Today was marked as THE day to weed the old strawberry beds. I had renovated it earlier this spring, just after harvest. After renovation I covered the rows with newspaper and then straw went over the paper and between the plants in the three remaining narrow beds. Most of the weeds were tall grass with some red root pigweed, a lambs quarters or two, some milkweed vine and the ever present lady’s thumb. The heat hasn’t favored the creeping charlie so there wasn’t a lot of it to tend with. The recent rains made weeding quite easy and the temps were in the high 70s this morning so it was quite pleasant. Weeding always offers a quite time of reflection that I need more than I would like to admit. Anyway today while I was weeding I came upon this monarch larva on some milkweed vine. A 4th instar I believe by its size. Once I found this one I decided to leave the rest of the milkweed and hope for more visitors.
3 thoughts on “Weeding Surprise”
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great picture!
It’s great that you knew what it was. I would have just said “Ewwwww…a bug”.
Insects have always fascinated me. So much so that I ended up getting a degree in Entomology. My reaction to finding an insect is typically ‘Cooooool a bug’. Unless of course we are talking about something that feasts on me. There is no love loss then even though I do realize they are part of the web of life.