I'm a leaf-turner. Through and through. Meaning I'm constantly in my backyard flipping over milkweed leaves (the host plant for the Monarch butterfly) to see how many butterfly eggs are stuck to the bottom, or to search for newly hatched, almost invisibly small Monarch caterpillar babies. If you're a seasoned PejorativeJinx reader then my fascination with the Monarch butterfly and its life cycle should be of no surprise. But I realized recently that all of the milkweeds in my backyard had somehow gradually disappeared, which wasn't immediately apparent in the tangles of my jungle of a yard, and is also kind of typical for these seemingly-unimpressive little plants.
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Milkweed is a Florida native, so one would assume that it would naturally do well here, but in my experience I know that they're highly susceptible to oleander aphids (those yellow and brown little assholes in the above photo) who suck the life out of them, and they also tend to eventually grow into spindly little nothings with no leaves meaning nowhere to lay eggs. They need agressive pruning to stay even remotely bushy, but I never want to trim off leaves hosting Monarch eggs, so I typically remedy this by just consistently buying new milkweed plants for the yard. And trust me, if you plant them they will come. They just KNOW. It's like they have a host plant sixth sense. So I planted a few and within days I had Monarch eggs spotting the undersides of the leaves that I've been happily monitoring.
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And of course they hatch into teeny tiny little caterpillar larvae that you really have to look for:
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I'm looking forward to watching these little guys grow up so they can pupate and turn into even more butterflies to grace my yard!
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Oh winter in Florida.. such a truly pleasant time of year (minus the days when it randomly drops to the 20s and makes life miserable). Because not only is my butterfly garden blooming like hell and attracting all kinds of butterflies on top of egg-laying Monarchs, but I get to sit in that lush, butterfly oasis and have a fun yoga session- a luxury that the muggy Florida weather does not afford me most of the year, or at least not comfortably. Good times all around!
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5 comments:
You are staggeringly beautiful.
..How is it possible to be so bendy?! Yoga pic #4 looks ridiculous.
I am jealous of both your butterflies and weather. Its a howling gale here on the UK coast :(
Enjoy your pleasant weather while it lasts.
Anon- Staggeringly? Wow, thank you.
Holly- It just takes practice! I'm pretty good with forward bends, but there are still PLENTY of poses that I have an unimpressively little amount of flexibility in.
I used to be extremely intimidated by yoga and afraid to do it because I have a herniated disc in my lower spine, but after trying a few of the simple poses I realized that the stretching helped my back SO MUCH. Camel pose is a surefire way to get my back feeling instantly awesome and loose.
Yes, Francine, thank you! I have friends who refuse to even try yoga because they have bad backs. Ironically one has scoliosis and is hyper-flexible and I can mold her into nearly any pose. But she's missing all the other components like strength and balance and whatnot. I keep trying to get her to do it, because it will help her back and she's already got such a huge leg up on beginners, but nope..
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