The Miracle of Growth…

We’ve been having a lot of fun with living things lately. A few weeks ago I had gotten a butterfly habitat. We were not-so-patiently waiting for our caterpillars to be delivered. We were a bit surprised when all of the bugs were already in chrysalis form. They were all at the bottom of their little cup and not moving at all, so I was pretty sure that they weren’t going to make it and I called for replacements. Surprise, surprise – five butterflies have hatched over the past two days. They are not terribly active and one definitely has damaged wings. A couple of them have been flying around a bit. Tornado Boy is absolutely fascinated. We sacrificed one of my Mother’s Day flowers to add to their habitat. We’ve also given them some orange slices to drink from. We’ll have to see how they do. In the meantime, our new caterpillars have arrived and we’ll now be able to watch them grow and change.

Our Venus Flytrap heads have finally opened back up. A couple still had bug carcasses in them when the plant was done the digestion process. We were surprised that it took almost a full week for the plant to open back up. Evidently the plants will typically eat a few times per month. We still haven’t gotten to see the plant in action even though five of them have clearly caught something. We’ll keep observing.

Our tomato plant has undergone a major growth spurt this week and we have about 15 itty bitty tomatoes on it now. Tornado Boy is very excited to get up every morning and go check them out. They are growing quickly and I’ll be very interested to see if he’ll actually eat them when they’re ripe. He likes salsa and he’ll eat a few pieces of tomato from Chipotle in his rice and beans every once in a while, so I’m hopeful.

I definitely don’t have a green thumb by any stretch of the imagination (that’s one of my mother’s gifts), but we’ve definitely had a lot of fun observing and growing living things this spring. It really does remind you what a miracle life is.