A few years ago, when we first started our garden in earnest, I was quick to judge all critters. Almost all bugs, caterpillars, bees and so forth were a menace to my efforts and should be dealt with harshly.
But there is one thing that my wife has taught me, and slowly it is really sinking in, honestly. Educate yourself about everything. This goes for your gardening endeavors, your political leanings, history and everything else we deal with in life.
That first year, we not only started the planting of shrubs and trees and flowers, we started a vegetable and herb garden. Things were going to plan, plants growing, flowering and producing various edibles. We planted some Fennel and to my horror, there were several nasty caterpillars eating it all up! Something had to be done! I immediately took them all off and executed them with my heel. Feeling good that I had saved my garden from these voracious vegans, my wife told me that they were swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. Damn. I am a killer. A horrible person.
I hit the internet and educated myself about these creatures. They are fascinating! They lay their eggs where there is a good food source. Their offspring will do the same and so on. We have been excited by the amount of fauna that has taken to our yard. Between the butterfly bushes and the Gauras our area is, pun intended, a beehive of activity. Although sadly we rarely see honey bees, the bumble bees, and others from that family are busy, the smaller bees, we used to call them sweat bees and other more wasp-like bees love the smaller herb flowers like those on the garlic and rosemary bushes.
So the following year I left them to their foraging. And to my surprise, they did not destroy the fennel plant. You could barely notice any evidence that they were there. This fennel plant, by the way, has survived 2 winters and acts like a perennial now. I went out today and took these shots. I counted 6 caterpillars. Things are looking good!
