Mutant grinning daisy and a newborn butterfly
A couple of noteworthy things appeared in the garden recently. A fat green caterpillar had been decimating my dill, but I let it be since it looked like the classic butterfly caterpillars in all those educational films in elementary school. Sure enough, a week or two later I see a fat-abdomened butterfly hanging out in the adjacent parseley. I assume it had just emerged from its chrysalis; although I never found the chrysalis, it didn't fly away when I got near and its abdomen didn't look like it was in flying trim yet.
Stranger is this odd double-headed daisy. It's from some perennial daisy I planted but I can't remember what kind. The plant was a 1-1/2-foot sphere of foliage all spring until it suddenly burst into copious bloom in mid-May. Sticking up from the rest of the plant is an inch-thick stalk (the other stems are 1/4" or so) with this obscenely grinning double bloom looking like something out of Little Shop of Horrors. There's another shot here or you can see it in context here.