non-plant bio mass

i hear a lot about insectageddon peopling the places and doing the reading i do...and i have no doubt that there is a human impact on habitat and so insect diversity...which strikes me as being not at all a good thing despite the human classification of many insects as "pests" and "vermin" because some of them are indeed disease vectors...mosquitoes for instance...

which , like the above moth, are using the blooms in my yard as nectaries...

the mosquitoes i have not been batting at have attracted an assortment of predators to the yard...there is a diverse population of dragonflies out there and they are not alone in their diversity...

i have seen few honeybees this season...there have been some however...

disturbingly large but mostly docile carpenter bees mugging the winter vetch...

an unidentified bee ( by me anyway ) on a popular bloom...

a bumble bee on the same well liked bloom...

and another acrobatically pollinating the bittersweet nightshade...a bloom they seem particularly attracted to...

here's a leaf cutter ( the agriculturalist's favorite...just saying ) on...yes that deeply attractive bloom...

a trio of leaf cutters bedding down last night...or evening anyway...after the temperatures dip down to the mid seventies ( fahrenheit ) or so...

and one of the girls just seeing the sunshine this morning...my best photos of the day however...

are of one of the girls just finishing up sealing off a finished tube of cocoons with some leaves and saliva...pure luck these...right place...right time...with a camera...insects are like that...so is timing...there is a place for at least some of them and it seems i will have cocoons to store over the winter to allow them to hatch next summer...the agriculturalist is pleased.

various legumes

difficult to misidentify a bean when you see it and the bush beans i planted in the back yard about as week ago have broken surface ( no sign of the ones i planted on campus just yet )...i will plant a few more in a couple of weeks and do so until i run out of seed...

zucchini has appeared as well...i planted them in profusion and if they all prosper there may be an inundation of fquash...there will also be the three sisters in my yard...

because there is maize up and progressing along with the beans and squash...they are not planted together...there will be no beans vining on the maize or squash spreading across the corn hills...they are all there none the less...

the "wild and weedy" maize ancestor teocintli is represented by two varieties...just for fun...

if the temperature stays warm enough to move the leaf cutters towards hatching they will find the alfalfa just coming into bloom...that would be an indication of symbiosis, no? thinking so...

and i do have a pollinator report...flower flies...

and solitary bees are working the blooms on the native berries to help feed the birds..small pollinators do a lot of work out there and are easily as important as the social bees... and i saw my first social bee ( finally ) of the season yesterday on the winter vetch...i imagine i will find them on the bean blossoms later in the season...they like legumes.