Creatures in the Garden

This was about the only creature I was happy to see in our garden, a tree frog at our mulberry tree, quite easy to spot despite being very small because of the light green color standing out from the dark green of the leafs

These are not only ugly, but they are also wrecking havoc on the potato leafs. Granted, I was a bit slow when I first saw the bugs (at that time I hadn't seen the larvae yet), and now they have grown into big numbers. I shook off a few dozen of them easily in the few rows of plants and hopefully this will make the situation a bit better. I also finally found out their name: Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata, 28-pointed lady beetle, belonging to the "vegetarian" subfamily of the lady beetles, which are more commonly known as predators of aphids.

To top that, when I was trying to retrieve some tools from the far corner of the garden, which had been half overgrown by weeds, I suddenly felt a fiery sting at my hand and saw it a bit swollen. Looking from afar I saw two or three black insects circling above the ground on the neighbor's lot beneath the trees. It seems to be some kind of earth dwelling wasps, though they looked quite sleek. I was happy that the swelling disappeared  after half an hour or so, but still my mood was getting rather depressing, as commented on the pic below (done with FastStone Image viewer, my preferred software when it comes to digital photographs)

But lets end this on a happy note 

This is what I would call an ugly duckling growing into a swan, a rather big sized Mullein starting to bloom. I can't wait for it to reach full bloom and would really love to get that fence out of the way.