Life cycle of a caterpillar in our own backyard ....

This summer, for the first time, I dared challenge my black thumb. Black thumb = opposite of green thumb. I planted at home in containers: basil, mint, parsley and lavender. Apparently, caterpillars like to lay their eggs on the back/under side of parsley and this is what happened next... Can you spot them all? (click on the picture to enlarge) Answer: there are 7 in the picture, there were a total of 9!

 Slowly, the munched away at my parsley, and not very slowly they got pretty plumpy. (moto, moto!)

 As you can see, my poor little parsley plant was eaten down to the nubs.

The bigger they got and the more sparse the parsely got, I noticed there were less caterpillars. A couple strayed, but I'm guessing those plump and juicy caterpillars where easy prey for some bird. So, since there was hardly any parsley left anyway, I put them in our bug catcher box.

Notice the very thin silk strand it wove to hang from, sooo cool!

Shortly thereafter, the cocoon ....

 I actually don't remember how long, but I think a couple of weeks later, they came out of their chrysalis.

Fly butterfly ... fly .... be FREE!!!! It took them a while to dry their wings and then they were gone ...