I was wandering around the yard with my sketchbook, looking for some inspiration, when a little bug landed on my page. Yay! Lacewings are highly beneficial to gardeners and farmers because of their voracious appetite for small soft-bodied plant pests like aphids and small caterpillars.
Huh. I always thought the feijoa was a native of New Zealand, but though it’s been widely grown there for 100 years, it’s actually native to the highlands of Colombia, southern Brazil and the hills of northeast Uruguay. It can also be found in eastern Paraguay and northern Argentina.
We planted some at Malibu, and they never really thrived (and then they burned in the fire). But there’s some very healthy specimens at King Gillette Ranch, in full flower right now. So pretty.
I used to own a shirt covered in green beetles with black spots. Here’s me wearing it back in 2017 (aside: this was taken at our old place, that burned down in the Palisades Fire of 2025. Gah I miss it.) One day someone at work told me that my shirt beetles were Diabrotica, a major agricultural pest. It stuck in my head, because I thought “Diabolical Diabrotica”.
These guys cause damage to crops in the larval and adult stages of their life cycle. Larvae feed on the roots of the emerging plants, and the adult beetles eat the flowers, leaves, stems, and fruits of over fifty different types of crops and wild plants, including corn, peanuts, beans, apples, cherries, clovers, lettuce, potatoes and, yes, cucumbers. The beetles can also spread diseases such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus.
Who eats them? Wolf spiders!
It’s been a while since I hiked one of my favourite trails in MCSP, Piuma Ridge. There are lots of wildflowers hanging on.
The native wildflower seed mix I planted months ago continues to charm us.
Our club joined up with the Channel Island Nature Journalers for a visit to the local botanic gardens.
hashiworks 