Late Summer Flowers and a Surprise
Last week I picked a bouquet of late summer flowers from my garden. I have cosmos grown from seed that are now taller than me. My cannas are nearing the end of their bloom, and some are making seeds. These last surprisingly long in a vase. I clipped a “Mother of Pearl” rose from one of this year’s new rosebushes and my favorite, “Rio Samba” is in its third bloom of the summer.
Some mint filled out the bouquet with fragrant green and little flower spikes.
Mostly my bouquet featured some terrific coral zinnias, also grown from seed. There’s only one plant, but it’s huge and thriving. I love them!
Imagine our surprise when three days later we found this fellow on a zinnia! The flowers in the vase were beginning to tire and droop and dry. And this caterpillar was still alive and on them, munching away.
He explored and ate while we grabbed our “butterfly garden” from the garage, picked fresh zinnias and place them in a small vase of water, and enclosed them and the caterpillar in the mesh enclosure. We wondered what the caterpillar might like to eat and brought in various leaves for him.
Then, we lost him. That is, try as we might, we couldn’t see him anywhere in the enclosure. I worried that he hadn’t had appropriate food and had died and shriveled up invisibly.
Then, one day, we found him again! He looked a little darker in color.
Then, he disappeared once more. Uh oh!
Today, Daddy found a little brown chrysalis tucked into a fold at the bottom of the mesh and fabric enclosure. We are now eagerly waiting to see what will happen next. Will a butterfly emerge? We hope so!
