Another Day Another Butterfly

I never really thought too much about butterflies until I did these gardens and when I was watching for hummingbirds the butterflies would come along and I became totally fascinated. I planted all the flowers that I could find that I would have to do the least amount of work with. I just wanted to plant them and mulch around them, put a few stepping stones through the garden and walk in the flowers now and then. It turned out as you can see the Butterfly Bush was exactly that. On a good day-usually when I did not have my camera, every bloom might carry a different kind of butterfly.

Well, I found a lot of nature that I wasn't looking for. One day I went out in the front garden and sat down in my white wicker throne to see what I thought was a piece of jewelry dropped in the garden. It looked like a green ceramic pendant, and it had a gold line through it like gold had been embedded. Just as in the first picture, but I did not realize then that I would never see this again. It was laying on the ground between the green stems of the milkweed and coneflowers(echinacea). I picked it up and even up close it looked like a ceramic piece of jewelry. The gold was so gold it glittered and I never really took a second thought that it wasn't something someone had dropped. I looked at it and then I looked for the chain that it must have come off of... None there... Then I looked for the loop to put a chain on... well.. finders keepers... it was my garden and no one seemed to be looking for it. When I found no loop I realized that it must be some type of a bug egg. I thought butterfly cacoons were like mummy shells or when a spider weaves something and would be white webby things.... just not so. This was a beautiful odd shaped object more like a vase shape. That is why I thought it was jewelry. It was perfect in everyway. It was like a little bowl with a lid that was molded to it with a high point in the center of the top but not really pointie ... More like a casserole dish but the edge was truly gold and unbelievable.... so.. The picture does not do it justice. It went from one beautious thing to another. It became irredescent like in the second picture and then it became totally translucient in the third and looked like saran wrap and lo and behold I saw it was going to be a monarch butterly.

I have attached a link below that I found exactly what I saw happen. I never saw a caterpillar in the garden, but the butterflies were beautiful and this one chrysalis well just like the video.... It became a monarch butterfly.