Last fall I moved our Hibiscus plant from the front yard to the patio to be nearer to the garage door to make it more convenient to bring in for the frosty nights. The first morning bringing it outside again I noticed some damage. I figured I banged it into the door frame carrying it and it lost those leaves. it got worse each day. Maybe it’s adjusting to less light and lower temperatures I thought.

After we got home from geocaching today Molly looked out the window and saw a monarch sitting a hibiscus flower. She ended up roosting underneath of it over night and flew away this morning. We knew some caterpillars had wandered off because we saw them then the next day they were all gone. There were three more butterflies on the neighbor’s bushes They stayed well hidden this year under the leaves unlike previous years.

Our milkweed was eaten bare save a few new leaves the caterpillars hadn’t found yet. We happened to be at a hardware store picking up sand for our sandbag and saw there was still some stuff in the garden center so I suggested we go look for milkweed just in case they have any left. We walked right past it at first then I smelled the vanilla smell. They had the pink swamp milkweed the we originally wanted.

It was a decent day and we wanted some fresh air today so we opted to go out on the riverfront trail and grab a few caches. It was a pretty nice day though. Pretty much the whole time out there we kept seeing these butterflies flying all around. I haven’t been able to discover for sure what type of butterfly (or moth it is) but I am pretty sure it is a butterfly.