{"id":141,"date":"2008-07-13T19:22:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-14T03:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/13\/dragons-in-the-garden\/"},"modified":"2009-09-01T19:56:08","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T03:56:08","slug":"dragons-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/13\/dragons-in-the-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragons in the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, not dragons really, but dragonflies. This one landed on a branch and stayed long enough to pose for Dave&#8217;s camera. With a little research, we identified it as a Blue-eyed Darner Dragonfly (scientific name <em>Aeshna multicolor<\/em>,) native to North America west of the Mississippi River. So what does this beautiful blue creature have to do with orchids? Dragonflies are beneficial insects, eating small <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/problems\/index.html%22\">pests<\/a>, including mosquitoes. We really try to avoid pesticides in the garden, which kill beneficial insects just as efficiently as the nasty ones. So while we may have a few aphids, beneficials like this dragonfly do a far superior job keeping them under control than any toxic chemical. Plus we can enjoy Mother Nature right in the middle of a busy urban area.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_2_640px.jpg\" title=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_2_640px.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_3_640px.jpg\" title=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_3_640px.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_4_640px.jpg\" title=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/blue_eyed_darner_dragonfly_4_640px.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Eyed Darner Dragonfly\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, not dragons really, but dragonflies. This one landed on a branch and stayed long enough to pose for Dave&#8217;s camera. With a little research, we identified it as a Blue-eyed Darner Dragonfly (scientific name Aeshna multicolor,) native to North America west of the Mississippi River. So what does this beautiful blue creature have to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-gardening","category-photos","category-problems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}