The Garden

In the dog days of summer, what we love to enjoy is our pollinator garden.  I've worked on this patch of dirt for a number of years and it's giving back to us yearly with so many tiny creatures who enjoy our pesticide free backyard and garden.  

We have been enjoying the sights of a few monarch butterflies.  Last weekend I witnessed a female doing the butt dab dance on the underside of the leaves on the common milkweed plants.  She was laying eggs.  A friend of ours came by and spotted a couple of eggs for me.  I've since lost or forgotten where those eggs were but I found a couple this weekend too.  I also found one teeny monarch caterpillar.

Here is an egg.  It looks like a tiny football.

We had a wicked thunderstorm overnight and unfortunately I couldn't relocate these things again.  Where the caterpillar was, I now see a small black streak and I fear it could by the remains of it as some other insect found it and ate it.  The eggs are laid on the underside of the leaves so I don't think some heavy rain could wash them away or pound them off the leaves but what do I know?  I did ponder bringing that caterpillar inside last night as we did successfully raise 4 monarch caterpillars to butterflies last summer.  I will keep watch and if I find another caterpillar, I might bring it inside and raise it in our netted butterfly enclosure.

Here is the female monarch doing the butt dab dance as I call it.

Another butterfly we got to enjoy seeing here this past weekend has been a black swallowtail.  I actually planted some dill which is their host plant.  The plant hasn't been doing very well and has been ignored by this butterfly during its visits.

Canadian swallowtails have been making random appearances since May.  This one was enjoying our sweet joe pyeweed.  The photo is from a previous summer.  Our pyeweed is almost ready to bloom so we should get a similar sighting very soon.

A northern bush katydid has been hanging out in the garden the last 2 days at least.  We seem to find one every summer here nowadays.  I remember 3 or 4 summers ago, the first one we saw, was on next door's BBQ cover and the people called us over to see it.  We ended up moving it into our garden that morning as they were having a small party and would be BBQ'ing.

Then we see things that we have no idea as to what they are.  Even my SEEK app cannot pick up some of these tiny little insects, like this one...

The bees are always fun to watch.  The garden hums from them all some afternoons.  I just wish that I could identify them all.

I think this one below is my favorite of the weekend.

I have no idea what kind of bee this one is below.  It almost looks like it doesn't even have wings; but it does.

Then there was this caterpillar from last summer.  It would turn into the moth/butterfly, if it survived.

We can easily spend hours sitting by the pollinator garden, as you never know what may appear.  This was our biggest surprise...  a snowberry moth!

I like to show my friends who aren't so into nature these bug shots.  They wow about them and them think about all these creatures in the days that follow.  Nothing like bringing some awareness, eh.  This photo of mine really gets some...

If you don't have your own garden to watch, there are many about the GTA in public spaces to enjoy.

Lastly, I am trying to blog on Sunday evenings after Angie goes to bed.  I may miss some Sundays but I am trying not to.  I'm usually pretty bagged by the time I sit at the computer, so I do apologize if my blogs are a little "all over the place".

Cheers!