When I got home, I had two surprises. One, the long-awaited snakeroot was here. Postmarked June 1st, and clearly marked USPS 3-day Priority Mail. Apparently, USPS can neither read a calendar nor count to three. Anyway the plants were quite wilted, but he’d packaged them well, and the roots looked healthy. Second surprise was less desirable. Not a single leaf of snakeroot remained, and I had four of my twenty-four caterpillars! I grid-searched the yard and found eleven, then found four more as I was changing out the MLB feeders. I tried taking one that was actively feeding, and putting him on pipevine, but he refused it, so I ended up putting them on the new snakeroot. It’s a good thing I’ve spent so many years looking for bugs because those little shits were *everywhere*! As of this morning, some have wandered off, but that’s fine because I know they weren’t gone to look for food.

Plants didn’t look well last night, but still edible.

A bit less wilted this morning.

First Route 66!

The other clump of Mammoth Russian sunflowers didn’t sprout–probably not enough sun–but these are coming along.