We've been studying the magic of metamorphosis.
With silkworm caterpillars.
They ONLY eat mulberry leaves.
Not cabbage, not the milkweed of monarchs,
not the ice cream of Eric Carle's lore.
Fortunately, we have one of these pretty trees at school.
Like Very Hungry they do have a voracious appetite.
When the children aren't around you can hear them munching.
I find it meditative and soothing, like hearing snowflakes land.
They no longer exist in the wild and depend on the
human love of their lustrous cocoons for survival.
Using a paintbrush, they're delicately transferred
leaf-to-leaf so they can find fresh sustenance.
And this, my grown-up-friends, is where silk comes from.
With the cultivation required it is a wonder that it's so accessible.
This experience made me quite conscious of the
raw-silk wedding dresses I tried on.
