Caterpillars and Day Lilies — The 21st Century Matriarch

Since I’ve been home, I’ve started doing some remedial yard work…more on the changes to the flowerbed later. I’m focused on caterpillars and day lilies that were a biproduct of the work. The biggest excitement was a very small monarch caterpillar on the milkweed! I can’t cut it down now. Every morning I look at the plants and I haven’t found the caterpillar again but there are a lot of other insects on the plants. Milkweed is popular with the insect crowd.

Yesterday there was a different kind of caterpillar on the milkweed. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe some kind of Tiger Moth caterpillar? It isn’t a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar since those are orange and block and white and bristles are shorter and there are more of them.

The day lilies that I thought would be so gorgeous in the front flower bed always make beautiful foliage and then last year the deer ate the buds before many of them could open . Evidently the buds are deer candy. I’m giving up on day lilies after this year. So - while I was working in the flower bed, I cut all the flower stalks I found and put them in a big vase. The next morning, I took the vase outside and took pictures in the morning light.

I appreciate the opening buds and the spent flowers of the orange lilies. Placing the vase on the deck railing and using the out-of-focus forest as the background worked out well.