Caught! (and zebras, plums, bees etc)

Went out to water this morning and lookee what I found. Caught. BIG time!


The caterpillar had his head stuck so far inside the tomato I could hardly get him out! Comby (Comb-less the chook) finished him off.


We have a mass population of ladybugs this year for some reason - but so too with the white moth/butterfly and we didn't seem to have that much hassle with them last year - almost zero probs with the tomato plants. Also, the past season's baby wattle bird is flying in with it's parent (one dead adult bird found across the park, so maybe solo parenting) - it looks almost like an adult bird except for the fluff still between the feathers - so cute, with his fuzz and little call to Mum/Dad.

Also, the only plum on the tree this year (lots of flowers, half that of fruit, then lost almost all of them in the wind/heavy rain). The splotch on it is fine - not a bug just a spotch - or at least that's what I think as sometimes the market plums have the same splotch and they're fine.

I hope.

Just put in some stripey eggplant, brocolli, dwarf sweet corn, more lettuce and silverbeet (all colours and sizes), green zebra stripe tomato (something different to try), sweet and striped cucumber and space saver cucumber (10cm width plant). Looking forward to those coming up :)

The other garden bed is going GREAT guns and a surprise strawberry plant popped up. I still have no real idea how it got there.

Also, a new bee came to the garden this morning and completely spun me out. The bee I saw was very fast, flying from flower to flower rapidly, then 'hugging' the flower then on to the next one in quick succession. Black and white stripes, very fat compared to the bees we normally see and a long pointy thing on the front of it's face. And I could really hear the bzzzzz.
Anyway, I had a quick look around on Google and these pictures are what I saw
this
and specifically the first picture here is the 'spiky' thing which they say is the tongue
this
I had the camera out moments before but in any case it was quite fast and hard to track with the eye let alone a camera. I've emailed a few 'apiary' people to find out some more info.