A "First" for me!

My Cousin Mary up the road found this cicada/dryfly while it was still crammed into the little brown shell and put it in her pot of rosemary. The next morning, lo and behold! It had crawled up into the branches and burst open the back of the shell casing and already emerged into its huge "new" self! It was still this beautiful green color most of the day, but gradually turned to the normal gray/brownish color. It's the first time in my 64 years I've ever seen a newly-"hatched" dryfly! It's fascinating........be sure to click on the photo and enlarge it to see the intricate designs in the wings; and how BIG it is to have come from the SMALL shell that it's clinging to!
One of my fondest childhood memories living here is finding and collecting the empty dryfly shells on our trees and fence posts. I still love to bring a few home from my walks even now. Thanks, Cuz, for such a fun visit to your herb garden!
This is a handful of our yard flowers blooming this week. I always feel a need to bring a few indoors so I can see them all day, and then feel guilty because the bees need all the pollen they can get! These little sunflowers after a few days suddenly "dropped" all their pollen into neat piles on the shelf, so I collected it and put it outside on other flowers..........maybe some wayward bee will find it!