Wednesday 20 January 2010

A bugs life

There is nothing quite like an organic garden to provide nourishing food for bugs. We have fat healthy caterpillars of every colour and size and the variety of grasshoppers needs to be seen to be believed. Green, yellow, black – you name the colour and we have it. I used to kill caterpillars eating my plants but then Sonia made the comment that I was killing butterflies. Now I am no butterfly killer so our caterpillars are now free to grow fat and mature into their much more interesting butterfly incarnation.

But there are some bugs that really test my limits. The stink bug definitely fits into this category. Not only do they eat the leaves of my citrus trees but they squirt out a horrible foul smelling liquid when they feel threatened (which can be as little as me walking past). The smell is disgusting especially when we have trees full of these pests. The organic solution is to knock them off the trees into a bucket of detergent but the thought of how I would smell after this option has left me procrastinating.

Well this last week, I have found a family (well more like a city) of these bugs in my small struggling grapefruit tree and they have provided an interesting study for daily photos. So here we have baby to adult.

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 I even put together a quick layout.



Have a great day!

9 comments:

Jennifer (Jennilyn) said...

Great photos...annoying bugs! Are those ones in the second photo "doing it"? LOL

~Susie~ said...

Great shots!! Love the bugs and the greenery!!

Karina Skupień said...

Yikes...ugly bugs but great shoots :)

I love watching your photos these are full of sun and greenery. I really miss it since our winter is sooo long ...

Cloudy said...

Oh, I'm happy those dangerous Bugs we have not here...
Great pics!
Servus and have a nice day
Kvelli

Jewel said...

well stinky they may be, but they look really cool!

solveig said...

uff they really sound like a pest, amazing photos though :)

Carol said...

What absolutely fabulous photographs, the green looks so lush too.

Magdalena (m2m) said...

Wonderful photos!!! I don't know if I could live next to bugs like these lol It's great that you still can make photos of them :)

Susan said...

Oh, I remember these bugs from when I was a kid. They are awful smelling. But, they make for interesting pictures.