Secret Agent Bee: Gentlemen! (click title to "get it")

(UPDATE: Pardon the idiotic un-finished post, was going to go back before it was scheduled, but yeah...)

Popping around the garden I was charmed by a very odd looking inverted teardrop shaped be.  The head of this bee was at the pointy end of the teardrop and it was very wary, yet seemed playful at the same time alighting to pause here and there, waiting for me to get to it to get a better look before flying away again.

After LOTS of time on the internet trying to figure out what it was I've determined that it's a parasitic, potentially beneficial pollinator fly from the Bombyliidae family.  The cool feature about this fly (besides its appearance) is that it lays its eggs by its prey's den or home and the fly's larvae crawl into the den and then eat the prey!

The unfortunate part is that it seems that Bombyliidae's don't distinguish between annoying crickets/grasshoppers and wasps (which can be helpful too as pollinators) and helpful beneficial pollinators such as solitary bees and etc.

Still, nifty to see and have around!


MORE INFO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombyliidae
http://www.cirrusimage.com/flies_bee_Bombylius_major.htm
http://thenaturalstone.blogspot.com/2006/04/studies-of-bee-fly.html

Shiso Fine

sSo I have this plant called Shiso, Purple Perilla, Beefsteak plant, what have you, and it’s lovely. Except for the fact that it is, shall we say, a rolling stone? It’s actually quite funny, I had previously bought Shiso seeds prior to attaining this plant, with the thought of some exotic herb growing in my garden. I never saw one seedling come up from it and was not very happy, cursing the lack of the exotic to my garden. Since I was not so quite up to date in the gardening world (aka, did not research/was not observative) I did not notice the striking similarities between the Botanical Interests packet’s lovely, artistic rendition to my real live Perilla plant.

The perilla/shiso/beefsteak plant got huge and I separated it, moved bits and pieces of it around, pulled it up and moved and its various selves to approximately 80 different locations in my yard. Little did I know that that was not enough for my little Shiso. She is so everywhere. In the garden path (HOW?) ALL around the raised bed my husband and I made around the tree (she was only in 3 different places too!) Admittedly the purple, green, gray seedlings do look great with the Japanese painted lady fern and the other various coincidental purple flowers that sprung up around it, but have mercy… my perilla from last year got to be at least a foot and a half tall from one plant. And now I have literally hundreds of them everywhere.

I have been doing great amounts of research into what I can cook these into, from pesto to wrapping them around meat bits. (why do I always seem to write double entendres? Better yet, why don’t I edit them out?)

So, hey, if anyone wants to horror/glory of this plant, please, contact me. I have a few to spare.