I was picking up some fallen branches from the lawn to mow the lawn and out of the corner of my eye something reddish or orange shot through the edge of my peripheral vision. Again I saw it go back the opposite direction again out of the corner of my eye. It was in the vicinity of our potted milkweed plants on the patio It seems way to early since we haven’t seen them until August here during previous years.

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.