My little common milkweed patch is growing every year, and one of them looks like it is going to bloom.  I think being located on the east side of my house and not getting full sun is why they have never bloomed before.  Monarchs have been sighted here in northern Delaware, and I have noticed milkweed growing all over the place, along roadsides and in fields, which is very encouraging to me.  So now I have started the “milkweed prowl” where I inspect my milkweed every day to see if anything is happening.  Yesterday I found my first milkweed bug of the season!  According to Milkweed, Monarchs, and More: A Field Guide to the Invertebrate Community in the Milkweed Patch, it is actually called a Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle (Labidomera clivicollis) and usually prefers swamp milkweed to protect it from its usual predators, but there it was on my common milkweed!  I guess I’d prefer finding monarch eggs, but a milkweed beetle is better than nothing, and at least the milkweed is being used for something by a native insect!

Swamp milkweed leaf beetle

My common milkweed patch

Milkweed blossom forming!

June 1, 2015  News flash!

Yesterday while we were sitting out in the backyard enjoying the hummingbird/house wren show and watching the catbird snatch serviceberries off the tree (you know we have an exciting life!), I suddenly caught a glimpse of something orange and black from the corner of my eye.  It was a monarch fluttering around my little common milkweed patch!  It literally checked out every plant in the patch, then flew around the backyard and the other side of the house before returning to check the plants again.  I felt like Linus hoping my milkweed patch was sincere enough for the monarch!  Eventually, it flew away, but I am so encouraged that if at least one monarch has somehow found my patch, others may also find it. I’ll be checking that patch for eggs every day now for sure!