A couple of years ago I was trying to raise the babes of my first ELF American lady that did a major egg dump on my immature and only host plant, pearly everlasting. It pretty much decimated the plant and my attempts to locate alternative plants locally did not work. So, I got seeds for some other listed host plants in swaps and started them to increase my food bank for them. Last year I added Antennaria parlinii (which is still under an inch tall), and more pearly everlastings. This year I was in the process of planting out Artemesia ludoviciana and Antennaria plantaginifolia when an American lady landed right next to me and started laying eggs on the Artemesia ludoviciana right after I put it in the ground! Today I saw some possible nests on the pearly everlastings and Antennaria parlinii as well. I will not be collecting them to raise at this point though because all the plants are so small still. If I helped them along it would probably decimate my plants again. I will let them fend for themselves this round. I also have another artemesia species to plant out that I think is a host too , but I can't remember the name at the moment. Good luck raising the American ladies. They are messy little buggers! Those nests can get pretty yucky looking.

Thanks for all the great info and pictures everyone. I don't recognize the cudweed, but now I have a good picture to go by while looking. The other ones I had looked at showed the leaves as much more silver and fuzzy looking, but I see there are different varieties known as cudweed too. It seems like based on appearances at least they would be more likely to try that than some of the other host plants I have read about because at least it looks similar. I double checked and the ironweed I gave them I have labeled as western ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii), and the other ironweed patch just says ironweed, but leaves look more like the western ironweed than the pictures of common ironweed I have seen online. Perhaps that is why they won't try it... or is ironweed a long shot anyways. I also saw asters, common mallow, common sunflower, and burdock listed on a few sites. But I am wondering if that is just mistakes confusing the American Lady with the Painted Lady. I tried putting in some aster, mallow, and sunflower leaves just in case. I know where I can get some burdock too to try, but am thinking it is a long shot as far as them actually eating it. For next year I will have to start some more of the pearly everlasting and try some of the pussytoes or sweet everlasting as well, just to have some more patches and variety. I had sown all the pearly everlasting seed I had and planted it out just last year and it filled out into one large plush clump of about a 2' diameter. I never thought it wouldn't be enough considering I hardly ever even see American Ladies... just a few so far this year. You may be right that she just dumped most of her eggs all in one spot. If I could have actually seen the eggs I would have never brought that many in. I just pulled the few leaves I saw her touching, but couldn't really make out the eggs in the fuzziness. Lesson learned.

bernergrrl, I'm really sorry that a wasp came out of the chrysalis. That would upset me too. I hope that none of mine were parasitized, and I hope that you have a lot of successes. I don't let wasps perpetuate the cycle either. I don't work these long hours in the garden just to raise wasps. I know next to nothing about artemesia really, so if you have any questions, I wouldn't be much help in that area. Actually the only one I'm familiar with is that one that I mentioned, the A. stelleriana. Even then it's not like I know much about it. I just know it from seeing it on a website that sells various host plants. I think I googled Rose Franklin's Perennials to find it. That nursery is about an hour away from here, but it's not a nursery where people can just stop and buy plants; it's strictly online. Besides, at the price of gas, it would be cheaper to pay the shipping. Anyway, I like the way that plant looks and am thinking about getting a few, but it will probably have to wait until next year. I used to have some kind of artemesia here years ago but don't know what kind it was. I loved the smell of it, and the foliage was SO soft! Unfortunately, after a few years it died out and I didn't get any to replace it because of that. I figured if it died out before, it would probably die out again. I'm up for trying a new kind though. I actually don't know if the A. stellariana is in the Burris book or not. I've seen the book mentioned on here already, but I don't have it. Hee hee, you and I must have the same tastes with the silver and blue! :) I love to have that as a theme for the Christmas tree. I still haven't planted anything in my lasagna bed I made over the winter (I'm disappointed that the materials in it aren't rotted up yet), but when it is finally ready, I want to plant blue flowers in it for the most part and Pearly Everlasting in the middle. Good luck with your cats, and I'll cross my fingers that you don't have any more wasps come out. I guess I'll have to do the same for me since I hate those dreaded creatures. Cathy

Ginger, thanks for your interesting questions. Sort of farm--During my growing-up years when my father ran it (I was born in '51), it was basically a hog and grain farm. He grew lots of corn for the pigs and to sell, plus some oats, but started growing soybeans in the sixties as a cash crop as well. We had a few chickens early on, but found it more convenient to buy at the store. (I think even store-bought chicken used to taste better back then.) My mother was a city girl from 200 miles away and hadn't inherited the gardening genes of her father. She did like to grow yellow wax beans and freeze them, which we all enjoyed. During my father's growing up it was much more diversified. At present, having retained about a third of the acreage, 122 acres, our renter/manager/neighbor specializes in grain--soybeans and corn. Organic veggies?--I've gradually gone to organic and permacultural gardening for fun. I really love fruit, and since my husband and I can be on the farm only three months of the year (we teach up in Alaska and fly our Cessna down every year), time is at a premium. Therefore, perennial edibles are my priority, with maybe a few yellow wax beans. So I've planted fruit trees and small-fruit shrubs, asparagus, rhubarb, hardneck garlic (not really perennial, of course), garlic chives, and (my namesake) Egyptian onions, plus many other kinds of herbs. All of these are just jumbled together for a permacultureal type of system, though I do plant them in such a way as to enhance the ability to mow around them. In the east garden, for instance, I planted over the years three rows of fruit trees, plus another row of currants, rhubarb, and grapes. In between the trees, I planted within the rows all kinds of herbaceaous plants, for organic companion reasons, but also so that I could just run the mower all the way up and down without having to go around each individual tree. (I initially scoffed at the by-word "easy to mow around," but soon incorporated it into my criteria of good gardening once I actually started mowing.) Rainbow garden-- Blue: blue flax Darker blue: Veronica austriaca 'Crater Lake Blue' Annual blue salvia that either survive or reseed every year, c.r.n. (can't remember name)--Victoria? Purple: annual reseeding larkpur, Consolida ambigua Veronica spicata 'Blue Peter' Veronica 'Sunny Border Blue' Salvia X Superba 'Blue Hill' Salvia 'Superba Blue Queen' Red: Ground cover rose 'Red Ribbons' (Jackson & Perkins) Dianthus, 'Flashing Light' and 'Brilliant' Orange: Asclepias tuberosa Gaillardia, 'Goblin' and a bigger c.r.n. Gold: Coreopsis, tall c.r.n. Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm' Yellow: Achillea filipendula Coreopsis 'Zagreb' Green: Juniper horizontalis 'Plumosa Youngstown' Euphorbia cyparissias (am phasing out as juniper grows) Historical restoration--As I view pictures that go all the way back to 1900, I see many changes, including the location of fences, the coming and going of huge trees, and in the ground itself as I describe before with the double terracing. And yet there are still a couple of barns and a corn crib that endure. Times change and new personalities come in. My blood link to the past allows me to both have some knowledge of the past, as well as the capability of gathing more knowledge from pictures, written material, and friends and neighbors whose relationships with the family go back for generations. I cherish this, and often repeat plantings to mimic the past. Yet I can't put it all back and I don't feel the need. As long as I have the family blood, the farm is still evolving as the family farm. I try to do it justice, and though I enjoy it tremendously myself, I'm really only borrowing it from the next generation, whether it goes to my nieces (we're child-free) or whether it changes over to a whole new set of genes. Please check out the gallery again as I will soon have some more pictures in it. Egyptianonion