Leafcutter Bees

We were out in the front yard the other evening talking to a neighbor, when I noticed that some of the rose bushes had circles or semi-circles cut out of the leaves.

Cut Leaves

I told Cindy that I thought we had a grasshopper at work chewing up the leaves again, but she identified the distinctive circles as the work of Leafcutter Bees, (Megachile).

Leafcutter bees don't eat the leaves; they cut these circles for material to line their nests for their eggs.  They seem to be pretty active right now, probably because they're raising a new generation of Leafcutters.

The damage they do to the leaves is minimal, since they're only taking what they need for the nests and not actually eating the leaves, so there's no need to do any kind of pest control.  In fact, as pollinators, they are important contributors to the overall health of the garden.

Butterfly Farms

We've both always loved butterflies and have tried to make our front yard into a garden with food sources for butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, so we went up to see the butterflies at Butterfly Farms in Vista recently.

Butterfly Farms

Most of the butterflies they have, both inside and outside the enclosure, are native to Southern California.

Monarch

Of course there were plenty of Monarchs enjoying the abundant Asclepia.

Gulf Fritillaries on Lantana

I was surprised to see how popular the Lantana was with the butterflies; we ripped out all the overgrown Lantana in our yard long ago, but the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) butterflies were all over the Lantana shrubs in this enclosure.

Indra Swallowtail

An Indra Swallowtail (Papilio indra) also found the Lantana attractive.  And a couple of Indra Swallowtails even found each other attractive.

It was an interesting place.

Melons And Memories

Two years ago when Cindy was back visiting her Dad in Indiana, they stopped at an Amish farm and bought some melons.

They enjoyed the tasty cantaloupes so much that she decided to save some of the seeds and bring them home with her, intending to plant them the next year.  Her Dad died unexpectedly early last year and it was such a chaotic time for us that she didn't get around to planting the melons then, so she decided to try it this year.

On her first attempt she planted the seeds directly in the ground, but the pill bugs and other insects nibbled the emerging plants off before they could put out enough leaves to become established, so next she raised them in the small greenhouse cabinet until they were big enough to transplant.

They're Coming Up!

Since she didn't know what variety of cantaloupes these were, it's been a sort of "by guess and by golly" approach, but the plants seemed to be thriving and we saw that they were setting some fruit earlier this summer.

So lately it's been a matter of waiting until they were ready to pick, and today they were ready.

Two Beautiful Melons

We had one for lunch today; it was yummy and very juicy.  And now she's got more seeds to start them again next year.