Hello Friends, It seems that I have been neglecting my blog. My apologies. The reason why is incredible. Let's start with last season...I only found 50 monarch eggs in my garden the Whole season (may-Sept). I think back and I only saw about 3 monarchs the whole season. As you can imagine it was depressing.
This year is so much better! I have seen butterflies in my garden almost every day, for weeks! I started collecting eggs in the third week of May and also got a few cats. (caterpillars) from my friend Bob. Since then I have had many batches of caterpillars. I have, as of last night, collected 1153! However as of today I have releases only 211 healthy butterflies. I had A lot of cat. deaths early on and a few diseased butterflies that I had to euthanize. Very sad, I know, but in practical terms if the butterfly is diseased it may spread the disease to others. I do have about 300 cats in play right now so this may help my survival ratio. 
I will write more tonight I promise- I really need to go clean all the cat. containers and aquariums right now. 

 Eggs start off in plastic containers to keep the leaves alive while the egg develops. Once they hatch, they should be given a new leave to feed on because the old one will get moldy, dry out or get consumed.

 These Chrysalids are all hatched now, part of the big batch of 25 on Monday.

 They make their chrysalis in maddening places sometimes

This is what it is all about, releasing healthy monarchs for the migration