Martha, I honestly don't know if it's normal or not. I started my butterfly garden in the late summer of 2005 with not very many plants. I did make sure to plant three milkweed plants that I found at a local nursery. I wish I had kept a file on when the butterflies all showed up here but I didn't, so I don't know if this time would be normal or not. I know that I marked it down now this year, so I will be able to refer back to my notes in the future, and I will continue to make note of when various types of butterflies show up here. I raised 70 Monarch cats last year. I was unsure of what to do at first and that's what got me started coming here and now I'm hooked! :) Not only do I want Monarchs, but I'm also hoping for lots of other kinds and have planted (or will plant next year) nectar and host plants for them. My garden is three times bigger this year than it was last year. I'm still planting it, but I hope to be done within the next two weeks. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten Monarchs here my first year of trying. I have planted tons of milkweeds this year and they are planted in the ground outside, sitting in pots outside, sitting on our back porch in pots, and in flats still waiting on Mrs. Too-Many-Projects to plant them. I have both Tropical Milkweed and Swamp Milkweed and hope that I get more than just one or two Monarchs going through here or I'll be left with a lot of unchewed plants. Right now I have a tiny Monarch here on the computer stand on a potted (just in a 16 oz cup) plant and I like to watch it every now and then. It's two days old now and 1/4" long. I'm writing down its progress. This plant, which is not quite 10" high and has 18 leaves on it that are mostly all 2" long, will be able to feed the cat for at least the next few days yet (I want to watch and see exactly how many), but once it gets into its last stages it will be eating a plant this size every day. I can't wait until the next Monarch comes along (or the same one that was here on Sunday) and lays more eggs. I don't see how I could possibly run out of milkweed. I wanted to be prepared this year. I wasn't really unprepared last year but wanted to save on my small butterfly weed plants that were in the garden, so I bought six swamp milkweed plants at the nursery for the cats and between those and the ones that I had growing from the year before, I had enough to get the Monarchs to adulthood and also has nice Butterfly Weed plants. Funny thing is, half of them died during the winter. Arg! Cathy

I wasn't looking for eggs/cats before last week, but I found probably about 40 or 50 when I looked. I didn't bring all of them in to raise because I just don't have enough milkweed. I replaced all of my swamp milkweed with tropical milkweed in the spring and with the horribly dry and hot weather we had for a month, the milkweed plants were just barely hanging on; as a matter of fact, I probably lost about 1/3 of them. I usually raise hundreds of Monarchs every year but won't this year because of the sparseness of milkweed and also because I really have to get some other things done. I have so much weeding to do that I honestly don't have the time to raise a lot of cats. It's a Catch 22...I planted a ton of host and nectar plants for many different kinds of butterflies over the past 5 years, but now I have so much weeding to do that the caterpillars get ignored. I wish there were some wonderful solution to my weeding problem, but I know there isn't. I spotted my first Monarch of the year on June 24 but I couldn't tell if it was a male or a female from where I was. I hope more people start seeing Monarchs soon. Cathy

Awesome!! Glad to hear the Monarchs are finally in your area :-)>

HI Congrats on the eggs. Wish it was a lot warmer up here than it is:/ I don't think that article is correct. My hand raised females and the wild ones act the same when laying eggs. I have seen three eggs on one leaf at a time.