I was tidying up in my garden the other day. I pulled out some celery that had been attacked by little white bugs, and cleaned up another bed that was overgrown with lobelia. The celery/bug infestation was bad enough but when I pulled out a big chunk of lobelia I found all these caterpillars lurking just below the surface of the soil. I wonder what laid these? Ugh!
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I am always fascinated when I find stickbugs in my garden. Talk about camouflage! I grabbed this guy because he was in a pile of sticks but he moved an antenna and was saved from the compost heap.
This isn’t the friendliest face I’ve seen, but fortunately we don’t typically see it with this much detail because a stickbug’s face is not very big. My little point-and-shoot camera takes amazing pictures!
This guy’s body was about four inches long. The body is soft and bendable. Stick bugs are herbivores and can live up to three years!
I like the color on its legs. I’ve never noticed that before. You can’t see it from above, only from a frontal view.
Now that we take a second look, he’s a much friendlier looking bug!
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I find Japanese beetles fascinating. Their colors are beautiful. They are pretty clumsy and I like to catch them when they fly by me. They seem pretty benign, but I have saw the pesky side to these little jewels.
I went to my friends’ house to gather some figs and found this action going on. The tree was crawling with beetles and lots of fruit was damaged. I was able to collect a fair amount of figs, but the potential for damage to the fig crop is pretty high.
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This is probably the little bugger who has been eating holes in my plants, but I can live with that. Isn’t he cool?!
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A nice drama has been playing out in my front yard for the last month. I never get tired of watching this all play out. The Monarchs came, laid their eggs, caterpillars appeared, the milkweed got eaten to an inch of its life, caterpillars cocooned, the milkweed scattered tons of seeds, and finally, the monarchs hatched. People walk by all day long and have no idea what’s quietly going on in my garden.
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Miracles are happening in the garden. To be more specific, I had three Monarchs hatch out today. Beautiful and quiet, my butterflies came to life as the neighborhood noisily went about its day.
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.. | This butterfly is less than a minute old. I actually saw it hatch. I have been trying to witness this for a long time and was surprised at how fast the hatching is; literally, it popped out in a second. |
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Just a few minutes old, from a different angle. The body seems plump but that may be because the wings are still a bit crinkly. | |
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After about an hour, the butterfly’s wings have straightened out and the butterfly is starting to crawl around. | |
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I stuck my finger out and the butterfly crawled right on to my hand. I felt very privileged. As it continued to crawl around I placed it back on the rim of the pot. Within three hours, the butterfly started its life flitting around the neighborhood. |
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That’s what I said this morning when I walked into my first Orb spider web of the year. And my second, and my third…. It’s time to use my spider Tai Chi moves out in the garden to avoid having more full frontal contact with spider webs.
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