Do you wonder what is chewing on your plants?  Is that spotted bug that looks like an anemic yellow-green ladybug a good bug or a bad bug?  It's bad!
  
   Before you spray poisons on the culprits, and on your fresh food crops in the process, make sure you are looking at a pest.  BT kills hornworm caterpillars on tomatoes.  It also kills butterfly caterpillars.  Be careful of drift when you apply it.

   Remember that successful butterfly gardens include caterpillars.  The so-called parsley worm is actually the caterpillar stage of the black swallowtail butterfly.  If you invite butterflies to lunch, you will also be inviting caterpillars to munch.  Learn to live with some damage so that beneficial insects will have a chance to take over your garden.

   In my garden, I have had some new visitors.  Red and black insects are smothering the seed pods of my butterfly weed, (Asclepias.)  A quick check of an insect list and I find that they are eating the seeds.  Not a problem since there are plenty of seeds to share and a bounty of them have already blown away on gossamer parachutes.

   Can you identify the small wasps(?) visiting the mountain mint?  They are black, very thin, with white bands, one at each segment of the body.  Their legs appear to be striped.  I assume they are beneficials.  At least they seem to be causing no harm.

   According to the National Gardening Association, "Most insects are not pests.  In fact, out of all the millions of known species, a small minority of insects and mites cause trouble for gardeners."  Go to the National Gardening Association website for photos and information on the good, bad, and ugly in the tiny garden world of insects.  http://www.garden.org/pestlibrary/bugs.php