Congratulations Den! You win an all expense paid vacation to Baghdad, Iraq. Your ticket can be picked up at your closest Marine Recruiter.
This milkweed plant started growing next to our driveway about 4 or 5 years ago. It is right in our landscaping and several times people have "done us a favor" by recognizing it is a weed and pulling it up. It always grows back but when they....."do us a favor"......they destroy the reason we let it grow there. You see, milkweed is the favorite food for the caterpillar that turns into a Monarch Butterfly. We enjoy watching them grow from a tiny speck on the leaf into a black and yellow caterpillar. They really eat a lot of the milkweed and have voracious appetites. I was lucky this year because the man that did our landscaping last year stopped by to check the plants after the winter. He was just about to "do us a favor" and pull out that weed for us. I stopped him and explained why we leave it and that there are 5 or more Monarch caterpillars on it. After the caterpillars turn into butterflies, we cut down the milkweed. It'll grow again next year. It's fun and our only problem is people that "do us a favor" and pull it up. It has two large stems, I just took a picture of one. You can see one of the caterpillars on the leaf of the plant. I also took a close-up of it so you can see what it looks like.
