Equinox nocturnal

In about a half hour the spring equinox will occur.  Meanwhile out in the garden the cool soil is harboring grasshopper eggs and grubs and leatherjackets and cutworms and sluggish earwigs and snail eggs and slug eggs etc.  Inside the wood pile and in wooden nests elsewhere are the carpenter bees and the leaf cutter bees and grubs of wood boring beetles and no doubt termites.  Inside a rotting cactus trunk are the cactus fly maggots.  Hiding under leaves and maybe inside them should be katydid stinkbug leafhopper butterfly eggs.  Somewhere on the wind there must be winged aphids headed for a tender leaf.

I say this as if I'm sure of it because in a very short time I expect the garden to be as full of insects and other critters as it always has been in spring.  But during today's garden inspection I found just a few honeybees, some hungry looking paper wasps, a sowbug, and this syrphid fly warming up on an aloe leaf.  Maybe thinking there must be aphids here somewhere.