Skip to main content

The Little Things

Funny how the smallest things in nature can give us so much pleasure.  This past weekend I noticed that one of the new metalwork items in my garden had been blessed by the addition of  a line of lacewing eggs.


  

If you're not familiar with lacewings, click here to see the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension page on this fascinating and welcome garden visitor.  Delicate in appearance, they're fairly voracious and consume a long list of undesirable garden pests.  

Fun fact, that little "stick" from which each egg is suspended is likely designed to prevent freshly hatched baby lacewings from eating each other!

 All material © 2014 by Vicki Blachman for Playin' Outside. 
Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Labels:

Comments

Debra said…
Oh, brava! What a great shot. Lacewings are my favorite insect.
April 21, 2014 at 1:45 PM
Rock rose said…
Every piece of metal needs to have a little jewelry.
April 22, 2014 at 5:06 AM
outlawgardener said…
Your lacewing eggs look very sweet all lined up like that; they resemble one of those desktop ball perpetual motion thingies. They are certainly a sign of great things to come in your garden this season. I'm excited to see you again at this year's fling!
April 22, 2014 at 7:07 AM
sweetbay said…
Those lacewing eggs are amazing. Glad to hear the iris are doing well!
May 3, 2014 at 1:14 PM
vbdb said…
Hard to imagine this image was captured on a cell phone! I was so surprised to see the purples and other colors in the metal.
May 3, 2014 at 8:34 PM
vbdb said…
I certainly hope there will be more such jewels.
May 3, 2014 at 8:36 PM
Diana said…
What a sweet little scene in the garden. I’m amazed that you saw those little guys - they’re so tiny. Every once in a while I find them in my garden, but on plants, not wrought iron!
May 14, 2014 at 6:07 AM
Sailorchronos said…
I love your photos and blogs about your garden. I take a bit after my mother in the green thumb department but my garden space is quite small. I've not had the pleasure of blooms yet because my daffodils seem to be on strike and the rest of the garden won't be mature for at least another month. Best of luck to you.
May 26, 2014 at 11:01 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Plant with Purple Leaves

There are a couple of groups on Facebook where I lurk and occasionally dip my opinion into the fray.  They're places where people with knowledge of unbelievable scope can be observed, deftly identifying this obscure native plant or that scraggly left-behind orphan found in the backyard of a newly purchased home.   One such backyard orphan recently was posted in need of identification.   If it were a native plant, two people on "Texas Flora" would've named it within minutes.  Even the taxonomy of those impossible grasses is typically put to rest in seconds.  Not so with this poor guy.   At first I was fairly certain it was one of the purple leafed basils, maybe 'African Blue'.  It's fairly impossible to find it still thriving in a Texas January, but two plants in my yard are still hanging in there.  They even look like they'll come back if we don't have a deep freeze before spring.  BTW, this basil has one heck of a...
1 comment
Read more

Flying Flowers - Butterfly Gardening Handout for Festival of Flowers 2024

Let’s dig into “petals, puddles, and pesticides”. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AkRpm5NGtWnj4aIW1rTnqt7h_w9TpIs2/view?usp=drive_link
Post a Comment
Read more

Ho-hum to Habitat: My Path to Native Bees - Resources

San Antonio's Festival of Flowers will resume this Saturday, June 3, 2023, after a break of three years.    I've been given the opportunity to share how I garden, as well as a general overview of our native bees.   A link to a Google doc containing my handout (the info dense slides from my presentation) follows this list of resources.  Note that if you didn't attend, some of the handout pages may not make complete sense.     Hyperlinks to more resources: https://www.wildbeestexas.com/ https://w3.biosci.utexas.edu/jha/research/native-bee-communities https://www.wildflower.org/collections/collection.php?collection=TX_central https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/BeginnerBeeFieldGuide_11March2022_LowRez.pdf https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/nongame/native-pollinators/bumblebee-id.phtml https://www.pollinatorphotos.com/ https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/       https://drive.google.com/file/d/...
Post a Comment
Read more