When we got married five years ago and I moved into his house, we started converting the lawn to flowers. It started very small – just a short hillside, which was hard to mow anyway. That was so successful that we’ve been chipping away at more and more of the grass every year.

We started buying flowers with gift certificates we received for our wedding: mostly perennials, some of them native plants. Now the only thing I will consider adding to the permanent garden is natives (though we do have annuals in pots each summer, too).

As the flowers have taken hold and expanded, more and more insects and other critters have been taking up residence. Who knew that swapping bluegrass for native plants would result in such a large insect community? (She wrote with dripping sarcasm.)

I recently added a list of my favorite flower posts to the sidebar. All five involve bugs.

This is the start of a multi-post series on critters, published in 2016 using photos from my 2015 garden. First, some bugs I haven’t yet identified (on plants I have identified).

Invasive creeping bellflower:

Native black-eyed susan:

Common milkweed:

Joe-pye weed:

Butterfly weed:

Common milkweed:

Bee balm:

Common milkweed:

More critters

• Damselflies and dragonflies
• Flies
• Ladybugs and other beetles
• Caterpillars and butterflies
• Honeybees and bumblebees
• Other bees and wasps
• Arachnids
• Other bugs
• Animals