Insects in My Neighborhood in April

I have seen both beneficial insects and insect pests in my neighborhood this month. Here are some I was able to capture with my camera.

Insect Friends

I and my neighbors have many herbs that provide forage for bees and other welcome insect visitors. I love hearing my herbs buzz. Below is a happy bee on my rosemary. The bees are also enjoying my black sage. 

Below is a butterfly enjoying my black sage. They don't mind sharing the sage with the bees.

I was very happy when I saw a ladybug on my wormwood yesterday, but I was unable to get a photo because I was working and didn't have my camera handy. I do have a photo of a ladybug on a vetch plant not far from home, though.

Insect Pests

The reason I was so happy to find the ladybug yesterday is because my calendula plants have been attacked by aphids this month. Ladybugs love to eat aphids. I hope the ladybug I saw will stick around and bring friends. I tore out this plant and another heavily infested calendula to try to keep them from getting any worse. There's still plenty left for the ladybugs. 

I also started seeing baby boxelder bugs yesterday. I didn't have my camera near me, but these bugs visit in droves every year. They get worse in fall. The photo below shows a mature boxelder bug on what I believe is a borage leaf. They don't do much damage, but they can be pests. 

If you enjoyed this post, please share it. The sharing buttons are just above the comment box at the end of this post. The photo below is especially designed for pinning. 

This is my ninth post for the 2016 AtoZchallenge, a Blogging Challenge for the month of April, 2016. My theme is Things You Can See or Experience in North San Luis Obispo County. Here are links to the other posts if you missed them.

A is for Acorn
B is for Barney Schwartz Park
C is for Cattle in Wine Country
D is for Dark Star Cellars
E is for Electric Wires
F is for Family Farms
G is for Graveyard Vineyards

H is for Horses

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Insects Love Spring Wildflowers

Looking for wildflowers? So was I today. I searched along a trail I enter from the north end of Oxen Road in Paso Robles. I found many wildflowers along this trail last year. After all the rain, the wild grassy weeds were so tall they almost covered the few flowers that have appeared, but the insects were finding them. I could hear the buzzing. Insects love spring wildflowers.

The photo on the right
shows most of the wildflowers that were growing along the path I took. You can see the purple vetch, the yellow fiddlenecks, and the red clover. I hadn't realized until I looked them up that the fiddlenecks are related to borage. 

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 Borage-and-Calendula, Beautiful Borage Greeting Card




This greeting card from my herbal collection shows the blue borage growing in a flowerbed next to the orange calendula.

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The first insect I saw on my walk was this ladybug in the vetch and grasses. 

Here is a closer look at the vetch in the midst of the wild barley (foxtails.)

As I walked I could hear a lot of buzzing. Unfortunately my camera is broken and the zoom doesn't extend anymore, or if it does, I have to turn off the camera to retract it. That's why I could catch only this honey bee in the lupine or clover. It's hard to tell which she is after. There were also plenty of bumblebees foraging, but I'm not brave enough to try to get a macro shot of one. They were not close to me anyway, and they were very fast. They would not pose like the ladybug did.

Below is some of the fiddlehead in a collage.

 National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Western Region
The Audubon Field Guide to North American Wildflowers is one of my most useful books in identifying wildflowers, and I have several. Sometimes you can't find every flower in one book. I like the way this book is arranged by the color of the flowers. I especially like its color plates. It's easy to find what I need quickly. 

The Peterson Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers is best known for the drawings of the flowers and their parts. Unlike the Audubon guide it does not have the actual photographs. Most authorities recommend using them together since the Peterson guides have more actual information, and the drawings are very detailed whereas the Audubon guides have the colored photo plates. You can find a wider selection of field guides, including those for your area on this Amazon field guide search page. 

The other two books are just for fun. How to Be a Wildflower is more of a journal related to wildflowers. The coloring book is an educational 64-page book of wildflowers to color from a model sticker, It is suitable for anyone over eight years old. 

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 A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers: Field Marks of Species Found in Washington, Oregon, California, and Adjacent Areas : A Visual Approach ... Detail (The Peterson Field Guide Series ; 22) How to Be a Wildflower: A Field Guide Peterson Field Guide Coloring Books: Wildflowers (Peterson Field Guide Color-In Books)

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