If you find the egg, you pick the leaf and put the end of it in water to keep the leaf alive.
After a few days if you see signs of something eating the leaf, that would be a monarch caterpillar. They start out tiny and grow to a good size pretty quick. They also eat and crap all day, so you have to keep changing out the old leaves with new ones. Once they hatch you don't have to put the leaves in water anymore, just lay them in the bottom of a bug cage.
The bug cage has to have a lid. They use that to climb up to and make their chrysalis.
It's kind of a cool process, for nerds. I raised 14 one year and this year Di found 6 of them.
The best time to look for the eggs seems to be end of June into July, but I would imagine you can find them all summer. Till they start migrating to Mexico.
The things we do in our spare time. I'll update with pictures as things progress.
