Autumn Snow

 Alas, my poor chrysanthemums.

We had our first snow of the season today, that season still being autumn. It's not common to have snow in October, that's for sure, but it's not unheard of. It snowed pretty much all day today, so obviously I did not do a bug walk. But I had my camera outside to take the picture above of my poor chrysanthemum, which does not appear destined to bloom this year, and I had a look around...

I checked the leaves on the back porch tree to see what, if anything, the aphids had done due to the freezing weather. It wasn't so much the snow that made me curious, in that I don't think they are bothered by precipitation. But the temperature was right around the freezing mark all day. It's hard to say if the aphids were affected, but they were still there, even the ones with wings that could have flown off to try to find better shelter.

Thinking of insects who could find better shelter, I decided to check on the large milkweed bugs, because I had been speculating earlier in the week that if it snowed, meaning that the temperature was below freezing, they would huddle up inside the milkweed pods. I did not expect to see any outside the shelter of the pods.

And yet:

There was one nymph clinging to a seed, and if you look at the top of the picture, the black you see is the back end of an adult that was active enough to crawl out of the picture before I could get a better shot of it. Probably there were more of them inside the pod. But at least these two were out braving the weather.

I looked around a little bit, but did not find anymore bugs. Later in the afternoon, though, as the snow was waning and the sun contemplated coming out, but it was still freezing cold, I was looking out the skylight and saw what I think were a couple of very small insects flying by. On a day when there was no reason to expect to find bugs outside, there they were.

They are remarkably resilient. Tougher than I am, that's for sure.