Glowing colours.

Saturday's delight:

Their perfume glows, too; I could smell them before I rounded the corner and saw them.

And Sunday's:

Golden jewel beetle, Buprestis aurulenta, dreaming of trees.

These beetles lay their eggs near injured portions of a variety of conifers, including our Douglas fir, red cedar and pines. The larvae hatch, then bore into the wood, live there for several years - up to 40 years! - burrowing through the tree, until they bore an exit hole and emerge as adults.

This species is the most damaging in its genus. Larvae have been known to take 30 years to complete their development in structural timbers. The emergence holes sometimes penetrate roofing materials which results in leakages. The Orpheum Theater in Vancouver was water damaged after "bargin priced" roofing timbers, cut from trees salvaged from the Taylor River fire on Vancouver Island, produced a large number of adult beetles which bored straight through the tar roof. (Forestry, UBC)

In the shade of the underside of the tablecloth, the colours are strong, but the glitter is gone.

Green or bluish back, with red or copper wing edges. The underside is a bronze colour. This one was about an inch long.

Sleeping with his eyes open

This astonishingly green insect was resting on the underside of a cap board on a wall yesterday. It didn't even twitch an antenna as I clambered up the wall and hung there trying to get close enough for a photo.

Unidentified.

The board is a 4x6, and the critter, from antenna tip to rear toe, stretched across about half of it.

From right up at his level. Risking my neck.

Photo cropped and flipped, to show his eyes and cute feet.

There were no insects like this in my books. Next stop, BugGuide. Where I tentatively identify it as a tree cricket.* I'll send it in to them in the morning.

*I didn't even know there was such a beast!

Update: it's a Drumming katydid, Meconema thallasinum.

Range ... Southern New England and British Columbia. See also BugGuide range map for an indication of the expansion of the range into neighboring states.
...
Remarks ... According to the Singing Insects of North Americs website, the subfamily of Meconematinae is represented in the US by only one species, M. thalassinum, which has been introduced from Europe. (BugGuide)

and ...

The Drumming Katydid or the Oak Bush Cricket, as it is known in Great Britain, is an immigrant to British Columbia. This small green bush cricket lives across the Lower Mainland and in the Victoria region. It inhabits deciduous shrubs and trees and comes out at night to feed on leaves and occasionally on other insects.
...
The name Drumming Katydid comes from the noise the male insects make by tapping their legs on leaf surfaces, creating a drumming sound that can be heard up to three or four metres away.
...
Invasion History
The Drumming Katydid arrived on the east coast of North America around 1957 and has since become established in the northeast United States and in Ontario. It appeared in BC in 1991 near Vancouver, and since then, it has become fully established in the Lower Mainland. (Alien species, Royal BC Museum)