There is not enough time to get thoroughly lost in the wonder of the season. I listen to the sound of blue jay fledglings being fed in the ash tree. The mother chickadee makes a different music, bringing her family to the suet feeder. The house wren nestlings create a tiny commotion from inside their house, begging for food. As I study the ant farming the aphids on a goldenrod in the backyard, I can almost hear their music.

On our patio, we have a pot with a compromised broccoli plant growing. It is a rescued “thinning”, a plant that was removed from a row in the garden in order to let the more vigorous plants grow and give us food. We chose to thin it in part because we watched a cabbage butterfly land on it and lay an egg. We wanted to share the wonder of metamorphosis with our guests.

Just about every-other day Emerson and I check our plant and notice the irregular shape of the leaves. Then we hunt for the latest hiding spot for the fleshy green caterpillar. Today we looked and looked again and could not find our caterpillar. Did it turn into a chrysalis? In the Kate Gorrie Butterfly House the cabbage caterpillars crawl high up the wall before going through that magical change into a chrysalis. At home we searched the plant and looked up and down the wall and could not find a chrysalis.

We enjoyed watching our caterpillar hatch from an egg right on our patio. We miss watching it grow daily and we will search again tomorrow in the light of day for a chrysalis. Maybe we didn’t search well enough.  Or maybe, as I warned Emerson, the catbird that frequently visits are patio made a meal of the tasty caterpillar. Perhaps the catbird heard it feeding?

Here is the Metamorphosis Song, created by Gerianne Linden at the Rocky Hill Cooperative Nursery School and sung to the tune of “Allouette.” I first heard this song when her preschoolers sang it to our staff at the Buttinger Nature Center.

Metamorphosis,                                                                                                         We know metamorphosis,                                                              Metamorphosis                                                                                                 means that things can change.

Caterpillar to butterfly,                                                                                      Tadpole to a frog, oh my!                                                                                  Things can change!                                                                                           Things can change!   

Ooooooohhhhh!

Metamorphosis we know metamorphosis . . .

