Last week my husband Jason and I went to the local plant nursery and bought a container of ladybugs to help take care of the aphid problem in our yard. Jason is a home brewer and he grows his own hops for his beer and the aphids are all over the hop plants. After releasing some ladybugs on several evenings we started noticing some strange black and orange bugs. We did some research and learned they were ladybug larvae! I had no idea that ladybugs go through a 4 stage life cycle similar to butterflies! We have since found all four stages of life in our yard:

We are pretty excited to have lots of ladybugs in our yard! Here are a few more shots of our little friends:

And here is one hard at work eating an aphid!

Also one of our roses started to bloom this week!

And of course these photos are brought to you with the help of Kiwi the big dog!

Be sure to check back soon because one of these days I might venture outside of my own backyard  ;)