Mom's Birthday Butterflies

This chrysalis all but opened on my Mom's 79th Birthday, she LOVES butterflies.... especially Monarchs, so I'm calling it her's ! It did open and fly away the next day. Next year I'd like to get some pictures of one as it's emerging from the gold speckled cellophane envelope. I'm still seeing lots of Monarchs, and still reading Four Wings and a Prayer. It's getting a little tedious and disappointing to keep reading how petty some of the early researchers were about sharing their information with other researchers, both citizen and degree-ed scientists. More writing about the natural history and migration of the insect would be welcome. But I guess this way I'm getting the whole picture on how the information that we do have came about...so I'll quit gripping !

Summer's End

Wow...here it is already...the last full day of this Summer.
I walked down our gravel road towards the setting sun late yesterday afternoon and found myself in a sea of airborne plankton...winged motes of life, swimming, floating, wind-driven...lending dimensionality to the invisible. Threads of cast spider webs, yards long, caught the light twisting and turning, spinning in the currents. All constant motion, lit from behind by the gold of the sun.
Earlier in the day a Monarch butterfly hatched out of its chrysalis in the hen house. I missed its departure, but didnt see it in the hen house, so I'm thinking that it got out and into the world to start its journey South. I'm reading Four Wings and a Prayer, by Sue Halpern, about one woman's experience with Monarchs, and now I would like to tag some butterflies next Summer....hopefully in our yard. tiny little stickers you adhere to a hind wing...amazing. I've seen more Monarchs than ever before this year, which is odd....Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy reported a very low year for that species. I see them EVERYWHERE...not in big numbers, but everywhere I go...even parking lots and highways. Maybe I'm just suddenly attuned to seeing them, like when someone you know gets a new car, and suddenly you notice just how many of that kind are on the road !