INTRUDERS IN THE GARDEN



I stared at the near naked Vinca (Periwinkle) bush with disbelief!  

Vinca flowers come in a variety of colours eg. shades of pinks, red, white and even purple.  The flowers are unscented and the plant falls under the "poisonous" list of plants but they are very generous in flowering and relatively easy to grow.  They can grow from cuttings or seeds.  The ripe seed pods will scatter when carried by the wind and volunteer plants will spring up everywhere.
 

Just a few days back the whole bush was covered with a crop of beautiful pink but now reduced to such a pathetic sight.  On closer look, the ends of each branch looked like they have been brutally chopped off.  

My first human instinct was of suspicion and anger.  For a moment, I didn't feel safe anymore at the thought of someone intruding into the garden whilst no one was around.

We were so proud of how this Vinca has blossomed over the months.  It started off with a very small seedling of barely a few inches in the flowerbed and how much it has grown.  

So we moved cautiously around the garden preparing to nab our intruder or at least scare the wits out of him and to our pleasant (that it was not a human intruder) horror (that the plant was almost bald!), we caught the culprits in the act.

Meet them....

Time for yoga

Did I tell you this is how you pole dance?

Getting chummy

Looking at how hungry our intruders were, we excused them as they needed a lot of energy to complete their metamorphosis.  Seriously they have as many as 4000 muscles in their bodies... something we just learned! 

We've learned to live and let live.  There have been so many more subsequent sabotage of our Vincas but then they grow just as fast and someone out there has to eat.  It's amazing what is poisonous to us are food for these hungry ones.