Milkweed

My sense of smell is not my keenest sense, and I think about that when I read about a loss of that sense being a symptom of COVID-19. I don't have a great sense of smell to begin with! It might take me a while to notice if I lost it. However, lately I have been confident that I still have it because there are a number of things blooming in my backyard lately that smell wonderful. I can't even identify where all of the beautiful aromas are coming from, but today I was very aware of the scent of milkweed blossoms. Milkweed is just an all-around wonderful plant to have in my backyard: beautiful flowers, wonderful scent, host plant to many fascinating bugs, including monarch butterflies. What more could you want from a plant?

Okay, so it's toxic. There are plenty of other plants to eat. Come to think of it, it is interesting that so many insects feed on the plant–not just on the flowers' nectar, which obviously is not toxic, and the plant wants insects to feed on that for pollination, but on the leaves and stem–because it does make you wonder what the point is to the toxicity. However, an interesting thing about it is that monarch caterpillars themselves become toxic from eating the plant; they are immune to the toxin, but they take it into their bodies, and it supposedly protects them from being eaten. I am not sure how that works, because if a caterpillar gets eaten, but it make a bird sick, and the bird learns not to eat those caterpillars, the one that it ate is not helped. Also, there are plenty of things that do prey on monarch caterpillars, like wasps that parasitize them, so... anyway. In spite of their attraction to many species of insects, I didn't see a single one on these flowers today. But milkweed plants are beautiful, that's the point. And they smell really nice. It's a shame to call it a weed.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Plant bug of some kind

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Tree cricket nymph

Other Bugs:

Robber flies. The female is on the left.

Moth

Beetle on black-eyed Susan. Last year I had one garden bed that was full of black-eyed Susans, which attracted a huge variety of insects from many orders. This year I have one plant, with a couple of flowers. So far it has attracted this beetle.

There is a wooden sculpture sitting on my picnic table, and there is a hole in it from a knot in the wood. While we were eating lunch outside my husband happened to notice that there were bugs inside the hole. I looked in through my camera lens and saw that it is full of caterpillars. I have no idea why.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I don't know if this is a spider or a mite, crawling around next to the tree cricket nymph.