Rain, Rain, Come Our Way. Please!

"Summer Sun" by Ana--driveway art adds color to a drab concrete slab. Its a sacrifice to the rain gods, hoping to get washed away in a downpour. Do you have any rituals to make the sky open?

Lady Bug, Lady Bug Fly Away Home?

Q. When is a beneficial insect not beneficial?
A. When they all fly away home, without passing go or stopping for a bite to eat.

I purchased a bag of 1750 lady bugs and set them out on Friday evening to see if they would take care of the infestation of woolly aphids on a limber pine (Pinus flexilis "Vanderwolf's Pyramid") growing in my back yard. You can see the white, flaky stuff on the needles in the photo to the right. By the next morning the ladies had spread about and appeared to be going after the fuzzy splotches, although the majority of the buggers were spread throughout the wild plums (Prunus americana) that have been nursing the pines along for several years. The plums are hosting a different aphid species that is causing some of the leaves to deform. With a smorgasbord of bug delights--I felt confident in my choice to defend my trees.

I had read in several places that lady bugs are collected in the hills of California come fall when they swarm in cool places, preparing to hibernate for the winter. Buckets full of these true bugs are scraped off walls and windows, chilled and distributed the following gardening season all over the country. There were reports that the lady bugs tended to take off for greener pastures, though one source suggested spraying the ladies with soda pop as soon as they are released in order to keep them in place for a few days. Supposedly the sugary liquid will stick the bug's wings together for a few days, so they can't fly away. (The thought of exposing these innocent creatures to the perils of Coca-Cola was too much for my conscience to bear--I refrained from dousing the animals in the syrupy fluid.)

I returned to the release site today and found four lady bugs left in the vicinity--camped out on some weeds--not a one was munching on the white, fluffy fare nor the juicy, pale green variety. I had also read that the lady bugs that are collected do not feed when released because they only have one thing in mind--to lay eggs. So now the $6.95 (plus tax) question is: did they lay eggs among the aphids before they flew the coop? We shall see.