And now, for something completely different....

Moving along........



A lot of the next photos in my albums are of other plants, and my pets.  A LOT of the daylilies are not labeled in the albums!  I cannot get close-ups in the blog's image selection program, either (some were taken with their garden labels, but the thumbnail shots just don't show them clearly).

How about a day of critters I've seen in the gardens?  We are just about at the end of last summer's photos, I suspect.  (Although I seem to have quite a lot from previous years, still!) I have gotten some interesting shots of buggies over the last 2-3 years.  Skip this page if that thought "bugs" you.  

Some kind of moth.

                                   A dragonfly with gorgeous, black, lacy wings!

Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite, non-flower, garden shots!  It's of two different kinds of pods, insect or spider on the left, and daylily on the right.
My caption for this is: "I see you hanging around here a lot...."

               
A butterfly,possibly a Monarch.  This was taken in 2012.  I don't recall any Monarchs in my gardens last year!  That is a bad sign.

OK, yes this is a buggy, but....
No, it isn't a buggy.  Exactly. 

It's the cast-off exoskeleton of a cicada!  

It was stuck onto that leaf, HARD, by the way, and I had no idea what this sucka was.  Posted it on Facebook, and an old school chum came to the rescue with the identification.  Apparently, these things are quiet in the soil (?) and come out as adults after several years.  Their adult life span must be pretty short.  I'm not sure what stage this is, if it shed this part for another form.  Looks like a hungry larva?



 
Still with me, after that? 

This strange spider has deelie-bobbers on its head!  And do I count seven legs?  Maybe the front two are put together, praying mantis style?  I'll probably never know....

                        


                             Another odd bug.

Yet another odd buggy!  The camera didn't capture it, but that green was luminescent!  

Hey!  How did he get into this?  
May I present, Mr. Leo Lovemuffin Ray.

Not a bug, but sometimes he bugs me.

And I usually have to chase him OUT of the gardens, when he gets into them!   In general, however, he truly is a Lovemuffin!  

Caterpillar "butt-shot".  At any moment, I expect this one to sit down with a hookah and start quoting Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland!  

  




One of my absolute favorite buggies, a Luna Moth!  Right or wrong, I like to think of these as good luck.  I certainly feel lucky when one of them graces me with its presence for a few hours.  

Bee on elecampane, a very tall plant.  The roots are supposedly medicinal, usable after three years' growth.  I can't recall what the medicinal application is.  But the honeybees like it! 

I get a lot of spiders, and for the most part, I leave them alone, as long as they stay outside of the house!  This li'l guy was just enjoying a sip of the morning dew.  Sometimes I find white ones that look similar, maybe a bit smaller.  Sometimes I find really BIG ones!  Still trying to find my favorite photos of those....

Froggie!  I rescued this fella from the cats, and set him up in his own little apartment (under a flower pot) with a pool! OK, the saucer-bottom of the flower pot, with water in it.  I don't think he liked it, because he abandoned it for the long trek to the pond.  Hope he made it all the way there alright! 

Another Spidey... mostly black.  I have no idea what kind of spider it is.

And HERE is the spider pic I was looking for: Argiope auranticum, sometimes called a "writing spider," because of the squiggly lines in its web.  The web fibers are quite thick, and you'll know if you've walked into one!  I spent the better part of a summer watching many of these ladies going about their work in the gardens.  Had a lot of them that year!  The male is colored and marked similarly, but yet differently, and is smaller, thinner.  Their egg sacs are like puff balls.  I thought I'd have a horrible infestation the following year, as I didn't get to the sacs to destroy them in time, in the spring.  However, the wind must have taken them far enough so they bothered someone else more than they bothered me.  They were quite fascinating -- did you notice the "Death's Head" or weird mask, on her back?  And these ladies  are quite BIG!!!