I love the colors outside at dusk whenever there is a reddish sunset. This is just a scrap of azalea I chopped off and left on the pavement for my genie to pick up, the old chop and drop technique. My genie is on vacay apparently because here it still is, weeks later and no clean up has been done. But lucky me, it has beautiful colors in it. Beauty in a piece of trash.
When I turned around, I was struck by the dusk enhanced colors of Patches. Couldn't quite get the luminosity into the photo though, no matter how many of the tricks I pulled out of my phone's editing arsenal. I really need a real camera!
So much for the end of the day, here's how the day started.
I took three steps outside my kitchen door to water the swamp milkweed in a pot just outside. I'd been told that monarch butterflies LOVE swamp milkweed, and I checked every day to see if any of the beauties, which were swarming my joe pye weed ten feet too high for me to photograph, were on the swamp milkweed more in reach of my phone's camera. But I spied instead..... what is that?! Shit? SOMETHING HAD TAKEN DUMPS ALL OVER MY SWAMP MILKWEED! Whatever it was also appeared to be eating it! On closer look I found...
Five monarch caterpillars! This shot has four in it, the fifth can be seen in the photo above.
Boy was I psyched! They were going to make their cocoons right there outside my back door and I would be able to chronicle the whole shebang! Bonanza!
The next day I went out for day two in the chronicling of a caterpillar's transformation into butterfly and found instead....
....a nearly defoliated swamp milkweed and not one single caterpillar! Where did they all go I wonder. Interestingly, I notice that they did not eat enough to kill the plant. Every single stem has enough foliage left on it to survive and recover, probably even flower. Even caterpillars know enough to protect their ecosystems. What is up with man?
Maybe the butterflies will come land on the blooms for me to finally catch a decent shot of a butterfly. Believe me, I have tried. Those little buggers are hard to catch in the act!
This is my entry to @tattoodjay's #wednesdaywalk @tattoodjay/wednesday-walk-and-make-me-smile-challenge-and-steem-basic-income-give-away. Come walk with us! We learn amazing things from each other.
And thanks so much for stopping by!
