While checking out progress on the sun room garden, I found this beetle hanging out on a pepper plant. It’s amazing to me how shiny these guys can be!

I didn’t realize until recently that ladybugs are part of the beetle family. You can see below that they definitely are related!

We discovered LOTS of aphids in the room so we decided to get ladybugs. We picked up a pack of 2000 of them to assist in aphid control. Here are a number of them right after being released onto a squash plant.

They quickly made their way to other pots in the room.

Here, it looks like one is keeping the other from falling off the leaf!

Another beetle we’ve seen around here is a striped beetle. This one is hanging out by the front door.

We learned that this one will HISS at you if you blow on it! In the process of hissing it hikes the body up so it’s standing on just two legs on the same side of his body.

Wait a minute…Isn’t that YOGA?!