Yesterday afternoon, I found this little critter lounging in the sunlight streaming though the panes of the front door. He was way too comfortable to run off right away, so I had time to get the camera and take a few photos before going to find a container to use for the capture and release effort that followed. He was about three inches long, most of that being tail. When I got him outside in full sun, the colors of the scales on his back were apparent – yellow and blue – at least for a second or two before he dashed away.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly … Bugs
Aphids attacked one patch of corn and the sunflowers growing nearby. They didn’t seem to really do much damage other than cosmetic. So when I went to check how the corn was ripening, the first thing I noticed were the ugly black spots of the aphids. Then I saw some other much bigger and ugly looking bugs sitting on the growing ears. So back to the house for the camera and bug jar. I didn’t know what it was, but I was afraid it might be something nasty and wanted to get an identification. After paging through a number of references, I finally found a picture that matched. It was only bad if one was an aphid. It was the larval form of the multicolored Asian ladybeetle. Although ugly, it turns out to be one of the good guys.
Hopper
I should not have been happy to see this critter on the corn. But he just seemed too pretty to do anything but get his picture. He matched the color of the leaves perfectly.
Garden Expansion Plan
While there were plans on paper, it sometimes turns out that the real situation does not work out as well as paper. So here stakes and flags are being used to test out the plan. The stakes at the bottom of the hill are the proposed fence line, small wood stakes at the top are additional raised bed locations and the flags represent trees or groups of trees.
From Garden to Table
For dinner tonight we had our first green beans from the garden. Instead of the classic Kentucky Wonder or Blue Lake snap beans, I planted a filet variety, Maxibel. I am not sure if the taste was as great as they said. However, since these beans are a lot thinner than the other kinds, I suspect that the timing given for steaming them was too much and they were overcooked as a result. If I had paid attention to all the details in the seed catalog description I should not have been surprised at how big the bean plants got — the description does say the plants are tall.