Butterflies

Category: Garden Wildlife | Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:38 am

One good thing about living so close to Disney World is that we can visit more often. Right now EPCOT is having their Garden Festival. Yesterday we took the kids and got to enjoy the park's beautiful gardens. One of the family's favorite activities was the Ladybug release. They had a special garden full of interesting kid-friendly plants and they gave each person a matchbox sized box full of ladybugs. They sprayed our arms with water and had us open the boxes. The ladybugs quickly filed out and happily drank the water droplets. Very fun! My 2 year old was being kind of rough and killed one so I tried to take the box away so she promptly dumped the remainder down my shirt....NICE. At least they quickly marched out and flew away. My oldest son had a conga line of them go right up his arm, into his shirt sleeve and hide inside his armpit. POOR LADYBUGS!!!!

The Butterfly House was a BIG hit (with me at least), at the entrance they had this beautiful topiary:

It was kind of like a mini aviary...full of butterflies, caterpillars, and their favorite plants.

They had these wonderful boxes FULL of chrysalises:

I loved getting to see my favorite zebra longwing butterflies!

When I got home that evening I could see that my own fritillary caterpillar was getting ready to change:

Hanging upside down and slowly swaying.....

When I got up the next morning....look what I found:

So now we have about 2 weeks and then a new butterfly. I am not quite sure what's going on with the other caterpillar. I think caterpillar 1 did something (nibbled his antennae), or he's getting ready to shed again. He's kind of acting withdrawn.

I found a new butterfly plant the other day, well new to ME. It is called Porter Weed but it hardly looks like a weed. Anyhow it's planted next to my butterfly weed, which also doesn't look like a weed. I wish all my weeds looked so nice!

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Frank wrote on Thu May 31, 2007 8:58 am:

How cool is that topiary! Very clever. It would be great if you could post update photos on the soon-to-be-butterfly story.

eileen wrote on Thu May 31, 2007 10:05 am:

What a great thing to do releasing all those ladybugs!! That will keep all the aphids off the plants and help those butterflies. Love the topiary - such wonderful colours.
I can hardly wait to see your butterfly emerge. I hope you have your camera handy as it breaks loose from the crysalis.