Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Hey man!

Have a groovy Halloween, from Tallulah Mae.

Halloween E'en

Are you ready? These dudes are...

Number Two!

And we have lift-off for monarch #2! The chrysalis photos are from yesterday...so fascinating to see it turn darker green and then opaque; you can see the wings inside it.

We woke up this morning to find that the butterfly had emerged. I put him--and it is a him, as was my first one (black spots on wings)--outside, and as soon as the sun hit him, flap flap flap flap--and away! From start to finish, about 3 hours. Clearly my first little friend had a few issues (but we prevailed in the end).

One more chubby caterpillar left...I think it is about to go into the chrysalis phase soon. I hope so, because it has eaten the milkweed down to almost a bare nubbin.

And BTW: yay!

Shock Top

I think our trash can needs a haircut...

A Butterfly Tale

Remember this? This is a lovely fat monarch caterpillar hanging out on a milkweed plant I bought at a farmer's market.

And then the very next day it turned into a chrysalis, right before our very eyes. I tended to it (obsessively, some might say--ahem) for almost two weeks, including putting up a tinfoil barrier so the other caterpillars wouldn't migrate over and eat the leaves where it was balanced. I watched as the chrysalis turned dark (no photos, alas) and then started to become transparent--so cool, you could see the colors on its folded wings inside. On Thursday morning, I went out for about 20 minutes and came back to find this: an empty chrysalis...

...and this magnificent, glorious, gorgeous butterfly. O.M.G.!!!! I actually shed a few tears at the wonder of it all. 

Tallulah Mae, on the other hand, was not impressed. 

After a few hours inside as its wet wings hardened--I took the whole plant outside so that the warm air and sunshine would encourage the newborn to fly away. 

I checked on it every 20 minutes or so, worrying and waiting. Finally, as it hung onto the plant, it started to open and close its wings. After another few hours, it finally took off and fluttered...to the ground, where it fell over on its side. Oh no! I righted it and saw that the right top wing is a bit malformed, as you can see here. {Gulp.}

It stayed there, opening and closing its wings, for a few more hours.

Tallulah Mae was still not impressed.

Finally, as the day wore on, the spot where it sat was in the shade, which I thought was not a good thing. I put my finger out and it crawled onto it (amazing), and I put it on a flowering plant and left it (had to go to an evening event). When we came home, it was still on the flower with its wings tightly closed, but definitely still alive.

The next day, we went out to check on it, and it started to open and close its wings again but was making no effort to fly off. I'd looked online to see what could be wrong (MANY things, as it turns out, from injury [it did fall as it was pupating] to fungus to who knows what), and I read where someone had fed (!) a butterfly that was having trouble flying. 

I mixed up some sugar water into a tiny bowl (no, really!) and after the butterfly walked onto my finger again, I put the bowl up to it. It reached out one of its tiny legs, "tasted" the liquid with its foot and then promptly unrolled its proboscis and began to drink! O.M.G. (There are no photos, unfortunately, because my hands were full.) After it finished (and pooped on me), I held it up above my head. More opening and closing of the wings and then: flight, yay. A short flight directly into a spider web. Gah! I rescued it, removed the web bits, and was trying to think what else I could do to help it

And it flew up onto my head. Um. I went into the house to get my camera--butterfly still on my head, like a tiny living fascinator, as you can see below--and went back outside. 

 

So. Butterfly. On my head. What now? I moved into the shade to ponder the problem. And it flew away. More tears of joy...and a real sense of wonderment and gratitude, somehow. Fly, little butterfly, fly!

Some small part of me likes to think that it was saying thank you and goodbye...

When you see a butterfly, please appreciate it: from what I've read, the odds of an egg making it all the way to adult are incredibly small. I love them even more now!

Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Halloween costume possibility: coffee elephant.

(Life of Riley...a venti Starbucks latte cup--just the milky dregs, of course--delivered to her as she naps on the end of the bed. Spoiled much?)

Sky Show

I stand in awe and watch the sky.

Star in the Sky

Love the star atop this old sign...amazingly, it is still a Chinese restaurant, at least 60 years on...

Flying Survivor

Check out this girl/guy: Even with ripped and tattered wings, he/she keeps on keeping on! (I think it's an alfalfa butterfly, but I'm not sure.)

Pumpkin Palooza

On Saturday Robin from Various and Sunday and I made a little trip down to Imperial Beach to Pumpkin Palooza, held at the very cool Suzie's Farm. Suzie's Farm is an organic farm that supplies vegetables to many of the city's restaurants.

There was music, food (pumpkin chili from the God Save the Cuisine food truck, yum!), and fun: pumpkins and chickens enjoying pumpkins! Y'all know I loves me a chicken...

A good time was had by all--including the chickens.

Tallulah-Palooza Friday

 

It's that thing, you know, when you're rolling around wildly and your ear turns inside out...HATE it when that happens, don't you, Tallulah Mae?

When Life Hands You a Bunch of Not-Very-Tasty Apples...

...make applesauce! Yum! Six pounds of apples cooks down to these four jars. Easy-peasy! I recommend it...the applesauce tastes so fresh and you can sweeten it as much (or in our case, as little) as you like.

Butterflies-to-Be

We bought a milkweed plant at the farmer's market on Saturday, complete with three monarch butterfly caterpillars.

The biggest one was hanging in a "J" shape, not moving, and I thought it was ill, so I tried to "help" it. Unbeknownst to me, it was getting ready to pupate and form a chrysalis...which we actually watched (one of the most amazing things to see, truly). That's it on the bottom.

One of my caterpillars died a rather gruesome death: it was parasitized by flies (ewwww....gross!).

The last one is busily eating and getting MUCH bigger, so fingers crossed it turns into a chrysalis too. I'm obsessed with them and check on them every half hour or so. I could sooo easily have become a lepidoperist. Second (or third or fourth, in my case) career?