Swallowtails

It's not all renovation projects around here, although that is mostly what I post.  We spent part of August and part of September being amazed by caterpillars that turn into black swallowtail butterflies.  It started when the older children found a caterpillar eating the parsley in our garden. We brought it inside and put it in a container. Within a day it had strung itself up and so we just kept it and watched the whole process unfold. We ended up with a total of four caterpillars that survived the process (and we basically ran out of parsley, even though I got rid of a bunch of caterpillars - shh, don't tell my kids!). The pictures below are a mix of those different caterpillars.

This was such a fun activity, and it was initially spontaneous and unplanned. We all enjoyed keeping an eye on the caterpillars, watching for the change and then were excited when each one turned into a chrysallis and then a butterfly. I did not like the decimation of most of my parsley, however. I read that these same caterpillars also like fennel and dill. So perhaps next year I will plant some of those and keep my parsley clear of caterpillars.