Thursday, September 8, 2011

Garden party... arthropod style!

Recently, I went out to the garden to take a few photos. I had an idea in mind to take close ups of interesting foliage combinations, thinking not much is blooming this time of year. Pleasantly surprised, I got a little, well actually quite a lot, side-tracked. There was a party going on in my garden. As I walked through the garden, I found...

Two bees and a couple of other quite tiny insects vying for position in a squash blossom.


A now deceased grasshopper posing on the stem of a Roger's Red grape I've yet to decide where to plant. While the texture of the grasshopper's shell mimics a leaf, it is hard to disguise oneself when the leaf color changes from green to bright red... gotcha!


An elaborate mega-commune for wasps. Guess I'm going to need to perform a delicate eviction before I can finish painting my house...


Wasn't enough for them to develop a waspene McMansion right outside my patio door. Now, they've gone and built separate mother-in-law's quarters several feet away!


Lady beetle nymphs(?) on Bladderpod pods. Not sure what they were, but I left them to do their job.


And, guess who? When I crouched down to get a different angle on the blossoms of this Santa Cruz Island Buckwheat, whom do you suppose I found lurking beneath?


Trying to look for all the world like a stem and leaves...


... she even mugged for the camera!


Finally, her possibly elusive lover lying in the Palo Verde tree.


As I haven't used any pesticides in my garden for a couple of decades, it just teems with life of the six-legged variety. (Eight-legged, too!) My theory is, there really are no "bad bugs." There are just some that you would rather find dead than alive! If they eat bugs, I leave them alone. If they eat plants, I'm not so forgiving. For the most part, they just party on, whether I am around or not!

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