My wonderful wife, Anne, ventures out one morning to check on the milkweed plants growing alongside our home. To her dismay the leaves on the milkweeds are nearly gone. Upon closer examination, Anne discovers the reason why. There are a dozen or so monarch caterpillars on the plants eating the leaves, the seed pod casings and the tender twigs.

She moves some of the caterpillars to another batch of milkweed plants nearby. So we head to a nearby nursery to buy more milkweeds to insure there is enough food for them to successfully pupate and emerge as adult butterflies. It is costly to do this, but monarch populations are decreasing so anything we can do to help them survive is worth the money.