|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
You can find Part 1 of this series here and Part 2 here.
We ended Part 2 with the disappointing finding that the ladybug larvae had disappeared and no pupae were to be found. I feared they died because there weren’t enough aphids to sustain their voracious appetites.
I consoled myself by taking pictures of the goldenrod, which was beautiful.
But wait! In that third picture, taken in a patch by a fountain, do you see what I saw?
A shiny red ladybug! I was so happy! And then I wondered, wait, are there aphids over here? And indeed there were, gobs of them.
I’ve never been so happy to see aphids.
I didn’t see any eggs, but it was harder to look for them with the goldenrod having bloomed. Fortunately, the larvae are easier to spot, and a week later they were everywhere.
My gardener Ingrid was coming the next day, so I asked her to help me find a pupa if there was one to be found. She suggested looking low, where they might be more protected, and after just a few minutes she spotted this larva slightly curled up on a leaf. “Watch this one,” she advised me. And I did!
A day later it looked pretty much the same.
But the next day, boom! Overnight it had transformed into a pupa. The crumpled stuff you see at the bottom is the skin (and legs) that peeled off as it emerged from the larval stage. (This YouTube video shows the process.)
The next day, on a nearby leaf, I saw another larva in the same slightly curled, immobile state. It was interesting to me that they had both chosen the very same area to pupate in, one that doesn’t get much afternoon sun.
I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the ladybug to emerge from the pupa, but just five days after the first pupa formed, I saw this on its leaf.
And look what I saw very close by! It was not yet flying, just running along the plant as it had done when it was a larva. But a few hours later, it was gone.
I learned so much from this.
To begin with, though it is a cliche, ladybugs are mini miracles. For a larva to find enough food to eat, to outcompete its siblings, to locate a safe spot to pupate, and to pull off each of its remarkable biological transformations without a hitch is no mean feat.
I also understand a lot more clearly now that you need a lot of small creatures to make a big one. It is one thing to “know” this but another to see it in action. The amount of food it takes to make just one ladybug is astonishing. The same is true for so many young animals. Many baby birds eat only caterpillars, yet how many of those will be in our gardens come springtime? We have a tendency to get rid of caterpillars because they eat our leaves. But if we love birds, then we must love caterpillars.
Finally, I thought a lot about how difficult it is for us to see things. That sounds stupid — we have pretty good eyes. So good that we always say that seeing is believing. But what we see and what we believe is limited by what we know, and by what we care about. My gardener and I see very different things in the same garden. I see beauty. She sees life.
It is true that what we see affects what we know. But crucially, what we know affects what we see. Walking down the street with my arborist is an eye-opener, because he sees how each tree is doing, why it is thriving or not, and how well-cared for it is. I just see green leafy things.
Sometimes I am glad that I don’t have his eyes. Redwoods are drying out, big trees of all kinds are disappearing, branches threaten to fall off trees that are inadequately pruned, and invasive species proliferate. Ignorance can be bliss, especially these days when we are doing so much damage to our environment. But ignorance is also blindness.
What is a beautiful garden? I had an interesting comment a few weeks ago on a post about water. A reader with lush plantings wrote that “Sure it’s possible to replant any garden with native plants that dry into tinder every summer, “ mystified why anyone would do that. My gardener, on the other hand, would look at such a native garden and enjoy its unadulterated seasonality, like trees that lose their leaves and flowers that turn to seed. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what we see is informed by what we know.
Ignorance is bliss. But ignorance is also blindness. It is on each of us to decide whether and how we want to evolve our perspectives. The garden is one place to start.
Current Climate Data
Global impacts (July 2025), US impacts (July 2025), CO2 metric, NOAA climate dashboard
Want to be Notified of New “A New Shade of Green” Blog Posts?
If you would like to be notified of new blog posts, please send an email to notify@newshadeofgreen.com with “Subscribe” in the subject.
Comment Guidelines
I hope that your contributions will be an important part of this blog. To keep the discussion productive, please adhere to these guidelines or your comment may be edited or removed.
- Avoid disrespectful, disparaging, snide, angry, or ad hominem comments.
- Stay fact-based and refer to reputable sources.
- Stay on topic.
- In general, maintain this as a welcoming space for all readers.
