Thousands of bees were gathering pollen from the flowers of the cup plants (Silphium perfoliatum). Jewel weed was blooming.

In other news, we celebrated some of the first harvest of tomatoes from the patch Dennis planted by having some friends over for bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches. The patch also has a tomato hornworm, aka Manduca quinquemaculata, which will metamorphose into a 5-spotted hawkmoth. If we were truly farmers we would’ve killed him, I suppose, but he’s just doing his job.

Oh- and the formerly unidentified strange plant that turned up in our garden does appear to be a cactus patch!