There's nothing quite like going out to the garden to collect vegetables when preparing dinner, especially when you've grown them yourself from seeds or saplings. Yesterday I had the chance to collect a fully ripe cucumber (Cucumis sativus) when preparing for Friday taco (we Norwegians are obligate tacovorous on Fridays!), which was my very first home-grown cucumber ever. I'm glad it survived the heat wave we have been having for over a month now, but as you can see in the photo, the leafs of the plant are not in the best shape.
I also found this little gal dead in my garden. I'm not sure about the species, but I'm leaning towards thinking that it is a Wart-biter (Decticus verrucivorus). We don't really have many large insects in the Norwegian fauna, so it's cool to find these "giants" every once in a while.
I hope everyone has had a great week, and as you might have noticed, I haven't really had much time for Steem in the past few days. Hopefully the next week will be a little less hectic, but I'm not so sure to be honest. The weather is just so great, so I'm not really much inside at all, which leaves little time to write neither science nor blog posts these days. Anyway, I hope everyone is fine, and have a great weekend.