container with some more parsley and some sticks on which I hope they spin their Chrysalises. I'll keep you appraised of their progress!










Update: One chrysallis spun while I was making pesto out of what was left of the garden...! In 2-3 weeks we should have a swallowtail!