Water gardens attract all sorts of animal and insect life. This month I like to write about one insect that I consider the most beautiful and beneficial, the Dragonfly. If you ban any insecticide from your garden like me, you need help and you need to attract the good guys. Along comes the Dragonfly. Dragonflies feed on any small insect, I even saw one eat a grasshopper. Damselflies, the smaller cousins are also hunters, feeding on small prey like aphids and whiteflies. Dragonflies and Damselflies are beautiful and come in many colors and when you have a water garden they will find you. Most beneficial is their larva. Dragonflies and Damselflies lay eggs in or near water. The larvae are usually the top carnivores in freshwater and feed mostly on small crustaceans and other bugs and their favorite food is mosquito larvae. If you have a water garden you will attract mosquitoes, but if you have Dragonflies and Damselflies larva you don't have to worry about breeding mosquitoes. Of course they may also eat some of your fish fry or tadpoles, consider that a blessing, a natural birth control. About 15 % of the North American Dragonflies are at risk of extinction in the near future. Having a pond in your backyard will help the survival of the Dragonfly. Unfortunately having fish in the pond reduces the Dragonfly population because fish like to feed on the eggs. Next time you come across the larva, which is really ugly, don't squash that bug. Think of the beautiful and graceful and beneficial insect it will become, flying through your garden like little helicopters. Their lifespan as larva can be from one to three years, depending on location and species.. Their life as flying insects is very short. Like the Butterflies they got only two weeks to spread their wings, enjoy the sun and the warm summer days, to mate and than to die. When the larva is getting ready to emerge the pond and to become that beautiful flying insect, it will one night choose a slim upright plant and come out of the water shedding the ugly body and spreading those lovely wings. A process that will take several hours and during this time the insect will be the most vulnerable, all that for two short weeks.