Aphids

These little buggers are starting to show up again. It seems every year at this time they show up on the Marsh Milkweed and the Butterfly Weed. I am not one to use a lot of chemicals but the last summer they killed the Butterfly Weed back to the ground. I was afraid that they had killed it for good but it did come back this spring. I guess the Butterfly Weed is pretty hardy. They grow wild along the highway in southern Missouri.

I also have the worst time with these little green worms. When I was a kid I called them inch worms. They would arch their middle up and then move their head forward and bring the back end up. I tried to capture how they move in the picture. These inch worms love to eat the buds out of my petunias, geraniums and roses. I have just about quit planting petunias because of them. They riddle the flowers with holes or the roses blooms turn out deformed because they have eaten a hole in the side of the bud before it opens. Gets me worked up just blogging about them.