The Monarch Butterfly is beautiful, and easy to attract to your garden. Milkweed is the Monarch’s favorite food. Our milk weed plants are finally recovering now that the Monarch butterfly season is over for us. This was our second year with the Monarchs, and right now  I am watering and feeding the plants in preparation for spring. Last year, as the caterpillars devoured our plants, and adult Monarchs continued to lay eggs, we purchased several additional milk week plants. We quickly realized that this was becoming an endless cycle, so eventually stopped buying plants and let the adult monarchs look elsewhere to lay their eggs. 

Here you see the monarch caterpillars munching on Milk Weed in our garden. The caterpillar stage lasts anywhere from 9 to 14 days and eventually the plants will become bare stems with roots. It is remarkable how these plants recover once the Monarch butterflies have flown from our area.

These photos were all taken in our back yard, and if you would like to know more about the Monarch butterfly, please go to Monarch-Butterfly.com . They do a wonderful job of telling the full story of the truly awesome Monarch Butterfly.