Hungry Royalty!

(I regretfully didn't have my camera on me yesterday when I saw one of those caterpillars do something really weird! It thrashed around, whipping both of its extremities together to form a closed loop, then it rolled off the edge of the leaf to the leaf below. It repeated these same antics leaf step by leaf step until it reached the ground! I've never seen anything like it before!)
For my birthday in April, my brother Dave sent me packets of several milkweed varieties. It took awhile, but I think all the varieties are represented adequately. Why did I plant milkweed? Except for butterfly weed, they are not showy flowers; in fact, they look "weedy". You plant milkweed for Monarch butterflies...and we finally have the caterpillars to prove that "plant it and they will come!"