Nursery report

This morning I watched as one of the Monarch cats morphed into a chrysalis, I tried get a photo of it but a point and shoot just doesn't work. It doesn't take but a minute or so for it to shed off it's stripped skin and turn into an alien looking bright green blob. Then it shortens up and hardens into the chrysalis we know. ( I will look for photos from past years and make a collage and post later.) This evening we brought in 4 more caterpillars for a total of 11 monarch babies. We have an aquarium set up for them. The monarchs favorite plant this year seems to be the balloon milkweed, a new plant for us. I was hoping to see the seed pods but we may not have much of a plant left.
Also in our garden we have 4 black swallowtail caterpillars (3 on parsley and 1 on fennel) and 2 giant swallowtail caterpillars which are on our Roe, also a new plant for us this year. These little cats seem to be very slow growing, right now they are too small for my point and shoot.
Perhaps if we could penetrate nature's secrets,
we should find that what we call weeds are more
essential to well being of the world than the
most precious fruit or grain. - N. Hawthorne