Little Wonders in the Garden

 

Whenever I go outside and spend some time in my garden, looking at my plants, I often see a lot of "small stuff" that I call the little wonders. It can be a spider web, an insect, a seed. Whatever it is, it belongs in my garden and is just as important and interesting as the "showy" bigger things. Like that beautiful Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata) in the top photo. It is a dragonfly that is the most common in my garden.

This spring I noticed a higher number than usual of emerging crickets. They are always stunning when they just emerge - look at those beautiful turquoise transparent wings. It doesn't take long and all the brilliance is gone.

I wasn't successful in figuring out what kind of caterpillar (if any) this one was that I discovered on my lupines (Lupinus). I first thought it might a Painted Lady caterpillar, but I am not sure at all. A couple days later the leaves of the plant looked like in the right photo. The entire plant slowly died.

Neither could I identify the little visitor on my red-flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande). Small feathers like the one in the left photo I found throughout the garden, and bigger ones as well.

St. Catherine's Lace (Eriogonum giganteum) attracts all kinds of insects. Bees love it, but so does the Elegant Grass-carrying wasp (Isodontia elegans).

When you start to look for bugs, you see many of them. From left to right: Cribate Weevil (Otiorhynchus cribricollis), Largus californicus adult and as a nymph. I also call them love bugs because they seem to mate all the time. Quite a suprise to find a solitairy one on my sliding door.

Ladybugs are always welcome since they are hungry for aphids and eat lots of them. I think that's some kind of hoverfly on my ground morning glory.

More bees, this time on my Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa). I don't know the exact identification of the flies in the photo after that.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I saw this amount of (dead?) bees only on one of my Verbena bonariensis.

And look at those beauties here - California pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor hirsuta) and Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) in top photo and Mournful Duskywing (Erynnis tristis).

There are many many spiders in my garden, but most of the time I only see their beautiful artwork and what they catch within it.

Garden snails, on the other hand, are not turning up in big numbers. They have proven to be quite the climbers.

This year there are more Western fence lizards than usual sunnying in my garden. This one scaled up the screen on our sliding door.

A decaying pine cone. I don't have pine trees, but years ago, when we were still living further up the hill, my neighbor brought me a bag of pine cones from the Sierras. I believe this is a Jeffrey pine cone (Pinus jeffreyi).

Last but certainly not least, these beautiful seeds are found hanging in different locations, where the wind has blown them. I think they might be seeds of Salsify - and hope that I'm mistaken

I had Salsify in my garden three years ago and since then have worked hard to get rid of them by either digging up the plants or cutting off the truly showy seedheads as soon as possible. The flower is star-shaped, but the seedheads are real showstoppers. Unfortunately they are very invasive in a garden setting, even in a native and/or wildflower garden. You can see a photo of both flower and seedhead below.

Hopefully with all these tiny faces, this post qualifies for Nicole's Friday Face Off.