Busy, busy butterflies!

This year has been a booming year for the monarchs in my yard.  I've been releasing them by the dozens.  Here's a pic of one of the day's hatching:

I've added a couple more milkweed beds and the monarchs have been laying eggs like crazy.  This little white dot is a monarch egg.

I've tried taking the leaves with eggs and putting them in my habitat but they don't seem to hatch once the leaf is taken off the plant.  So I go out and look for the just hatched caterpillars and put them in the habitat. These are ones I found just this morning:

If I don't get to them early enough the wasps destroy them.  This is a caterpillar that was attacked by a wasp.

There are other bugs that love the milkweed too.  Aphids are a real problem as the sugar ants actually deposit them on the plant, care for them, and eat the sugary residue from the aphids.  Aphids are also called 'ant cows' and you can see why.  These ants are 'milking' the aphids they deposited onto the milkweed.

But along with the aphids are other predators of the aphids to even things out.  I leave the aphids on the plants because it brings ladybugs to my flower beds.  If there's enough food for them and the aphids are plentiful, they will lay eggs on the plants and the ladybugs and their larvae will eat them all up.  They are my organic pesticide! This shows a ladybug under the leaf and the larvae on top of the leaf eating the aphids.  The orange and black larvae look like bad guys but they have ferocious appetites and are always welcome in my garden!

Can't beat this weather...it almost feels like California!

Wow, I love days like today.  Sunny, warm with a cool breeze and no humidity.  Its a rare day in Houston when we have days of low humidity.

Today our first monarch butterfly hatched in my monarch cage.  Here's a picture of the chrysalis about 30 mins before she hatched and after she hatched. What a pretty girl!

What the chrysalis looked like when we found it

Before  hatching

I usually catch the caterpillars and put them in the cage to hatch but this chrysalis is one that my husband found while trimming the palm trees in the back yard.  We had thrown all the fronds on the ground and as he was picking them up to throw away, he found this little girl.  I have no idea how he managed to see it with all the vegetation we were throwing away but I'm glad he did!  I still have two more in the cage that should be hatching in the next few days.

I spoke to the Droll Yankee customer service and found out that a raccoon hanging from the bird feeder  (see my raccoon blog) could actually burn out the motor and battery. Hmmmm, who knew!  I suspect the raccoons in my yard are a bit chubbier than usual too considering all the bird food we go through.  We are going to do a little test...They are sending me a new battery and I'm going to take the bird feeder down every night to see if the charge lasts longer than a day.  If the charge doesn't last then the batteries are defective, if it does then the raccoons are defective...

I'm betting on the coons.

So I decided to give Lucy another chance.  I read on the web that her leg paralysis could be from a vitamin deficiency so I'm giving her liquid baby vitamins every day.  I hope she gets better soon!  Considering her disability she still gets around pretty well and is still as bossy as ever.

Miss Lucy hanging in the house

Two expert beggars, Lucy and Angel 

I went out yesterday to check on the veggie garden. Well actually I go out everyday, multiple times a day, to check on the veggie garden but that shows how obsessed I am with it. Signs of mental instability me thinks. ;)  

Anyway, it's really doing well (although I don't know how couldn't be doing well considering my obsession.)

So well in fact that one of the tomato plants has gotten too heavy for the regular tomato cage and it wouldn't hold it up anymore.  So I brought over one of my heavy duty ones to put around it.  Of course I had to do this by myself since I am not one to wait for when someone might be around to help me. :/  To do this I had to try to hold up the plant with one hand, and wrap the cage around it with the other while keeping the other plants out with my foot.  A figured this was a practical use for my yoga however I ended up losing my balance and landing on my kale plant or should I say what used to be my kale plant.  It got harvested a bit sooner than necessary.

Life sure is interesting!

Planting, planting, planting!

Wow, the weather is beautiful today.  After a few days of overcast misty, rainy weather, it's nice to see the sun out again.  Don't get me wrong, I love the rainy days too and so do my plants.  I finished the veggie garden planting,  now just waiting for the results.  Meanwhile I'm busy planting lots of milkweed plants in my garden.  The bees and butterflies are already visiting and I haven't even gotten some of them in the ground yet.  My girls have really been enjoying the days also.  Lucy's leg is still lame unfortunately.  I'm not sure if she'll ever be better.  I have to say that she has figured out how to move pretty fast even with that leg.  In the evening when the other girls have gone into the coop to roost she will stay out with me knowing that I'll be picking her up and bringing her into the house to sleep in the chicken infirmary.  But she still doesn't like to be caught so I end up chasing her all around until I can finally catch her to bring her in.    Peeper is still expecting to come into the house daily to lay her egg.  She always makes her happy sounds when she goes up to her space.  Here's a video with the funny noises she makes when getting settled.