MILKWEED

For several years after I purchased the milkweed from a sale to benefit the school's butterfly garden, the newly transplanted plant, which came with a cocoon already attached, resulted in the emergence of butterflies.

Then there were none.

Cocoons attach to the plumbago and yellow butterflies emerge, sometimes massively.

A black, yellow, and white striped caterpillar, eats up all the parsley and eventually there are several monarch butterflies. I have never seen the cocoon. 

But, where have all the caterpillars gone that attach to the milkweed?

Such is life on my little plot of land here in Crescent City.