The girls and I were delighted a couple of weeks ago to discover a brood of brand spankin’ new baby ladybugs hanging out on our snapdragons in our deck planters. The excitement escalated the next day with the discovery of swarm of new baby spiders on the BBQ, which have thankfully moved on to different grounds now (as cute as they were to see at first, there were roughly 100 of them, and I don’t think it would take me very long to stop thinking the spiders were cute).Thankfully, though, the ladybugs are staying put where they are. For whatever reason, they seem to prefer hanging out on the snapdragons as opposed to the other flowers in the planter, which is good, since the snapdragons are on the edges of the planters, so it makes it easy for us to see them. The downside is that these flowers aren’t getting dead-headed, since I don’t really want to disturb the ladybugs. I’ve never seen baby ladybugs before, and it’s a wonderful thing for me and the little Coole girls to be able to watch them grow.

I was already starting to feel a little nostalgic about them tonight, as they’re growing fairly quickly and I expect they may be on their merry little way quite soon. It’s been quite delightful for the girls and I to check on them daily and comment on their growth and characteristics (most of them are orange, but there are a few red ones – the colours are becoming more pronounced as they grow). So tonight I was happy to discover what looks like a whole new batch of babies for us to watch when the first batch decides to abandon us.

As for the neglected snapdragons, it’s not the end of the world if we let them go to seed. After all, it could be a new project for us Coole Girls next spring – planting the seeds, watching them grow and then seeing if we can attract a new ladybug family to our garden.