BTW, I don't have any oleanders and none of my close neighbors do either. I know the cats of this moth can eat an oleander bare. But, if I grew oleanders it would only be as a host plant for these moths. Many of my plants are sacrificed to cats to ensure I have lots of butterflies and moths.

I know that others have opposing opinions to mine when it comes to these guys.

Beautiful! I understand what you mean. After finding the cute Tersa moth caterpillar on my Pentas, I already looked up what else I could plant for them next Spring.

Thanks Iris! I agree...tersa moth cats are adorable! Unfortunately, many people confuse them with the tomato hornworm and destroy them.

The favorite host plant for mine is hamelia patens aka Firebush. In fact, they would devour the hamelia and totally ignore the pentas nearby. I believe that it was Miss Sherry who solved the puzzle...hamelias and pentas are in the same family - Rubiaceae. Hamelia wouldn't be reliably hardy in your area though.

I had a whole bunch of Oleander Moth cats my Desert Roses and Mandevillas. I didn't know they were a host plant, until I saw the cats on them. Now I have more of each of them, just for the cats.

I finally got my Dombeya Burgessiae (Seminole) and Skyblue Clustervine, and they both started flowering in October.

These are nice looking plants, ily! Everything is dead and brown looking here. Can't wait for Spring.

Sorry for the delay in response all. I've been battling food poisoning since Saturday evening. I don't remember ever feeling so bad and that includes my 4 kidney stones and delivering two 10 pounders! I am feeling a little better and sure hope that I am over this in a day of so. I had to go to work yesterday and today because I have 5 days of intense training for my job this week. Talk about long days!! Now, poor Joe is showing the same symptom :( I am more worried about him due to his age but he won't let me take him to the ER. If he is worse when I get home tomorrow, he won't have a choice.

Ily, I didn't know that Desert Roses and Mandevillas were host plants for them either. The Dombeya and Clustervine are gorgeous....never had any. I did recently plant a beautiful, large-flowered blue tropical morning glory (aren't they all tropical?) and a blue-sky vine (which I may regret planting down the road).

Iris, love that my plants seem to thrive even more in the winter here...70s but no freezes. But, I do remember the thrill of anticipation of the first plants peeking up through the snow in early Spring in Ohio. That was my favorite time of year there.

Rhonda, sorry to hear you've been sick, hope you feel better soon. I only found out, because I got over run with cats on them. After doing research on them, found out it was to Oleander Moth. The flowers on the Clustervine are small, but I read on it and it says it's listed as endangered in Florida. Found it by looking in the internet, and found a native plant nursery that had it. I bought both of them from that nursery. My mom wants to get the sky blue vine. We have about 3 houses near us that have them, and they're beautiful. Similar to the Clustervine, but the flowers are a lot bigger. We got some seeds for them. I'm always looking for something different to add to my yard, especially for butterflies. This links tells you about the Clustervine, http://regionalconservation.org/beta/nfyn/plantdetail.asp?tx=Jacqpent

Due to the Hurricane, I lost a lot of trees, 3 avocados and 3 mangoes, not to mention smaller plants. The biggest tree fell on my orchids, but I didn't lose to many of them, thankfully. Iris, tell me that at least you get snow. I have yet to see snow falling, and I would love to. I went to Minneapolis in January, 2003. It was only 27 degrees that year, that was the year all the snow was falling in Colorado.

Rhonda, I hope you and Joe are both feeling better soon. Ily, we hardly ever get snow. And even if it's just an inch everything is closing down for a week. Right now the temperatures are in the mid 60's during the day and around freezing at night. There are still some pollinators showing up in the afternoon, so I really have to look up what to plant for these times (saw a sulphur today) It's really just dandelions in the grass and my green headed coneflowers, so I am feeling sorry for them

Wow, I don't know, but right now most of the plants I have, seem to be flowering. I'm in Miami, FL. It's been pretty cool here lately. I put the AC at 76 at night, and it hardly turns on. I saw 1 hummer, just 1, and it came for the Cosmos, stopped right in front of us on the terrace, and flew away. I hardly get hummers here. I think I've seen maybe 2, in different years. We started to plant some seeds now, hopefully we'll have better look with them.

Iris, after taking 6 months off to get settled, I started working as a patient registrar
in the ER of our local hospital. I started getting sick Saturday and today is the first day that I have eaten and felt almost 100%. Joe is still feeling pretty crappy and I'm beginning to think it's a
stomach flu, not food poisoning since he didn't get it until 2 1/2 days
after me and we eat the same food. Just about the time for a bug to
spread from me to him.

Don't feel bad about the dandelions. I have so many different pretty little weeds growing in the grass that the tiny butterflies just love. I just can't bring myself to do anything to kill the weeds but I really do need to mow them this weekend before the neighbors start to complain.

Ily, I just moved to Englewood in March and have only seen hummers on the Northward Spring migration. Must say that I was totally disappointed that I didn't have some stop and stay on the way South. I really miss them :(

I am so glad my lawn isn't perfect. Had this unexpected visitor, and these are about the only things flowering. Poor things have to work hard to find some food now.

We don't have a perfect lawn either. When we mow the lawn, I've been telling my brother to leave a patch without cutting, usually the Spanish Needles. We were told by Fairchilds butterfly walks, that 21 butterflies use it as nectar, not to mention the bees too. I'm trying to collect some weeds to put in containers, because they're host plants. There are about 4 of them that I want to collect. There are others that are just for nectar, which I'll probably collect too. I like this site, http://butterflies.heuristron.net/weeds.html  It talks about the weeds in the lawn, and which ones are good for butterflies. They also have a page on the butterflies and months, among other things.

Ily, the link is not working for me. I really am going to have to find something for late Fall and early Spring.i planted climbing Aster, Ironweed, Frostweed and a few others this year, but none of them survived the 25 degrees we had. Well, they should come back in Spring.

Try this one, http://butterflies.heuristron.net/  The name of the site is

Steph's Virtual Garden

I would assumed the butterflies can't survive in 25 degrees either.

That's gorgeous Iris! I'm glad that you don't mind "weeds" in the yard either. I checked the yard when I got home from work tonight and I see at least 5 different types of wildflowers growing there. Some are quite pretty. I'm sure that your plants will come back in the spring.

Ily, the link didn't work for me either. But, I typed the name into the search engine and found it. I love that site and many of the lawn weeds listed are in my yard:) Iris, try this link.

I mowed after work today and felt so guilty...all those butterfly weeds chopped off :(

Don't feel guilty! You do have a lot of other food sources around. Now if my husband would say he has to mow, I might have to throw myself in front of the tractor.

Ha ha! The things we do for critters...