Three Miracles in the Milkweed Patch!

My husband and I have a milkweed patch in front of the hedge that has grown over the past few years. We started out with just a plant or two, and it is now up to several dozen. We have been actively cultivating and adding to it. This milkweed patch is a place of miracles!

We have been watching the monarch caterpillars with great interest. They start out tiny, and they get huge. At some point, a monarch caterpillar selects a site, hangs in a J shape, and turns into a chrysalis. My husband has insisted on calling our chrysalis "J-Boy," because of the J shape it made.

I have been checking our chrysalis every day, multiple times a day. On Friday evening, I noticed it had turned darker. On Saturday morning, around 9, I took a photo of the darkened chrysalis. I could clearly see orange and black wings inside (see the Extras for a photo). Would today be the day? Who knew?

But then I came out around 10:15 to go for my walk, and I checked J-Boy before I left, only to find that the butterfly had already come out of its chrysalis (this is called eclosing), and was standing on it. I deferred my walk till later, and sat down to watch, with camera.

At first, the butterfly seemed very oddly shaped. It had a thick body and crumpled wings. I worried about it. Could THIS become an actual butterfly? And as I watched, it did! The butterfly pumped the fluids from its body to its wings, and within a very short time (maybe 15 minutes after I noticed it and began watching closely), it looked like what you see above: a fully formed, petite, gorgeous butterfly!

Oh, that wasn't all! For there is much more to tell! My husband came out to look, and as he was walking back up to the house, he said, "What's this?" And suddenly, there was a SECOND freshly eclosed butterfly on the milkweed!

Oh, and there's MORE! A few minutes later, I saw orange out of the corner of my right eye. And then fluttering. Hello, Beautiful! It was a spectacular day in the milkweed patch, for not ONE, not TWO, but THREE beautiful, perfect butterflies were born here, as we watched! We only knew about the one. We were surprised to see THREE!

All of the creatures from the milkweed patch came by to watch. A huge monarch caterpillar stomped by, fairly shaking the earth with its tread: "The spice must flow!" the caterpillar said. Our two fawns wandered by: "We heard it was a special day in the milkweed patch!" they said, as they played at the edges of our woods.

Butterfly #3 was the first to fly. It took off, and landed on the top part of one of our tall Norway spruces along the road. "Good job, Butterfly!" I hollered. (I strongly believe in encouragement.) And then J-Boy, our Butterfly #1, tried ITS wings, and flittered around the front part of the yard, and also landed in a tree. Butterfly #1 took first flight about two hours after eclosing.

Butterfly #2 was the last to go. It took flight, as we cheered and clapped, and hollered our encouragement. (Our neighbors must think we're daft, but the heck with all of that; what really matters is the butterflies!) It sat in the bushes for a long time in the sun before flying away.

All three butterflies are petite and beautiful and perfect, and I hope they will be strong travelers, as they are part of the Methuselah generation of butterflies that will live longer (eight or nine months instead of two to six weeks), and fly all the way to Mexico! (I have no idea if they are boys or girls, or a mix; I never got a full view of open wings to tell me.)

As you have seen on these pages how much I love butterflies, you can only guess what this experience means to me. I have seen part of this process before, but have never been home to see the whole thing because I had to go to work. Now I don't go to work anymore, and I get to be present for every single everyday miracle in our yard, like this one!

And in closing, before we have a song to celebrate this grand event, as a monarch missionary, I feel compelled to share with you a few things you can do to help monarch butterflies:

1) Don't use pesticides or any kind of poison in your yard.

2) Plant native milkweed as food for monarch caterpillars.

3) Plant nectar plants such as joe pye weed, phlox, zinnia, agastache, ironweed, and Mexican sunflowers for butterflies.

4) Support the growth of nectar corridors to protect native plants in the areas where monarchs travel.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed this journey as much as I have! And the good news is we have several DOZEN more caterpillars on our milkweed! So we will perhaps have MANY more butterflies! Hooray!

The soundtrack song for this amazing day is this one: Sarah McLachlan, with Ordinary Miracle.

It's not that unusual
When everything is beautiful
It's just another ordinary miracle today