Cathy, you are so fortunate because you get those gorgeous Great Spangled Frits up where you live. We are too far south of their range. They see them in the NE part of our state, but not down this far. Linda, I've never had them on my P. incarnata. I've seen them flying in my yard, but never found any cats. It could have been I just missed them in the Gulf Frit deluge, though, too. I need to find another P. incarnata, but Precure hadn't gotten any of them in yet, and didn't know if they would. I imagine I can find one at TLC or possibly Horns or Satterlee's, but they're so darned expensive! These Blue Violets sure did attract them. Today I saw a HUMONGOUS Question Mark in the front yard. Had to be a female. Hope she left some eggs on the Hops in the front yard. I already have some in the back yard. Also saw a Red Admiral as well. I keep checking my False Nettle......... I'm almost convinced I should try it in pots. They are supposed to be hardy, but maybe my drainage wasn't good enough or something. Who knows. I've got to get my containers cleaned out, but I've been so busy trying to plant things. Susan

Christie - you're so lucky to get the Variegated Frits, too! Wish I could get some here, but I rarely see them in the city. Not many in the garden today, but we started out with a bit of a small shower, and skies were cloudy for most of the morning. Boy, is it humid out now! I have tons of Hackberries and Question Marks on the banana. Finally a summer form QM showed up today, and she was so orange, I thought it was a new species at first! I love the Gulf Frits because they tend to stay and hang around in my garden, so I have lots of them playing, breeding, laying, at all times. So far, I haven't seen many. My Passion Vine is new this year, so there's not as much of yet for them to destroy! LOL! Susan

Karyn, Thanks for the info. I thought I remembered of someone saying about not linking from a forum but couldn't remember if it was that specific one or any forum. I'll include the link below. It's a post of someone on that forum who listed a bunch of butterflies and included how they overwinter. I don't know if it's from her personal experience or where the info came from. Congrats on your new camera! We expect to see a lot of nice pictures now. ;-) Cathy Here is a link that might be useful: How Butterflies Survive the Winter

I was gathering food and found 4 more GF cats, so I have 6 now. The other 7 have all pupated. I was changing out the food in the container. For now, I have both the GFs and VFs in the same container. I was being careful to move the GF cats to the new food, when I noticed the smaller, teen-nine-neensy caterpillar on a tendril. I had to look twice, and then three, four, and five more times before I finally was able to ascertain that it was, indeed, a VF cat. It looked like a tiny little scratche on the tendril at first, and not like a caterpillar. I feel like first time fathers must feel when they initially hold their infants - like I was going to break them or something dire. These cats are soooooo much tinier than the GF cats! I carefully started to go thru the old food and realized I must be missing some of them, and upon closer inspection, I was. They are so tiny, tiny, tiny! I found a couple more on tendrils (the eggs were not laid on tendrils, so they had crawled onto them), and they are almost IMPOSSIBLE to see! No longer trusting my eye - my very old eyes at that - I put all of the food, old and new, back into the container for fear I would be missing some of the hatchlings. There's not much frass at this stage and if there is, it is microscopic! I will keep adding new food, but will wait a couple days until I can see them better (I hope) before I clear out the container......very carefully. I don't know what else to do at this point. My only concern is whether the GFs will eat the VFs. If you think so, I can at least go and move the GF cats to another container. They are small, but still so much bigger than the VFs. Don't think I've ever dealt with such tiny little babies as these VFs! Susan