On Sunday morning, I was pottering in the garden wondering what to do. I saw a flapping coming from my wildflower patch, so I went to my clump of clover. I pushed it away, only to reveal a large white butterfly fresh out of its chrysalis. It had been drying its damp wings in the sun.

Then I realised that part of the butterfly’s chrysalis was still on its wing, and the other wing was already dry and ready to fly. I watched the butterfly for a while. The butterfly tried to get the chrysalis off, but it had used up all its energy. I realised that it needed some help, so I tugged the chrysalis as gently as I could. The butterfly didn’t move but the chrysalis did, so I tugged a little bit harder and off it came.

Ottoline with the scrap of pupa. Photograph: Family handout

But it still didn’t have its energy. So I went to the kitchen and got a banana and cut a slice off and put it in front of the butterfly. The butterfly stood on top of the banana and used its long proboscis to eat it. After a while the butterfly flew off.

I will dearly miss that butterfly, but I also wonder why it was in our garden. This butterfly lays its eggs on cabbages and we don’t have cabbages in our garden. We do have an old kale plant that was covered in lots of caterpillars last year. Maybe that is where this butterfly came from. It was also a lucky butterfly because sometimes this type of caterpillar gets found by a wasp that likes to lay its eggs inside it. Then the wasp babies eat the caterpillar.
Ottoline, nine