I have written before about how much I like monarch butterflies. Their caterpillars are also very cool, huge with bright yellow/white/black stripes to let everyone know they mean business. This year I decided I should do more to attract monarchs to my property, so I purchased two large swan plant saplings but didn't quite get around to planting them. Before I knew it the plants were colonised by caterpillars who proceeded to eat both down to the stems in a matter of weeks.
I know that the caterpillars are storing up energy for the wonder than is metamorphosis, but eating two whole plants seems a bit greedy.
Today I went out to find the last two caterpillars (I don't know what happened to the others, nothing eats them so perhaps they just left looking for other food) rapidly consuming the last edible fragment of the last plant. Peak Swan Plant was long passed and the caterpillars had doomed themselves with their wasteful overuse of resources. I had to rush out to buy another three plants just to keep them alive. These are turning into very expensive pets.
In other garden news, these Arctotis flowers are very photogenic...
