Pollinating the bitter melon blossoms

A few years ago, insects were so scarce that I had to pollinate the bitter melon flowers by hand. Only some took, and the harvest was meager. Fritillary and Skipper butterflies moved up from the south to keep us in bitter melons over the next season. But this year, even though I haven't seen any Skippers yet and the Fritillary larvae are still eating the violet leaves, everyone else is pitching in: Swallowtail butterflies, three kinds of bees, several kinds of fly, and this year's star presence in the garden, the Pale blue grass butterfly.

Imagine trying to nap in sun-drenched yellow.

Summer's strange veil

Agelena limbata grows out of its skin

The largest kiwi fruits the garden has seen

Parent Brown-eared bulbul oversees the hunting grounds

Bright harvest

There is a strange juxtaposition in the midsummer garden which at this time of year becomes a nursery for sparrow and bulbul fledglings while they learn to hunt and forage on their own. They share time space with those that shed their skins to grow anew, and those that transform into winged creatures behind the delicate veil of the chrysalis wall. Behind the staid and solid green of midlife leaves the cicada sings of cooler hours in which to love. Twining between harsh sun and viscous window pane, the bitter melon's tropical green curtain makes us dream of everlasting renewal. In summers as humid as this one, death is always present in the decaying brown of leaves overcome by bacteria, insects and rot. The cicada's discarded carapace is a monument to perfect engineering and luck. Tethered properly to the right object, it supports the newly emerged life form whose wings must dry before flight is possible. Untethered at the wrong moment, the fragile being plummets to the earth, clinging to its carapace all the way down. All is determined in the random act of choosing where and how to get one's hooks in, after having spent most of one's life in the dark, suckled by tree roots. How amazing is it then, when a smaller cousin sets up its own transformation to festoon the glazed and miraculous window of what was once a nymph's eye?

Some kind of Satyrinae, perhaps a  rare False Ringlet or Brown. My first sighting, and it stayed quiet for the photo session.

The artistry of Uloborus varians, a most intriguing spider.

Pale Grass Blue (Pseudozizeeria maha) in its dry season colors, with a beat-up wing.

Someone is still inside the little white form clinging to the cicada's old carapace.

And now that someone is free, leaving behind another empty skin.

Pale Grass Blue (Pseudozizeeria maha) in its wet season colors. Taken on the same day as the one above, thus speaking volumes about the present climate.

Living curtain of bitter melon vines.

A bitter melon, so delicious!