We have a seating area just above the vegetable garden which is one of our favorite spots to relax and have a drink before dinner.
From that vantage point, we can see most of the vegetable garden, the house, and out to the road. Our street is a dead end and a favorite local walking route, so we often wave at the walkers and note with more satisfaction than is seemly when they and the occasional car slows to ogle the garden as they pass by.
The seating area is surrounded by heliopsis -- an exuberant orange June bloomer that holds its blossom longer than many perennials. We originally had two plants on the left side of the seating area. They multiplied there and then jumped the path to populate the right side. We've encouraged this proliferation because the plants are just so sunny and happy, and they make us smile.
YUCK!!!!
For five or six seasons we had no insect issues with heliopsis. Then, a couple of years ago, I noticed that the stems on a few of them seemed... furry?! On closer inspection, what looked like fuzz was actually a blanket of voracious red aphids arranged in neat ranks and files along virtually every stem, sucking the lifeblood out of the heliopsis! They vastly outnumbered any ladybugs we had that might have helped, so I tried every organic solution I could find, to no avail. That meant war. For the next couple of seasons, I moved on to stronger stuff, but even then some aphids survived to wreak havoc on what had been our happy place.
This year, I got a jump on the aphids, and -- though I'm not proud to admit this -- I prophylactically sprayed the most evil potion I could find before the plants emerged, assuming the aphids were already in the soil. And then I sprayed again just before they bloomed. Every day I held my breath and checked to make sure there was no sign of the red pests. Things were looking very promising. And then, three days ago, I saw something I'd never seen before:
Uh, oh -- are those orange spheres someone's eggs on the heliopsis? And do they contain some new hungry larva who will have a field day eating this plant?!
Given my experience with other lifesucking insects, it's understandable that this raised all sorts of red (orange?) flags for me. On most of our veggies, eggs are precursors to larvae that can strip a plant bare in days. Convinced that some new kind of moth had laid orange eggs, I immediately applied copious amounts of lethal insecticide to these and the surprising large numbers of them on lower leaves and along the ground. I combed the plant for other signs of infestation, and was relieved to see that it seemed to be confined to just one area of one plant.
Later that day, as we were having our pre-prandial cocktail in the seating area, I noticed a well-camouflaged caterpillar wrapped around the stem of one of the heliopsis blossoms. I was in a merciful mood, so I plucked him off and put him on the table between Mr. Mulch and me for further examination.
As we watched, from his nether end, he produced... a bright orange ball of... POOP!
Those weren't eggs I had sprayed; those were little balls of caterpillar poop! And they were orange because he had been dining exclusively on heliopsis petals which are the same bright sunny color! As I looked back at the plant, it was clear to see what his last meal had been. He had stripped every single petal off the main course!
Heliopsis blossom stripped bare by the very hungry caterpillar (with apologies to Eric Carle).
Since he appeared to be a lone interloper, I wasn't feeling particularly vindictive. So I left him on the table to fend for himself while Mr. Mulch and I went to have dinner. When we returned afterwards, both he and his poop had disappeared, likely serving as some lucky bird's appetizer. I'm not sticking around to see what color the bird's poop is!