Well, I’ve had these caterpillars eating my curly parsley now for a while. I would have killed them previously, but since seeing the butterfly exhibit in Key West I’ve decided to let them grow and hopefully turn into butterflies. Besides, Ian prefers to cook with the flat leaf parsley and the caterpillars don’t seem to like that nearly as much.

Well, I can’t be sure this is one of them, but just a foot or two away on my cannas this morning I noticed a flutter of motion. I peered in and saw a beautiful butterfly whose wings were slightly curled up. I thought they were damaged at first. The butterfly didn’t move at all, which is so atypical for them. I watched, and slowly the wings began to uncurl. I realized this is actually a newly ‘born’ butterfly whose wings are filling with blood. I then proceeded to watch him climb (the apparently slick) leaves of the canna to the top where he then lay there (to heat up the blood in the wings), and then finally took off on his maiden flight. Luckily I caught some pictures before he flew away. I’m going to assume he’s one of my parsley loving caterpillars!