Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Nurturing the Milkweed


It's raining again as you can see.

I have a little stand of milkweed in the rear portion of my property. Every day I weed around the 14 plants. I grew up loving them and I hope they will stay. I used to make things and stuff them with the milkweed floss from the big pods after they popped open. Weeding the weeds -- crazy? I think not. Kids used to gather milkweed for the WWII effort -- read more here. It was used to stuff life preservers. my iPhone photos

5 comments:

Jewels said...

When I was a young Girl Scout in New Haven, CT, our scout leader was doing research with milk weed bugs and I dutifully took some home and documented their behavior. I remember the lovely milk weed pods and the silky floss. Thanks for the posting.

Content in a Cottage said...

Jewels

Sounds like fun. I can't wait until mine get pods.

Karen said...

I've heard of milkweed but haven't heard much about it. How interesting.
Karen

Anonymous said...

Monarch butterflies will only lay their eggs on milkweed plants!

There is something in them that make them distressful to birds and predators!

The eggs hatch into caterpillars who eat all the leaves.....(my gardener was horrified)!!

then make a chrysalis and out comes a monarch!

the lovely "floss" spreads the seeds all over....the "floss makes the seeds fly!!!

Maybe let them fly! then you will have more monarch butterflies!

Wonderful!!!

Anonymous said...

thank you "autocorrect!" "distasteful" to birds!