Sitting on the garden seat in the vegie garden, minding my own business listening to bugs, the wind, bees, etc. and there's a bug scuffle in the lemon balm and these two jump out as one, onto the herb garden's metal wheel.
Mating grasshoppers.
I love this seat.
Later that day....
In the bottom garden, we have a columnar apple that has done nothing in five years.
Ta dah!
Just the one, but it looks rather nice. It's growing on the trunk, as they do.
Also on the trunk of the apple, a monarch butterfly larvae (caterpillar).
I noticed it leaving the swan plant (its food source) and heading off. Watched it for several hours on and off, across the comfrey (that took hours) and up into the apple tree. A caterpillar with cocooning on its mind. So, up the apple it went, zigzagging across trunk and leaves, up and under and over. Obviously had to find the right spot.
Finally, it stopped. And I'm glad I called it a day as it was still in that position, upside down on a leaf - the one in the last pic here - next morning.
As was another one I watched leave the swan plant, go across some weeds and up onto a fence. And stop. Still there, same spot in the morning.
Don'y know where they have gone now, but we have an eye out for two green cocoons somewhere nearby. More larvae coming.
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