The magic of butterflies

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I have always been fascinated by ladybugs and butterflies so when we visited our local bug museum a few years ago I was delighted to find they sold painted lady caterpillars. We took our caterpillars home and I ordered them a habitat online. Each morning we said hello to our pets and watched them grow bigger and bigger. Soon they were all hanging upside down and making their chrysalis, we moved them to the habitat. One morning we noticed one butterfly, later that day we had two and by evening we had five. We fed our pets and then set them free a few days later. We really enjoyed our butterfly experience and plan to do this again.

Mom and I made a butterfly feeder for the deck to attract more butterflies. We added new fruit pieces each day. We had lovely swallowtails, painted ladies, dragonflies and even hummingbirds that visited us.

This year we sent away for ladybugs and praying mantis, I had read online that these fierce warrior insects work well together to keep our garden pest free. The praying mantis are really neat they come in two large egg cases ( they contain 50 to 200 eggs each) and took about three weeks to hatch. The lady bugs were larvae ( we only received six) they took a week to make their chrysalis and another week to emerge. Because it took so long for the praying mantis Lia missed their arrival, since they needed to be released immediately or they cannibalize each other ( not something I want to witness) I sent her photos.

I walked the garden and set several free on each plant, they are near sighted and don't go to far from where they are released. I put them on the roses and fruit trees. Lia was delighted to visit with them whenever she found them on plants, they did a wonderful job of controlling the pests in the garden. Our apples were lovely this year, and the leaves on the roses were not eaten up as badly as last year. We will be getting more praying mantis, but I think we will just buy live ladybugs next year because we need a lot more than six.