Bug Squad

It's almost that time againtime for the annual Beer for a Butterfly contest or Suds for a Bug. If you're out and about on Jan. 1, start looking for that cabbage white butterfly.

If you want to learn about native bees, the place to "bee" on Saturday, Jan. 7 is the Rush Ranch Nature Center, 3521 Grizzly Island Road, Suisun.

Back in March of 1977, ABC launched a TV comedy-drama series titled "Eight Is Enough." It was about a Sacramento, Calif., family with eight children. The journalist/father, Tom Bradford, wrote a column for the fictitious Sacramento Register. "Eight Is Enough!" the father declared. He was wrong.

Dec. 22 marked the winter solstice, the first day of winter. But don't tell that to the western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica. It's supposed to be hibernating, not flying. But there it is flying around--and sipping nectar--from flowering Algerian ivy climbing a fence in Vacaville, Calif.

Our unseasonably warm temperatures in November yielded 12 unexpected surprises: 12 monarch caterpillars munching away on the tropical milkweed in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif.