painted ladies: butterflies in the mail

for christmas last year buck & i purchases a butterfly kit for chloe (and my niece aspen). you send away when the weather is warm for your caterpillars. they come in the mail. they eat this yummy peanut buttery substance for a few days. they turn into crysallis's and you put them into the butterfly net habitat. and wait! and wait! and WAIT some more!

ours hatched after having them for a total of 2 weeks (caterpillar to now). what fun! we missed each one hatching...they were sneaky little boogers! on this day the weather was suppose to be nice (it had been in the 50's for a week) and for the next couple days....so we decided to release them. we'd just been feeding them sugar water on flowers/napkins. plus, who are we going to hire to take care of butterflies while we go out of town for labor day weekend? LOL



this project has been so fun for the C girl...remember the butterfly pavillion incident in denver this summer? egads! i am happy to report she loves butterflies once again! :)




and then they flew out one by one...some we even had to guide them out. a couple stopped by to guzzle out of our own flowers, others flew right away. we had 5 total.


meanwhile, we have tons of these on one of our bushes in the backyard....


and in case you're wondering...we got the butterflies here @ insect lore. there is more than just butterflies...worms, ants, ladybugs, etc. so fun!