Wow! Very hard-working Ladybugs in the garden
Look what I discovered on the same Lupinus arboreus "Yellow Coastal Bush Lupine" where I discovered ladybugs hard at work eating aphids on the shrub.
It is the larva of a ladybug.
I needed to do a little research to figure out what it is, because it's the first time I've seen this type of ladybug larva. It is so much bigger than an adult ladybug.
Apparently ladybugs lay 10 to 50 eggs under a leaf near a leaf or plant with food sources for their larvae when they hatch so that they don't have far to go for food.
Looks like the lupine is providing lots of food for the larvae, namely those creepy aphids that seem to keep multiplying.
So not only are the ladybugs, here a seven spotted one, eating the aphids, but they are also .laying eggs so that we'll have even more ladybugs to eat up our soft bodied garden pests.
What a blessing!