painted ladies

I lost count on how many years we've been getting Painted Lady butterflies. The girls aren't as interested in the caterpillar stage as they used to be. Now they just look forward to releasing the butterflies.

They've been checking these chrysalis every day to see if the butterflies hatched. We had 10 caterpillars this time. In the last 2 days 9 of them hatched.

Today was butterfly release day!

Two of them flew off right away. The rest of them sat on these flowers for a while before flying away.