Monarch Caterpillars and Butterflies

May 30, 2012 - I've been seeing the Monarch butterflies fluttering about for a week or two now so Lizzy took an up-close look at a milkweed plant and found several eggs.  Thus starts our annual Monarch raising project.  I noticed after a couple days that there was a hole in our milkweed leaf and a tiny caterpillar.  The milkweed is a bit wilted now so we picked a fresh stalk of Milkweed this morning and were thrilled to find more eggs and LOTS of tiny caterpillars.  We put the milkweed in a small vase with water inside a gallon jar with a net rubber banded over the top.

Tiny creamy white eggs on the back of this milkweed leaf

Note the tiny holes in the central leaf to the left,
where tiny caterpillars ate them.

Here the leaves are held back
 so you can see the tiny caterpillars

Here the image is enlarged to give a closeup view - you can see the dark droppings scattered on the leaves

The image enlarged even more - the caterpillars won't change in looks, just shedding skin and growing until they form
a crysalis and then become a butterfly. I love the tiny yellow, white and black stripes!  These are about 1/8" long.

Our present set-up for raising Monarch caterpillars.
  Later we will probably use a styrofoam cup to hold the plants
 so there is more room at the top for foliage when the caterpillars are
bigger and require more food.

June 5, 2012  It's just under a week now and look how much our caterpillars have grown!  

Our caterpillars have definitely grown!

The caterpillars are eating and growing.  You can see several different sizes here

 June 11, 2012  The milkweed has to be replaced almost daily now as the caterpillars devour the leaves.  Three have hung in their J shape waiting to  form chrysalises.  

June 12, 2012 This morning the beautiful Chrysalises are formed.  I didn't get to see them actually shed their skins this time but I've watched in the past as they split their skin from the bottom and wriggle and squirm until the skin moves all the way up to the top where they are  connected to the leaf.  There it is just a small black piece of refuse that usually falls to the ground unneeded.  And what is left is a beautiful light green chrysalis.  At first it is bigger on the bottom but it continues to squirm pushing itself into the final shape that you see here. 

Notice the beautiful gold dot markings 

June 19, 2012  We've been adding a new stalk of milkweed pretty much every day and the refuse in the bottom of the jar had really mounted up making the whole thing a smelly unwholesome place to raise our beautiful caterpillars so we carefully pulled out the plants - some just skeletons of the original plant with chrysalises attached.  We then pulled out our "vase" jar and wiped out the bottom of the gallon jar with paper towel being careful not to disturb the chrysalises that are attached to the top edge of the jar.  We then placed the "vase" jar which we had cleaned and filled with fresh water in the gallon jar again.  Then we carefully added our new milkweed.  I have been trying to get milkweed without eggs or tiny caterpillars now so we can wrap this project up in a couple weeks, but I forgot to check before picking today and I see I got a couple eggs on today's milkweed so we'll be at this for a couple more weeks unless we decide to replace our last few caterpillars on milkweed growing outside.  When we had everything back in place there were still two chrysalises that weren't attached to either foliage or the jar so we took a thread and threaded it up through our net cover and back down then I had Sarah hold a chrysalis in place while I tied the string in a knot around the tiny black "stem" at the top of the chrysalis that it usually hangs from.  We carefully placed the net over the jar and banded it in place again. We'll have to be careful when we remove the net from the jar not to disturb them too much.

June 23, 2012 - This morning I awoke to four butterflies in our jar.  Normally we see them turn dark first and you can actually see the veins on the wings through the clear case they are in, but we were gone for the day and missed the splitting of the case and the newly hatched butterfly with its fluid filled body and tiny crumpled wings.  It takes some minutes for the butterfly to pump the fluid out through its wings and then awhile longer for it to dry.  They will crawl onto your finger at this stage and we often hold them gently for a bit before placing them on a flower or until they take their first flight.  Ruthie chose a flower in her garden to place "her" butterfly on and John chose the apple tree. 

What a miracle of transformation these beautiful creatures are!  Truly amazing! Cause for praise to our Awesome Creator!

