Welcome to all the ladybugs

It seems like everywhere I look in the garden these days there is a ladybug (or ladybird) Coccinellidae.

And what a blessing they are, eating the pests that have also arrived to feed on our plants.

This is an Asian Lady Beetle Harmonia axyridis eating whatever pest is destroying our very first Scabiosa caucasica 'Perfecta Alba' blossom of the year.

These lady beetles are quite amazing. They eat more than fifty species of aphids and other soft-bodied insect pests that eat fruit, produce and flowers.

I often see solitary Seven-spotted ladybugs such as this one on the lambs' ears petals.

Because the sun was so bright this weekend this isn't such a great shot of a ladybug pupa, but there it is on a dried up leaf of a California Delta sunflower plant.

I planted three seedlings of this plant, and wanted to pull out this particular plant because it really is dried up and withered.

But it seems that the ladybugs like to lay their eggs on these dried up sunflower plants, so I pulled out the whole plant and tied it to a wooden stake so that the ladybugs can still use it.

Another Seven-spotted ladybug is checking out the Indigo Spires salvia plant.

An unusual sight - two ladybugs meeting, or who knows, maybe about to mate on a wooden stake next to a California Delta sunflower seedling.