Come to think of it neither have I. There were some blues or hairstreaks around early in the year (note: despite way I said we have hairstreaks too, it's just that, while they are in motion it's hard to tell them from the blues, so I usually don't bother); there always are. And I'm sure there were sulfur's and whites and swallowtails in the butterfly bushes (or more accurately in the whatever it is that isn't a butterfly bush but still attracts butterflies we have) Those are common enough I don't pay them much heed (at least, as adults). But a few days ago while driving home, it suddenly occurred to me that summer is over and I never raised so much as ONE parsley worm, because I never FOUND even one parsley worm (I'm not good at inducing them to hatch from eggs, so to get ones to raise I usually gad around the herb sections of the nursery's and farmers markets until I find fennel plants that already have tiny ones, then buy the plants and go from there.) I'm not even sure if we had the annual sunroom tragedy this year. Every summer, for some reason at least one butterfly gets caught between the two sides of the window in the sunroom where we install the air conditioner (which is why we can't just move the windows to let it out) and ends up starving (to get out, it'd have to fly DOWN and most of them instinctually always fly UP towards where the light is coming in. So they usually end up trapped until they give up and fall down (by which point they tend to be so starved they probably don't make it) What makes it worse is that the butterfly is invariably some species we usually DON'T GET around here. One year it was an eyespot, another, a fritillary.) which is good, I suppose. But I LIKE raising caterpillars (actually I don't think I saw many moth ones either this year)
