deltamiss

My newest quest is to photograph as many garden critters as I can find. I'm not that observant and usually don't even see the spider or fly or whatever until I upload the pictures to flickr. Actually, it's probably that I can't see very well. Anyway, I've put together a little slide show of all the critters that have visited my garden over the years. You've seen all of them, but now they are in one place. A good thing about doing the slide show is that whenever a new photo is added, it automatically shows up. Neat.

If you click the button with the four arrows pointing in different directions in the bottom right corner, you can see these full screen.

Something is eating my basil, darn it! But it's not aphids because ladybugs are all over the pots. Hmmmm...maybe it is since there are lots of predators. I figure it's slugs though I haven't seen any. If the ladybugs stick around, aphids won't be a problem anyway. Maybe it's grasshoppers. Eh, everybody's got to eat.

However, nothing seems to be doing anything about the caterpillars on the dill so they had to be picked off by hand. There were SIX on my little plant doing as much damage as they could. Normally, I do not try to control the pests other than picking off those I can see, and I hated to destroy these. Butterfly or dill? I think I want my dill. Little buggers!

This has been a week for critters around school. A giant silkworm moth, a very large box turtle and today a velvet ant (commonly called a COW KILLER!).

This monster is at least an inch long and is a female. Females don't have wings; males have tiny ones. They nest in the ground and come out when the earth is disturbed. I guess all the landscape work, mowing and weed-eating woke up a colony. They are known as 'cow killers' because the sting of many can kill a cow. Duh! According to my research, the sting of one is not fatal, but it will make you wish you could die. :/

Shoot! I was all up in that little Gladware container trying to take a decent picture. Thank goodness I didn't anger her! :D

'Cow Killer!'...