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.








 I even put together a quick layout.

Have a great day!