We were out on the Conewago Trail this afternoon, finally finding a few caches. A few butterflies were flying around. A tiger swallowtail landed on a tree directly in front of us and sat there with open wings.
I have been noticing tons of the common white butterflies around the past week or two. Today was the first time that I had my phone on me to grab a picture of them.
Just for shits, I stuck some of the milkweed plants I started from seeds in pots that we had lying around the other year. They’ve come back up in those pots since. This spring they seem to be doing really well in the pots.
I saw the first monarch butterfly of 2020, or at least the first one that I am positive that I saw. I thought I saw one out of the corner of my eyes before, but today I was certain.
Our original milkweed was supposed to be pink but it turned out to be white. The monarchs still loved it. We saw pink milkweed last summer and bought some to plant. That was late in the season so we weren’t sure if it’d grow bt it is sprouting now.
We have been wanting to plant milkweed for a couple of years now. We finally found some and planted it in our front yard. Last spring, we actually had monarch butterflies and caterpillars on it.
There’s been a monarch chrysalis hanging on my chair on the porch for a while. We’ve been keeping a close watch on it. Today it cleared up, and we actually got the opportunity to watch the butterfly drop out of it.
We searched and searched for butterfly weed last year but wound up only finding swamp milkweed. It came back up this year. We don’t have any monarchs yet but a bumble bee found it and has been hanging out on it all day.
Last fall I gathered a bunch of milkweed seeds from the pods on our plants. I thought it was worth a try to try to grow some. It took forever for them to sprout but they eventually did after I had given up.
We went to a geocaching event at Blue Marsh today. It was really interesting getting information about how search and rescue works. Of course we went caching after the fascinating presentation about SAR.