More Before and After

Here are some more before and after photos, just not of my sewing room this time.

Remember these guys?

I brought them inside, put them in an apothecary jar with a lid and continued to feed them parsley until they pupated. I wanted the granddaughter to see their life cycle and truth be told I'm fascinated by nature.


Then I put them in the attic stair well because it's very cold in there but never freezes. This type of butterfly will actually over winter if they pupate late in the season as these guys did.


The first week of March I brought the jar out of the stair well and set it on the kitchen table where it's warm and bright, heat and light signals them that it's time to hatch. Originally there were 5, so far I’ve had four to hatch.

They are Black Swallow Tails, they're my favorite of all our native butterlies. Their larva eat parsely, dill and fennel. I plant it especially for them each year.

The thing I found interesting about them is they turn black just before they hatch. At first I thought it might mean they had died before hatching but apparently it means they are about to hatch.

The underside of the wing has even more orange dots. Unfortuantely I didn't get pics of that.

These pics aren’t as perfect as I would have like, I need some more photography classes and probably a marco lens to get the quality I’m looking for but they’re still really cool all the same.