Butterfly Project: Butterflies Away!

By Saturday evening, all five of our butterflies (wow!) had successfully emerged from their cocoons and were flying actively around the butterfly home. We wanted to encourage them to stick around our butterfly garden long enough to lay some eggs so we dipped some more red carnations in sugar water (which is we had been using to feed the butterflies, along with some orange halves) and scattered them around the butterfly garden.

Then we brought the butterfly home out to the butterfly garden and the Lone Star Baby unzipped the door and tried to coax a painted lady out on an orange half. They weren't interested in the oranges, but two flew out pretty quickly.

The other three took their time about leaving.




We put a branch of the Texas Lantana into the home to encourage them to leave into the plant. The kids lost interest before the last butterflies made their exit, and the painted ladies seemed to fly right away, so I don't know if we'll get any caterpillars, but we'll see. We did put the leaves that we had placed in the home with them into the garden in case they already had eggs on them and I did see one painted lady flying around later in the evening.

It was very cool.