life cycles of the Monarch butterfly

Last month, the church re-surfaced the parking lot.

They used a drone to lay the chalk lines, which was interesting.

Looking out the window all day, I noticed this caterpillar (monarch)

It had parked itself on the vinyl fence right by the office.

A few days later, I saw it was still there, and had made a cocoon!

I've never seen an actual cocoon, even though I garden a lot.
(well, in kindergarten we raised Silk worms.)

I get excited about these things.. I'm pretty sure my co-workers think I'm weird.

I'm used to being that person...


One day, when I arrived at work, the cocoon was empty!

The whole process seemed to happen so quickly.

I looked it up and learned a lot of interesting things about Monarch butterflies.

The ones that migrate up from Mexico have three generations in the summer, some hatch and die quickly, and the last generation is the one that hibernates over winter.

I saw a Monarch butterfly in the garden that was hanging around the milkweed.

Not sure if it was the one that hatched, but it didn't want to fly away very far.

On closer inspection, I noticed it was laying eggs!

There were dozens of eggs all over.

After reading instructions about hatching Monarch butterflies,
I snipped off a few of the leaves with eggs and put them in a big jar.

I also have two milkweed plants at home.

So if they hatched, I could release them at home, or feed them in captivity too.

I saw caterpillars on my milkweed last year, but they seemed to disappear.

Maybe they didn't die, but wandered off the plants, and made cocoons as well?


Not many days later, three of the four eggs hatched!

The caterpillars were tiny, less than 1/4 inch.

At the same time, the gardener at the church office cut down almost all the milkweed!

At least I saved these three.

It's neat to see them grow, and feeding them new milkweed leaves.
They double in size every day!