if you plant it, they will come!

I was out cleaning up the garden today. I have a lot more photos for another post- but right now just wanted to show what made me so happy. I found more than fifteen good-sized monarch caterpillars on my single milkweed plant!

I worried right away they'd run out of food soon- the plant is looking pretty worn out and shabby already. In fact, I'd come out to wipe aphids off- a few days ago I noticed the stems were thick with orange-yellow aphids up and down. But today I found hardly any aphids- probably thanks to this sycamore assassin bug.

I went and did some reading on monarch caterpillars. Apparently it's not enough to just plant milkweed for them to eat.

The caterpillars have a surprising amount of natural predators- only five percent make it to adulthood. Lots of people raise them indoors. According to some pictures I studied online, mine are probably already at the 4th or 5th instar.

They have a slightly fake appearance, in my opinion. Like a kid took a bunch of flattened yellow, white and black disks of clay, lined them up all up and squished them together.

I also found one of those very hairy caterpillars on the milkweed. Tussock moth? Probably a food competitor, but I didn't  flick it off. I like the moths, too.

According to online sources, I could in a pinch, feed the monarch caterpillars things like squash and cucumber. Today I pulled up all my withered cucumber vines, and found one more big yellowed oversize cuke on the end. Maybe I should have sliced it for the caterpillars, instead of tossing it in the compost!