Photo of the Day

An amazing sight in my garden this weekend: I was harvesting fresh dill for pickles and found not just one but two of these beautiful caterpillars on my dill plants. After a bit of research, I discovered they’re destined to be black swallowtail butterflies, of which we’ve seen a number of this year. Turns out these caterpillars like dill (and parsley and fennel)…I had no idea!

black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar photo

 

black swallowtail caterpiller_8.4.13 010

Luckily, they were both quite cooperative; it seems that if you bump or disturb one, they send out a horrible odor as a deterrent.

It looks like I’ll be leaving some dill up strictly for our newest garden members.



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