Hi, I had someone very generously send me a package of seeds from The Butterfly Ranch I think it was called, last year. Well, my ex destroyed a lot of my plants and threw away some of my seeds & I no longer have any of them. :( Please, if you are still on GW & see this post, I would love to get some more of the seeds from you! I would be willing to send a SASBE and some of my veggie seeds if you want. Please let me know! =) Thanks - Steve

No, you didn't have to pick them up. It was best to find a butterfly that was resting rather than one constanting flying around but all you had to do was to gently place the q-tip by the front legs, wait a second then start very slowly rolling the q-tip toward the butterfly (your hand isn't moving just the q-tip betweeen your fingers). They kinda step onto the q-tip and since they smell with their feet, they get the scent of the Gatorade and their proboscis comes out and they start to drink. One thing I noticed was that they didn't sit straight up, they kinda leaned to the side to drink. Anyway, it worked for us, everyone in the group got the butterflies to drink. I had a ZLW and a Julia get on mine (not at the same time). One thing the woman said and I have heard it and read it in other places is that the proboscis is like like a straw but when the butterfly first emerges it is actually like a straw that is not sealed. The butterfly rubs it with its feet and over time, it seals . That is why the butterflies do not have to feed for the first few hours, actually not until the proboscis is sealed. So if you raise them indoors and the weather isn't nice enough to release them, you don't have to worry so much asbout feeding them.

Oh my! I recognize the word debris! My husband and I talked after Katrina about how we never used that word except after a hurricane! And when I think of hurricanes, the first thing that comes to mind is the endless sound of chain saws. I'll never forget Hurricane Elena, when we still lived in Gulfport. Somebody in our neighborhood already had his chain saw going before the storm was even over! My neighbor here gave me a funny look when she saw how much things had "grown up" at my house. I'm not going to give up on trees, no matter how many hurricanes go through here. Who would want to live in a treeless world? Sherry

Butterfly World's selection on site is much more extensive then their online catalog and the plants on site are even bigger and less expensive. You should see their gardens. It's just gorgeous. I was last there in late Feb and would have bought plants and shipped them ahead but temps at home were well below freezing and I was afraid to mail them, even with heat packs. BTW the Passiflora Society International holds meetings there.