Looks like bird poo to me

I recently (a few months back) bought two fruit trees from Costco. I bought 1 mandarin orange tree and 1 Italian lemon tree. They were passed the seedling stage but not full sized. They are sorta small in size still, and still in the pots they came in, I think it is a 1 or 2 gallon size pot. They are doing well and seem to maybe have grown some. After I bought the trees I called my uncle Charles to ask him if they had to be planted in ground or could I keep them in large pots. He told me they would do very well in pots, but not to transplant them too soon, or the root structure wouldn't go right. He said about every year or so they would need to be transplanted. I could watch for the roots to start growing out the bottom of the pot and that was the time to move up in pot size. So that's my plan. Since it hasn't been a year yet and I don't see roots they are staying in their current pots! He also gave me watering advice but I don't want to bore you with all my plant care.... (but feel free to ask if you are curious) The mandarin tree is on the left, lemon on the right.

There has been 1 mandarin growing for quite some time now on my little tree (see first picture below, you can see it and if you look down and little to the left of it, you'll see two other smaller ones) and lately it is getting bigger and more colorful. Well not orange really but instead of dark green like they start it is lighter and a little yellower. We are also starting to see more buds forming on both trees. But recently I also noticed that there were also some holes appearing on the leaves of the mandarin tree. The kind you see on leaves after something has been munching there. I have looked periodically to find the culprit but without any luck. I have noticed a few times some spiderweb like stuff that I have cleared off it and occasionally little black bugs that have not been allowed to stay there! But so far nothing has been big enough to be the hole eating bugs! Ugh..... Both the first pictures are mandarins and the third is a group of lemon buds....

Tonight I was outside on a phone call. I was sitting on a box type thing we have outside and I wasn't really paying much attention. Than I noticed what looked like a huge clump of bird poo on one of the stems for my tree. I got another leaf to try and clean it off and it moved!!! I found a black,white and gray caterpillar on my tree!!!!! It was pretty darn ugly looking! It really does look like bird poo! So then I got a container to put him in (for my nephews and such) and I looked around and found another one. This one was even uglier because he looks slimy too!!! It was incredible! I guess it's a pretty good camouflage because we all thought it was bird poo until it moved. My mom said something about thinking she saw bird poo on it the other day and i said it probably was the caterpillar! My mom and sister and I continued to look and were unable to find any more and it seems they were only on the mandarin tree. I am not really sure where they come from and how they found my tree but I finally found the culprits. I guess I need to pay more attention to bird poo than I thought! Sometimes it lives!

Well I figured I would also post a couple recent pictures. The 3 are from the day before I layered my hair, I had curled it the night before. It was fun! I love curling my hair from time to time. I was also trying out some new eye shadow colors that day. The next two are of my new dress I wore today. I love it. Although the pictures aren't as nice as I would have preferred! It's way cuter in person! I got so many compliments today it was unbelievable!

On other news, although he has been "able" to for awhile in the past couple days my nephew Isaiah has finally decided he likes walking a little more often than crawling! It's so cute! He is still a little unsteady and walks kinda zombie-ish with his arms out in front of him for balance! It's so cute! Well I think I am gonna end here! I'm sure with the pictures this blog is getting a little long! Love to all my readers! Have a great week!