Gardening

I thought I was going to have the day off today, because the forecast was for it to be pouring rain all day, but that's not what happened, so I went out to do a bug walk. It was still warm, though not as warm as yesterday, very windy, dark, gloomy, and not very buggy. Until I finished my bug walk, brought my camera inside and then started weeding in the rock garden because my husband was planting my new plants and I felt like I had to do some yard work, too. Then I found a million (that's a huge exaggeration) insects and spiders in the rock garden. But you won't get to see those, because I had clippers in my hand, not my camera. But... they were there (mostly spiders).

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Flower fly. Once again the chrysanthemums were popular with the bees and flies, but there were nowhere near as many as yesterday. There was mostly only one bee or fly per flower, instead of two or three. This fly is so big there wouldn't be much room to share anyway.

 

 There was room for a gnat, though. Can you see it?

 

 I was holding onto a stem while trying to take a picture of this bee when it crawled onto my finger.

 

I got a couple of good shots of Hemiptera proboscides:

 You can see this leaf footed bug's proboscis laying flat along its body. Its a very long proboscis.

 I wonder if this stinkbug was about to jab something? I didn't see any other bugs there that it could be preying on, but that doesn't mean there was nothing there.

 Beetle. I have seen quite a few of these around the backyard the last couple of days.

 Tree cricket