End of Another Season

Tomorrow is the beginning of autumn. We're having a splendid, hot day today and I got a lot of chores done around the house - swapped out the new wasp trap, programmed and installed my new garage door opener keypad and took the previous ones down, washed and bleached the caterpillar castle to get it ready to store for another year.

Yes, folks, I released the last two monarchs today. They were my 37th and 38th releases of the season. It was a pretty good year and I'm hopeful the overall population is up from last year. We'll know better when they amass in Mexico a couple of months from now. Aerial photos are taken of that area to determine the population. Here's a photo from 2014. The orange hue on the trees are the butterflies.

Then we need to keep our fingers crossed that no disasters happen while they're down there or their offspring are on the way back north next spring.

At one point today, I had 2 monarchs in the castle and three others flitting about the yard and garden. There were also painted ladies and white cabbage butterflies.

Next year I'm going to tag the supergeneration - those that eclose after the beginning of August. It would be great to have one of my tags recovered.