I've never noticed cats of any kind on either of my butterfly bushes. I deadhead mine (if I wouldn't I'd have quite a few plants coming up from the seed) and am at the butterfly bushes a lot, so I'm sure that I'd notice any cats that are on them. If I get any Common Buckeye cats this coming summer, I hope to remember to put some butterfly bush leaves in with them to see if they eat them. Just in case they won't eat them, though, I'm also going to put in the snapdragons with the cats that I normally feed them. The snapdragon leaves get eaten up fast because the leaves are pretty small and the plants are half brown by the time I get buckeye cats here to raise. I don't know if the cats would even eat the butterfly bush leaves if I also have the snapdragon leaves (probably more preferred then butterfly bush) in with the cats, but I'd hate to only have the butterfly bush leaves in with them and have them being hungry. So it would be somewhat of an experiment but not totally controlled. I'm no scientist though. :) I didn't even get any buckeyes here at all in 2013, but there wasn't much of anything here in the way of butterflies. I didn't see any Red Admirals at all either and had raised those the previous two years after my false nettles came up and got nice. I had 3 Monarchs finally show up here in September, but I assume that they were on their way south for the migration. I had all this milkweed and not a single cat to raise. I had American Lady cats on the pussytoes and Pearly Everlasting but didn't get around to bringing in any to raise. I probably had Wild Indigo Duskywing cats and Clouded Sulphur cats on the Baptisia australis, but I didn't walk up to that garden enough to keep bringing in food for any cats that I'd find. I didn't get any Question Marks on my potted (or in the yard) hackberry trees like I had been getting the previous years. I did get to raise Black Swallowtails on the parsley, dill, and rue and have some in the tool shed (unheated, of course) waiting to eclose in the spring. Same for some Giant Swallowtails and Pipevine Swallowtails. My family loves to help me release the butterflies in the spring! I hope that we all have a better butterfly year this year because I don't think that 2013 was very good for a lot of us. Cathy

Paul, I only find plantain growing on well-drained sites in full sun. Please keep us posted as to how yours does, also whether or not you get any cats on it - I may order some for myself, since I don't have anything for the buckeyes at this time of year. MissSherry

Sandy, I had never even heard of Butter and Eggs before just reading the name here on the forum. I think someone else (I forget, maybe it was you) and I thought then I wonder what that is. Now I know. I want to get buckeyes here, but oh my, if it's invasive, I just don't know about planting it here. So I wonder if the buckeyes will lay eggs on any of the hybrid snapdragons? I forget exactly which I planted but I'm sure it's not a wild kind. Susan, I'm so happy that you got cats on the plantain and the violets. At least one of us did. lol Actually, I guess I obviously must get cats on the violets here since I have so many fritillaries, but I don't notice them because our lawn has probably a few thousand violets in it. Can you picture me looking at all of them to see if there are frit cats on them? Ha. I don't think my back could take it and I'd have to do it sitting down just like I do my gardening. Honestly, it's literally a pain to go out and collect Monarch eggs because of having to bend over to look under the leaves. I've considered quitting it, but then I think of the spiders possibly getting at the eggs/cats. I don't actually know if they eat the eggs or wait until they hatch and then get them. I know that I found more than just one or two plants with evidence of a cat having hatched but it was nowhere to be found. Since there was a spider on the plant, I assume that it had gotten the cat, and that is why I feel compelled to bring in the eggs even though it gets to my back. I'm glad that my planting is almost done. I was going to plant the last 20 milkweeds outside today in my milkweed patch, but it's raining. That's okay, we need it. The plants will have at least two months to get a good root system before we get a frost, so that should be okay. I just can't believe how tall those Swamp Milkweeds got already this year after having just sown the seeds last fall! I'm talking about the ones I planted in containers; I don't know why the ones in the ground didn't come up, so I used my extras in the containers to plant down there. We finally got the cage up yesterday. I don't have anybody in it yet, but they will be soon. Our daughter is at the beach with a friend or I'd have taken a picture of the cage. I wanted to wait until after she gets back to put some caterpillars in it. I don't actually have a whole lot of them right now. I have 7 that will pupate with the next few days, 8 that are about 1" long, 6 smaller ones, and sheesh, at least 130 eggs...unless some of those hatched by now; I haven't even gotten a chance to check yet. Saturday really made that count high since I found 93 that day. Geez, if all of those pupate on the same day, won't I be busy! I thought it was great last year when I released a dozen on one day. This year is really busy and there is no way I would raise all of these in individual containers. I really think I would go batty. Believe it or not, I do have other things to do besides raise Monarchs. Ha, I don't know what hubby would say about that though. Things get neglected around here when the Monarchs are here. Oh, and I can't be your muse if you're mine! :) I wasn't worried about the cherries. I have been so busy with planting other things that I was beginning to think that I'd never get done, but I finally see light at the end of the tunnel...only 20 Swamp Milkweed left to plant outside, some transplanting of milkweed from small pots into bigger ones, and a few odds and ends one to do yet but nothing major. If I wouldn't have had to dig all the sod by hand with a trowel, I'd have been done two months ago. I like to plant things, but I really got carried away this year and took on more than I probably should have but oh well, I lived to tell about it. :) Cathy

Both of them are ribbed. I think the lanceolata is as heavily ribbed as the major. My cleomes are almost eaten to the ground, and there are so many cabbage whites, it's like big snowflakes in the garden. Right now, the Sleepy Oranges are laying eggs again. There were several in the yard this morning and I kept seeing females going to the Senna bicapsularis to lay more eggs. Laying TONS of eggs! Now these plants are not very big yet (about 1' tall), but they keep using them, and laying a very few on the S. hebecarpa, and none on the Partridge Pea yet. I think they must prefer the Xmas Cassia. I brought my little checkerspots in today since I keep seeing wasps hovering around the stand of sunflowers. I just KNOW they're trying to get a good meal. Very difficult to handle because with the slightest motion, they fall (a defensive mechanism). So, I used a shirt box and held it under the leaves I was removing. The sunflower leaves are holding up VERY well in water so far. The ones that fell off the plant have now climbed back up onto the leaves. Silly little buggers. I can't decide if they are silvery checkerspots or Bordered Patches. For awhile they turned completely black, but they have molted again, and now look like that have a reddish dotted line right down the middle of their backs. This may indicate Bordered Patches. Ah, well....the saga continues. Susan