I don't know how it is for you, but summer just seems to evaporate for me.  For one thing we have a huge garden and we all try to spend two hours each morning working in it.  Some of my children think this is outrageous, but I think it is good for them.  There is the normal housework, which we try to do a little more thoroughly and diligently in the summer, actually changing sheets weekly, etc.  Then of course there are graduations, weddings, holidays and company that fills up many weekends.  A few years ago I realized that summer was slipping by without us finding time to have fun and relax together, so we began a tradition that if the children work hard and get their work done the first four days of the week we pack a picnic lunch and head to a park for the day Friday.  We take our camp chairs and nature notebooks, sometimes a good book and a picnic basket of food and enjoy relaxing together.  Looking forward to our outings turns out to be a good motivator for all that work that needs to be done early in the week and some of our best memories are made relaxing together. 

The Swimming Expedition

May 14, 2012 Sarah wrote today about our Saturday swimming outing to Farmer's Beach.










   "We're going swimming!" the kids shout excitedly.  We pack a picnic lunch, towels, sunscreen and swimming clothes and head off to Farmers Beach.
     When we arrive everyone grabs their stuff and runs down to the beach.  There is a cold wind blowing off the lake and when Anna feels the icy water she shivers and says, "I am NOT going swimming in that water!"  In the end I convince her and we slowly wade deeper into the water.  Ruthie, who has just emerged from a good dunk splashes us with water and I chase after her teasingly.  Oops, bad idea - I trip and fall landing face first in the freezing water.  I gasp as my mouth fills with water then come to the surface again.  "Well, at least I got that over with," I say with a grin.
     Anna soon dives under coming to the surface spluttering.  We swim for a while but soon Anna gets an earache and heads in.  I stay in a little while longer until I feel like I might catch hypothermia.  Then I also go in and lay down on a dry towel.  The wind whips and I shiver uncontrollably.  I grab my yellow hoodie and soak in the sun.
     Later we have our picnic lunch of pasta salad, chips and cold apple juice.  Then we pack up and head for home.  What an exciting afternoon!  

First Swim of the Season

Farmer's Beach

It's really much to early for swimming in my opinion.  The dandelions have only been out for a couple weeks and the leaves are only half way budded out yet, but these are Minnesota grown kids - Northern Minnesota at that and they've been insisting that they needed to go swimming so today we packed a picnic lunch and headed to our favorite little township beach on Marquette Lake.  It's only about three miles from home so that makes it nice, too. 

 I was wearing a hoody and Rachael wrapped in a fleece blanket and Lizzy decided she was too old and wise for swimming in the Spring but the young ones put on swimming clothes and headed out into the frigid water.  "Do you think they'll get hypothermia?" Rachael asked, but I didn't think so, so they got to swim.

Anna and Sarah realized they were cold sooner than the other three who had to be called in to warm up in the sun.  John thought perhaps he had Pneumonia and he started to cry as he came up out of the water into the stiff breeze, but by the time he had dry clothes on and a plate of food, he was back to normal.


I hope this is just the first of many joyous summer outings.

Fun with Turtles....

We found our first two turtles of the season.  The first is a nice sized painted turtle that we rescued on the highway near our home. It's new abode is a little turtle shaped sandbox that we used to make a home for it.  

It is still quite shy but I hope that over time it comes to look forward to the children's visits bringing it food.  So far we've fed it only lettuce, but we'll try some bits of raw meat and we also have turtle pellets left from pets we had last year.

Our second turtle is a tiny, just hatched painted turtle.  It still had it's egg tooth when we found it this morning on our driveway.  We have it in a tiny gold-fish aquarium. We surrounded a small plastic bowl with rocks and sand.  We filled the bowl with water and added a piece of driftwood for our little turtle to climb out on.  The book we read said to be sure that it's food was torn small enough to eat - you can see the little bits of lettuce in the aquarium.  Our turtle isn't sure he wants to live inside - he's still trying to get to the outside of the glass.  I hope he decides he likes it soon - we sure like him!  

Spring is such a fun time!  Ruthie found a frog hideout in the rafters of her playhouse so she gathered a couple of frogs to study and have for pets.  We'll have to get out our identification guide tomorrow and decide what kind they are.  Then we can add them to our nature notebooks.  

I'm not sure this frog wants to be petted,
But I guess no one asked him....

Sarah saw these Cowslips growing profusely down by the lake and collected a bouquet for our table.  The evening sun was shining on them and they glowed in the light.  They would be lovely to paint....  So many Spring things to enjoy.

He Was One of Us

We recently enjoyed another outstanding book by Rien Poortvliet, titled He Was One of Us.  Rien's art is expressive and the text by Hans Bouma is insightful and poetic.  This book celebrates, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus showing the human reaction of people in his life.  



Following are two pages from the book to give a feeling for the text.