As a child, I found an article about “raising” butterflies. I was a curious energetic child and took on projects like I took in air. My Dad encouraged me and built me a “breeding box” like the one in the article—a wooden box about 14” square with a hinged lid that had a screened opening in it about 10” square. Every summer for years I biked out of our little town, gathered milkweed and beautiful striped monarch caterpillars ,and brought them home to the breeding box. Once, while at my grandmother’s a 45-minute car ride from home, I took a paper grocery bag and collected caterpillars all afternoon, over a hundred of them with as much milkweed as the bag would hold. My mother let me carry that bag home in the car. I left it on the porch and replenished the milkweed a couple of times, and soon our entire front porch ceiling was hung with beautiful little green-and-gold lanterns. In 4th grade, hatching Monarchs was a school tradition. A lonely and insecure child, I was thrilled beyond belief when Mrs. Rowlands said, “Janna, you hold the butterfly for the picture, since you are experienced.” I have a copy of that newspaper image somewhere, me at the center with a butterfly clinging to my fingers and my classmates gathered around in wonder.

Years and years passed; I moved to another town, dirtier and bigger; I had kids and was busy. Then one summer my kids and I were walking at a park dedicated to the preservation of a riparian area, and as we came around a corner I saw milkweed, a huge patch of it, with telltale nibbles on the edges of the leaves.

Despite all my efforts as a child, I never found an egg, never saw a caterpillar shed its skin to reveal a chrysalis, and never saw a butterfly emerge—but that summer my kids and I saw all three.

It was awesome.

If you haven’t hit the link above already, do. And click on each life-cycle picture for more. Monarchs are so beautiful in every stage, and their chrysalis is incomparable. I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful in the entire natural world.