
OMG OMG OMG. BUTTERFLIES EVERYWHERE!!!
I found three just now when I went out to check; two males and one female, all looking great and healthy! One of the males was hanging from his empty chrysalis under a bench, and I lifted him up and put him on a geranium leaf so he could soak up some sun and warm his wings up. Of the other two, a female was floundering in a patch of grass under the kitchen window, after having fallen from her empty chrysalis, but only about a foot. The other had landed on a towel I'd put below the chrysalis in case of that happening. He'd fallen from under the eaves -- about eight feet up. Both had managed to hang until they were perfectly dry, so had landed safely.
I lifted those two up and put them on another towel I'd draped over the hose box. They were relieved, I think, to get higher up and into the sun. They're basking in the sun right now, slowly opening and closing their wings, gorgeous creatures in their patterns of orange and black.
There have been butterflies in the past that have fallen onto the concrete and been fatally injured. I don't know if they'd been dry enough to have survived without damage, but ever since then, I've put something softer down when a butterfly was close to emerging.
This group started out with twenty-two healthy-looking chrysalises; a couple of the ones left are looking iffy to me, but I've been surprised before. We're down to eleven. If the weather stays reasonably warm, as it has been, the rest of them should be out in the next couple of days. And off they go. OH YAYYY!
I need to go out and get some more film, dammit.
I've been under the weather for a few days, but I'll get more details up soon about the entire winter season we've had. And pictures!
By the way, did you manage to catch the The Doctors Revisited -- The First Doctor?
I had no idea that it existed and had aired at the end of January, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across it last night, at midnight on BBC America. It was an overview of the First Doctor era, which was interesting enough, but it ended with something I was not expecting: an actual several-episode story from that era, "The Aztecs." It's one of the very few from that era that still exists (and a lot more interesting than the first, "An Unearthly Child," the only other one I've seen.) For two-and-a-quarter hours I was glued to my seat!
I don't know when it's going to repeat again (I wish the VCR had been working), but the Second Doctor one is coming up. Evidently they're going to do one for each Doctor. (I wonder what they'll do for Eight, though?)
If you don't have access to BBC America or some other source, I hope you get to see them somehow.
(If you'd like to discuss it here -- which I'd love to -- please use lj-cuts so as not to spoil anyone who hasn't seen it and doesn't want to know, please. Or big SPOILER WARNINGS at the top of the comment, or something. Thank you.)