Glorious creatures

So this weekend was spent working on finishing the GIANT perennial bed that we started last fall. Finding time to work on it can prove to be a challenging thing during the summer as the weekends that are free, are few and far between. And something sad starts to happen in mid August when you live in Minnesota- you start saying things to each other like "we really need to make sure we get that done BEFORE THE SNOW STARTS TO FLY"

Ah, What?

Yeah, we start thinking about that awful white stuff that will take over are lives in a few months.


Okay, back to the project. It was labor intensive, sweaty, very hot, and oh so very satisfying at that end of the day.

An amazing thing happened though, while we were working. All kinds of glorious creatures started to show themselves to us. (Well, the reality, is we were working in their habitat, and we just got to observe them.)And I just had to photograph them.

First up was this cool guy:



I found him hiding in my bee balm. He was having a lovely little lunch munching on some weed that didn't belong in there. So I ripped the weed out along with him and decided that he was just too cool. One of those wonders of nature with his weird little spiky thing coming out of his fake eyeball on his butt. From what I can tell from the Internet, I think he's a sphinx moth caterpillar. Funky little guy!

Next we have her:


This a clear wing hummingbird moth. From a distance she looks like a hummingbird. She stayed around forever. I could bore you to death with all of the pictures I took of her. She did some serious eating at my million bells on my deck.

Then there is her:


Gotta love a beautiful swallowtail. She let me take a ton of photos too. She feasted on my butterfly bush for over 20 minutes. I've had a lot fun with her in my Photo shop program.

Makes me wonder what else I would find if I hung out in my gardens all day every day!