Passion vine

One thing led to another. We didn't have a hard freeze last winter, and the passion vine never died. It uses my camellias and citrus as a trellis. I never got around to pulling it off, so it is really vigorous this year. I knew last spring that the first citrus I planted, beloved ponkan tangerine, was sick with the greening disease. Then I discovered the Duncan grapefruit was also sick. The tangerine was clear, but the grapefruit had vines. I agreed with the arborist that I would pull the vines off and they would take down the two sick trees, along with some others. 

When I pulled the vines I thought there would be a shower of caterpillars. There were none the first day, not even one. The second day there were two. I moved them to safety. I speculated that the zebra long wings and fritillaries were laying their eggs on tender shoots instead of mature vines. I've noticed them doing that. But I fully expected to see the tips of the mature vines with some eggs or caterpillars. None. So I did just two days of pulling vines and left the rest as they were for now. 

Two days later I was pulling some weeds out front when I noticed a zebra long wing on a camellia, looking me right in the eye. It appeared to be newly hatched and letting its wings fill out. It stayed there for two  minutes looking at me and then flew away. I will continue to pull up vines and try to liberate the yard, but there will probably always be a few for the butterflies, over on the edge of the woods. 

I was sad about the citrus. My neighbor said, you don't have to cut them down. But the tangerine had progressed so far that its fruit were misshapen, and it was clearly trying its best to bear in response to the organic fertilizer I had lavished on it, in hopes that it would recover. It was far sicker than the navel orange I cut down two years ago. 

This leaves one other ponkan tangerine, a pink navel orange (for the orioles when they visit in the winter), and a pink grapefruit. I hope they will stay well.