Thursday, July 13, 2006

Friend or Foe?

It was such a killer hot day today, I decided to let the plants suffer through the extreme heat and then give them a good drench this evening. I am glad I did, because had I wasted water and done the watering this morning I would have missed this. The catepillars must have just hatched for I caught them feeding on one rose leaf and the egg sacs are at the tip. You can actually see the eggs in the upper left hand corner (looks slightly shimmery) anyhow, I have no idea what they are, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they are fall web worms, and they can cause a lot of damage ( a lot more than what they already did to one single leaf in a few hours). I put them in a mason jar, then I clipped the stem around this leaf just in case one of them was fast to leap to another feed source.
Anyone know what they may be?

Edited to Add: I also found a few green aphids on my roses, I transferred the ladybugs over to the rose bush and I set out yellow sticky notes covered in vaseline. If this doesn't work tomorrow I will look at other options.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

My Confession..

I grow weed. Lots of it, in fact if I don't harvest the weed soon, it will expose itself to the neighbours. This side section of my yard was completely ignored, not by choice, but because I was *told* by the builder that the swails were to be dug up and redone this spring. Apparently I misunderstood and I figured the swail that had craters from the poor soil and bad drainage job was to be the swail to be dug up and redone, apparently that was a misconception on my part, instead the swail that was redone was fine and had no erosion whatsoever (until they dug up the sod and left the exposed soil for a month). Is it the builder that has no common sense? Or is this supposed to be the case.

In other Garden news, I have ladybug babies! Well hey if I can't procreate at least something in my garden can. I hope these ladies bring me as much luck as they can muster.
I also caught site of this by the tomato plants. Now let me confess.. ... I Cannot stand spiders. Even after photographing this (I apologize for the poor quality, I was not sticking around to photo over and over again, besides I sent a branch in to help out the ladybug right after I shot the photo since I saw some leg movement) but even now an hour later I still feel itchy and tingly. I know there are lots of spiders in my garden, I keep a keen eye for them when I am rummaging about. I know they are beneficial and blah blah blah, they are creepy and scarey to me, they are lucky to be so beneficial, but I would rather do without them. Just to let you know the ladybug did escape, but I am unsure if the spider wounded her with venom. My clematis, oh my clematis, I understand you like to grow your vine so high, but one flower, show me one flower just to know you want to shine.