Our Backyard is Teeming with Life

Our backyard swamp breeds mosquitoes, which in turn feed an army of dragonflies.




This female barn spider, araneus cavaticus, is the sort that Charlotte of Charlotte’s Web is based on.




That’s one of our dragonflies she is eating.




A katydid of some sort. I don’t have the patience to identify all the bugs that I come across. Plants are much easier to identify.




Another katydid. This one is as long as my thumb.




Ants shepherding aphids on a touch-me-not.




Patience, grasshopper.




A small garter snake posed for some photos. I resisted the urge to pick it up.




I wonder where the honeybee hive is. We don’t get many honey bees here, but there were four on this sedum when I took the photo.




This looks like a carpenter bee, but it seems rather small. How lovely it would be to roll around in a giant pink flower!




I have been mistakenly thinking that all wasps are predators.




The obedience plants are covered in pretty red beetles.




A humble butterfly visits the praire blazing star.