Sharing dill and parsley with black swallowtail caterpillars

A very acrobatic black swallowtail caterpillar by bodhilens

The black swallowtail we saw in July must have laid a lot of eggs in our yard. We found two caterpillars on dill in a pot in August. They ate up all fresh leaves and left (or captured by other creatures). We enjoyed watching them eating and growing happily, and I had already harvested some leaves and seeds, so it was all good, except that their sudden disappearance was disappointing. Then, in September, half a dozen caterpillars showed up on parsley in a pot. I divided the plant and transplanted some from the pot to the ground, hoping to save some leaves for me to harvest for a little longer. That was a good idea. Parsley in the ground grew well and spread quite a bit. I also took two caterpillars in the house and went to a store to buy a bunch of parsley to feed them, hoping to see them metamorphosing into butterflies. That was a big mistake. I was saddened to find them dead in the following morning. I learned that they could not tolerate a trace of pesticides on store-bought non-organic parsley, though I rinsed it thoroughly before feeding it to them. I felt really bad about killing two caterpillars and decided to give all parsley in our yard to their siblings. Two caterpillars were on the parsley in the ground until a few days ago, but now they are gone. I hope that they left to be chrysalises somewhere else and will show up as butterflies in our yard next spring.

Dill flowers with a bee by bodhilens

Yomogi (Japanese mugworts)



Yomogi (Japanese mugwort) by bodhilens

Recently a distant relative of mine passed away. She was my mother's older brother's wife's mother, who used to live near my family in Osaka. We affectionately called her obaachan (grandma). When I was a child, I remember her sometimes visiting us with homemade sweets, like kusa mochi (sweet rice cake pounded with cooked yomogi [Japanese mugwort]). Although kusa mochi is available at some Asian grocery stores in Kentucky, I kind of missed fresh homemade kusa mochi. So this spring I bought a packet of yomogi seeds from Kitazawa Seed Company (They sell seeds of Asian vegetables and herbs in California.) and sowed them in a planter. To my surprise (and the company's), they grew into at least three seemingly different kinds of yomogi. (See the photos below.)

To make sure that all the plants in the planter were indeed yomogi varieties, I read a lot of information published on the Internet. A gist of what I learned is that yomogi or Japanese mugwort usually refers to artemisia princeps. However, several hundred varieties of artemisia grow worldwide, and according to some Japanese information, more than 35 kinds of yomogi grow in Japan, any of which can be called "Japanese mugwort." The good news is that they are all edible, although some are less bitter and more palatable, while others are more bitter and more medicinal. I sampled a few leaves and found them all fragrant as yomogi should and some more bitter than others as I had read. So I said to myself, "Fair enough," and harvested a bunch of young leaves, cooked them, ground them in a mortar with a pestle, pounded them into mochi (rice cake) made from glutinous rice flour sweetened with stevia powder, and wrapped a spoonful of anko (sweet red "azuki" bean paste) with the mochi. My first homemade kusa mochi turned out to be pretty good.

Black swallowtail by bodhilens

While watering yomogi in my garden, I was reminiscing of obaachan and her kusa mochi, and a black swallowtail appeared and flew around me. She lingered for a while, so I was able to ask bodhilens to bring his camera and take a photo of her. Japanese say that insects can carry souls of the dead. I wonder if the butterfly was carrying the soul of obaachan.