Some Kind Of Bug

 As the neighbors have tended their plants in the veggie garden, they've found various forms of insect life crawling on the plants or in the soil.  

The kids are fascinated by earwigs that they call pinch bugs.  Earwigs are scary looking but harmless to humans; they may actually be beneficial to gardens by eating decaying vegetation.  

Earwig

Other forms of insect life are various caterpillars or grubs.  They found this grub in the soil last week; bugguide.net has let me down and not identified it, but I think it might be the larva of some type of beetle, possibly Figeater Beetle larva.  These grubs also eat decaying vegetation, and apparently crawl on their backs, which explains the lack of visible legs.  I've always liked seeing the adult Figeater Beetles; I love their iridescent green color, although they're not the most graceful of fliers as they bumble around the garden seemly at random.  Various critters, including the neighbors chickens, consider the grubs to be a succulent treat.  

Grub

They also found this, possibly a chrysalis.  Still no idea what it is, but it, too, got fed to the chickens.  

Chrysalis?

Today they found this green caterpillar.  I thought at first it was a Cabbage Looper, but it doesn't have the yellow strip on the side and doesn't loop as it crawls.  Instead, it looks like it might be the larva of the Cabbage White Butterfly.  That caterpillar has a fuzzier body than the Cabbage Looper, but they look pretty similar.  

Cabbage White Butterfly Larva.  Maybe.

The garden is literally crawling with life all the time.  

 

"The Love Of Gardening Is A Seed Once Sown That Never Dies"--Gertrude Jekyll

 About a year ago I let a neighbor grow some kale and eggplant in Cindy's raised beds.  See The Gardener Is Gone....  He got busy with other things and didn't have much time to attend to the veggies he had planted, but they continued to grow.  

That left several of the raised veggie beds vacant, so when the family next door found that their own vegetable bed was being raided by voracious raccoons, I invited them to plant their veggies in Cindy's beds.  The drip irrigation was all in place, the soil she had filled them with was waiting, and her security system of anti-varmint panels was ready for action.  

So they came over with their kids, Maggie and Jude, and planted veggies, sowing seeds of carrots, beets and corn, and waited for them to germinate.  Then they added some broccoli and cauliflower plants that were a little further along, and those have been thriving ever since.  

And now another neighborhood family has joined us and has planted their veggies, too, so on Saturday we all had a Ladybug Release Party, turning hundreds of Ladybugs free to feast on the aphids and other pests that were eating the plants. 

Neighbors Tending The Garden

Kids Are Learning Gardening

Release More Ladybugs

Ladybug Ready for Release

It's been fun for me to look out into the garden and see it being productive and full of life, both vegetable and human, again.  And I know Cindy would approve that her garden space is helping educate and encourage a new generation of gardeners.