Six years ago, a local fiber artist began growing a small patch of Milkweed. Today, there's a whole new reason to keep tending this unusual garden... Monarch butterflies.

The Monarch butterfly only lays eggs on milkweed plants, and while this little plot of milkweed has been available as a nesting ground for six years, it is only now in 2007, that a stray migrating Monarch found the patch and began laying eggs.

Here's how the project is going so far.

The female butterfly lays each egg on it's own leaf, so the baby caterpillars won't have to fight for food when they hatch.

Milkweed gets its name from the white milky substance inside the plant. If you poke a hole in a leaf, you will see the milky stuff ooze out.

But don't taste it!

It may be called milkweed, but that white stuff isn't milk: it's poisonous!

When the caterpillars hatch, they are tiny and difficult to spot among the large milkweed leaves. The caterpillars in these photos are only about 1/8th inch long (4 mm).

This next caterpillar has already grown so much that it had to shed its skin. It's now about 1/2 inch long (1 cm).

Here's a caterpillar that just shed its skin.

Now the caterpillars have shed their skin again. They will do this five times before becoming a crysalis.

The caterpillars are still growing as they much away at the poison milkweed. The poison in the milkweed makes the caterpillar poison, too. His bright stripes warn birds not to eat him.

Kind of creepy, huh?

The caterpillar on the left is about to shed its skin for the fifth and last time. It has attached itself to the underside of a milkweed leaf and within a few short hours, transformed into the green chrysalis on the right.

What amazing camouflage! The chrysalis will be safely hidden until it becomes a butterfly.

It has been at least two weeks since we last saw a Monarch butterfly in the yard.

Today I saw two that looked very new. I didn't actually see them hatch, so I don't know for sure whether they are from this project, but I think they are.

I am keeping my eye on several chrysalis now. We have lost quite a few for various reasons: one caterpillar died just as it was about to form a chrysalis; some of the chrysalis seem to have been eaten out (despite being poison, they do have predators); some just went black and died.

The beautiful green chrysalis pictured above seems to be dying now too, but another caterpillar decided to transform on the same leaf, right beside it, so maybe that one will do better.

As it turns out, the other chrysalis did hatch, but I wasn't there to photograph it.

Fortunately, I was able to catch this next one several times during its transformation. In this next photo, you can just see the butterfly forming inside.

At last the day came for it to hatch.

It's a girl!

Here she is hanging from the shell of the chrysalis. Her wings are unwrinkled, but still very floppy. Although you can't see it in the photo, it's body is also fat. All this will soon change.

Now the butterfly has climbed up into the sunlight to better dry her new wings.

Her body is still a bit fat, but is shrinking fast. Soon this Monarch butterfly will launch into it's new life.

I have seen Monarchs drinking from the flowers in and around the yard preparing for their long flight south, but they are now too quick for me to catch them with my camera.

It is my hope that they will remember this place and return here again.