Ultra Green Sweat Bees in the Cosmos Cupcake White blossoms
I don't see Ultra Green Sweat Bees Agapostemon texanus often, but when I do spot them, they are quite a sight to behold. They are native...
New blooms in front yard
Since the shasta daisies apparently don't like a lot of heat, I pulled out their dried remains last Friday from the plant bed next to our...
Monarch butterfly number 3 released
Last Friday we released monarch butterfly number 3 of our current brood, another female. She emerged in the afternoon on Thursday in this...
Monarch caterpillar wiggle dance
We finally got to witness a monarch caterpillar that was in "j" position shed its skin for the final time. This was monarch caterpillar...
More monarch adventures
As I posted on Sunday, we released the first of our seventeen butterflies that we are raising from caterpillars we found on our milkweed...
Anna's hummingbird feasting on nectar in the front yard
An Anna's hummingbird had a nectar feast on these plants that are growing on one side of the front yard, all in a row. In the top photo...
First monarch emerged from its chrysalis yesterday
The first chrysalis from our current group of monarch caterpillars emerged yesterday! It was in chrysalis mode for 14 days. The photo...
In search of milkweed for the hungry caterpillars
As you can imagine, seventeen monarch caterpillars can eat a lot of milkweed. We only had the two narrow leaf milkweed plants....
Life with the monarch caterpillars
Happy monarch caterpillar munching on the base of a milkweed leaf Today three more monarch caterpillars developed in chrysalides. Now we...
Grasshopper on the apricot cosmos
The apricot cosmos plant is now in bloom. I thought it never would. All that fern-like foliage that I regularly watered, and no sign of...
