Bringing friends home

I was at the local farmer’s market during my lunch time today, looking for some new additions to the garden.  You never know what you will find at this market.  I only buy plants I don’t already have in the garden.  Today, to my delight I found Chiltepin, a type of wild chili pepper.  There was no second thought about it.  It’s sort of a hobby: collecting chili pepper.  This year I’m growing twelve different types of chili peppers in our garden.  The Chiltepin will be the thirteenth.

Has no hint of a "Lady".

I was about to pay for the pepper when I saw two little insects crawling on the plant.  When I look closely, I realized that they are Ladybug larvae.   That’s a bonus. The ladybug larvae can help clean up the aphids on the rosebuds.  They would walk up and down the buds and leaves looking for aphids to consume.  The lady who owns the stall saw them too and jokingly said that she should charge me a hefty amount for this pepper plants since I have these two guys to go with it.  We both laughed.  We are familiar with one another enough that she said to me that people who love hot chili pepper are crazy, including her husband, but she is selling countless variety of chili peppers.

A couple of Ladybugs enjoying life.

I got the peppers and the ladybug larvae back to the office.  They didn’t seem to have any interest in leaving the pepper plants.  But, when I got them on the train one of them crawled up on the seat.  We caught it and put it back on the plant and spent the rest of the trip back home checking to make sure that they weren’t trying to escape again.   Finally, we got them home and took some photos before letting them go on the rosebuds.  I hope they won’t become breakfast for the House wrens, Song Sparrow or Gray Catbirds since these guys do not discriminate.  They are serious garden patrollers, if you creep or crawl, you are their food.