Too Late Monarchs: Part Two

It was before September 25 when I started to watch this chrysalis hanging on Ed's Lime Green Daylily.  It is one of my Two Late Monarchs.  Now it is the end of the first week in October and it is still hanging out there.  We have not had a frost, but the weather has been wet and night temperatures have dropped out of the sixties.

The other of my Two Late Monarchs has spent the time in my kitchen where the temperatures never drop out of the sixties.  Even though this Monarch was still a caterpillar when I brought it in the house, it won the metamorphosis race with days to spare.  I knew as soon as the orange wings began to show and the shape of the chrysalis  began to change that a butterfly would emerge soon.

Here she is pumping up her wings.  To my delight the predicted rain held off and the temperature was predicted to stay in the sixties overnight.  It was great to watch this magical process so closely, but butterflies are meant to fly free.

I carried my Monarch out to the October Sky asters and set her free. 

When she began to flap her wings I left her there in the garden.  Just before dark Ed checked and found her on top of the October Sky asters.  We have since seen a newly emerged butterfly flitting past the windows as it moves from one clump of October Sky asters to the other plant. We would like to believe it is the one that spent days on the kitchen counter.  Now both the butterflies and the geese are now flying south so we expect this one to soon be gone.  There still remains one that we know of to emerge from its chrysalis. Flowers are becoming scare.  Even if it's too late to make it to Mexico, they will have their chance to fly and try!

Two Late Monarchs

Here we have two  late Monarch chrysalises.  This one is hanging from a leaf on Ed's Lime Frost Daylily.  This week the weather has been cool and we have had lots of rain.  As you can see this chrysalis is wet.  We are still seeing Monarch butterflies in the garden, but time is getting short because the flowers are almost gone.

 When I was out in the garden weeding on the last sunny day we had, I found a Monarch caterpillar curled up on the soil looking like it might be dead.  I carefully picked it up and laid it on a stone in the garden path to see if the warmth of the sun would make a difference. It did!  We decided to take it inside.  I found some nice green milkweed.  Most of the milkweed has gone to yellow.  Many plants have dropped their leaves.  Ed put in the two sticks.  The next day it was raining hard all day.  The caterpillar did not seem interested in eating.  He wanted to climb up and find a place to hang.  We did not see it attach, or shed its skin, but we did get to watch it wiggle and change losing its ridges and smoothing out from bottom to top.  AMAZING!  It will be interesting to see if we have too late Monarchs or two late Monarchs.