Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Milkweed bulbs growing wild in my yard!!, 1 by thumpergirl

thumpergirl wrote:
Hi again and thanks for the responses. I sure will post this under plant id as I have a few other plants I really am having trouble identifying. I swear when they turned out to be tropical milkweed(the first bulb) i was very confused and terribly excited.It bloomed for a total of 5 days,gorgeous and the monarchs came running. I had finally gotten something for them to eat. The baby caterpillars stripped the plant in less than a day but I am hopefull new flowers will bloom soon as many leaves have fully regrown.(all this in about 2 months) Then I can get some photos of the tropical milkweed flowers and post for you. Below is the plant now as the leaves have grown back much bigger and flowers starting to bloom.Some other bulbs are shooting out a different milkweed..flower is different.a pinkish/white..
i have discovered a mealybug disaster the day I started this post.i have a groundcover/lowgrowing senna growing with these.They help cover the "bulbs" and they were INFESTED with mealybugs,Unlike anything I have ever seen.I am so upset.Ive spent several hours every day trying to remove the huge clusterd of mealybugs on each leave joint with insecticidal soap,a little alcohol and a paintbrush. I am very worried this will hurt my butterflys and caterpillars. I suppose this should be in a different post as well. Anyone have other suggestions on killing my mealy monsters,and NOT harming the butterflys and cats? I think I may have burnt my senna badly.another heartbreak...Went out to take newer photos and its all crispy and brown.