This guy (or gal) has been chompin’ on my grass. I think it’s grass, I really don’t know what it is (if you know please tell me). It seems to be some kind of grass, at the very least it seems to not be the milkweed (see below) which is now covered with yellow aphids. Even though it is not even yet like two inches tall.

Internet says we have a Common Buckeye caterpillar here. It will become this Pokemon.

There are plants—the bugs will come!

The story with this caterpillar is that, about three days, I was stooped down to look at these sprouts in this area of my garden, trying to figure out what was what. I had planted butterfly milkweed here, which is what those yellow aphids are on.

I happened to spy an extremely tiny caterpillar on the length of a tiny blade of grass. It was certainly the above caterpillar.

Well, yesterday I didn’t see it at all.

But TODAY, as you can see, I saw it, and it was MASSIVE. I also noticed, before seeing this caterpillar, that the grass seemed to have considerably lessened. I said, “Hey, where’d all that grass go?”

This is where the grass is growing. This caterpillar has about hextupled in size since I saw it literally four days ago, a teeny-weeny greenie baby.

I also noticed yesterday, one of my three remaining sunflowers that was again horribly decimated by some predator, squirrel, rabbit, who knows… it was sprouting knew leaves and attempting to make a recovery. That was good. Well, last night I was out there, and I saw no more leaves, I looked closely, and what do I see? Little son of a b**** going hammer on the remaining shreds of those fresh leaves, that it’s devoured all of. Rascal!!

However, I am too soft. I did nothing. The poor thing is having a bountiful feast. It is what it is.

My other sunflower has survived two assaults and massive predation by a variety of insects, and is going to bloom. Look.

Through drought, chomping, aphids and lace bug… We are getting a flower.

If you have never seen a lace bug (Tingidae), here it is. I remember the first time I saw one of these, extremely tiny and wonderful bugs. It was our very first class walk that we went on in my Entomology class, to go investigate the school garden and find bugs, and we were walking under a tree, and he casually flipped over a leaf and said, “Here, look.” And showed us the lace bugs. They completely blew my mind.

They are extremely small, as you can see. And they are feeding on my sunflowers, and I won’t stop them. The sunflower can handle it. More will probably just come anyway.

I will say that my sunflowers have had a somewhat terrifying amount of aphids, large aphids on them. I was hoping, praying that a hero would appear. Well, I saw, today…

Is this our hero? Looks like a hero to me. (A ladybug.)

Below is an aphid prowling on my sunflower. Interestingly, a winged aphid. I think that is somewhat unusual, I don’t always see them with wings. Maybe just a full adult?

Then, here are my Zinnias. They’ve made it but are suffering from drought conditions, even with my watering. IDK what the deal is really. It’s only rained twice this August and been blue sky and hot every day. They get full sun, and the soil is clay. Probably tough conditions for them, I don’t know if I haven’t watered enough or my methods aren’t good enough or there’s nothing I can really do about it. But some are making it through. The patch with the white Zinnia is looking better. Who knows. A lot of the Zinnias have made it all the way to having a flower that’s about to bloom, and in the last week they’ve just gotten worse and worse and they’re dying right at this point. That’s sad to see. I’ve watered them, but maybe not enough. IDK. Ah well. But I got some blooms, that’s alright. We’re supposed to get some rain in the next few days, I’m praying. 🙏